Everyone's A Winner?

[Tyler_Kaplan]

Originally Posted by NoahB4536

This last weekend my team competed at the Minnesota 10K lakes regional. As per usual there were lots of speakers but it seemed to me like this year they talked a lot about how everyone was a winner by just showing up to the event. Now I am not bashing the speakers, I just wanted to address an issue that has come up in other sports, which is that if competitors at an event are told that everyone is a winner it can take away some of the joy of winning and interfere with the competition aspect of coopertition. Calling everyone a winner can also make it tough for people to deal with losing, although that is mostly with younger kids. I was in the pits for some of the regional so I did not get to watch every speaker and therefore cannot attest to the extent to which this was occurring but I do believe that it is important for the FRC to not give into the concept of everyone being a winner. There are three winning teams in a regional and although that does not necessarily mean that the other teams are "losers" it does mean that the other teams can be motivated to learn and improve in their pursuit of excellence.

I am going to respectfully disagree with saying that there are three winners at a competition. FIRST is about far more than the outcome of the finals. For example, I would consider the winners of the Chairman's award huge winners, same with awards like engineering inspiration and rookie all star. Being a winner in FIRST is not black and white. It's about what you as an individual and a team get out of the experience. As a mentor, I look at it as what we can do to serve our community, and how to give students tools to succeed in their lives.