Giving/Receiving Peer Awards

[Carol]

I know there are teams who have told us that they were THRILLED when they received our peer awards. These are typically teams that don't receive many awards, so maybe are less "jaded". That is the reason we too try to give out awards that don't replicate the official awards.

However, we have received our share our official awards, but our students are also proud when our team wins a peer award. Sometimes even more proud.

[SoulianPride]

When we give out awards other teams seem kind and grateful and we've never quite had an experience like that. When we receive awards we are equally as grateful. Our awards tend to move out of the way of defense and offense but more of other things like 'role model', 'best rookie' and 'safety'. I believe last year we gave out Role Model, Best Rookie, Safety, and Best Strategy.

[Lil' Lavery]

We still have the "gold record" we received from 118 for "The Best Name to Say into a Fan" in either 2007 or 2009.

[tr6scott]

We have our students try to come up with creative awards that combine our team, TORC and the game, and come up with peer awards that can be spread around. The best defense, the best offence, they will earn their awards from FIRST. Yes they should be gracious, but we are still talking high school students, so I am not surprised at your experiences.

I think this is similar to BigJ approach.

Most time we hand out our pit awards on Saturday, and we do it in the pits, most times the drive coaches and drivers are not around, so that takes some of the "pick me" tarnish off of them.

Here are the awards we came up with last year, and the teams that won them at our second event at Waterford.

Torque from TORC Award--for holding your ground against other bots
Team 1718—The Fighting Pi, Armada
Shooting the Moon Award--for having the highest shooting altitude
Team 2612 – Corsairs, Waterford
Frequent Flyer Award--for having yours balls always flying
Team 4998 – TESLA, Flint
No Smelly Pits Award--for having the best pits
Team 1 – The Juggernauts, Pontiac
Altitude Attitude Award--for showing spirit and staying true to your team
Team 3098 – The Captains, Waterford
Taming Award--for taming your opponent most of the time
Team 302 – The Lake Orion Dragons, Lake Orion
Mountain Climbing Award--for raising from a low rank on Day 1 to a high rank on the next
Team 3707 – Brighton Bug, Brighton
Are You Sure You're a Rookie? Award--for the best rookie team
Team 5084 – FridgeBot Caveliers, Corunna
TORC Award--for The Outrageous Robot Creativity
Team 3538 – RoboJackets, Auburn Hills

In my experience, the only way to have a legendary team take notice of you, is to beat them.

[GBK]

In the past we have given out these kinds of awards, but have gone away from them the past few years, only due to time.

When it comes to receiving them, we value them. Anytime your piers give you an award, you are doing something right.

[AllenGregoryIV]

I like the idea of team awards but they aren't given out as much in Texas as I think they are in other places. I know several teams that have given them out in different years (including mine) but I'm not sure of anyone that has a big tradition of doing it every year, but I might just have missed it.

Whenever we did give out team awards I would always try to steer the team in to giving the awards to the teams that were probably not going home with any other hardware.

It makes sense to me that if you have dozens of blue banners hanging in your school, a team award isn't going to be as valuable or noteworthy to you as a team that has been doing FRC for 10+ years and never won award. Not to say teams shouldn't appreciate them because they should, but a team's reaction and acceptance is going to be based some what on what they have done at that event and in the past. It may even be that way within a team, maybe the seniors aren't impressed with the team award they won but the freshman who helped write part of the autonomous code could be overjoyed to win the "Best Autonomous" award from a team.