What does the Chairman’s Award have to do with a robot contest?

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Many people who question the vadality of the Chairman's award, probably have never had anything to do with the award and probably mostly dealt with the construction of the robot mostly. Technocats did last season in CHicago gave team 909 one of their extra robots, which had a robot with a non-working drive base and they as a team decided to assist this other team. Not only did they give them the robot but thier choice actually cost them a match as they lost to their own robot. Such self-sacrafice is the true spirit of FIRST.

True words.

Last year our mentor LeRoy found himself to his surprise free from needing to help with our robot. So on his own he looked up the bottom 5 teams, and checked if they needed help. He ended up asking 10 bottom teams, and 1/2 wanted help. He wasn't even letting anyone on our team know. I found out. I followed up learning what LeRoy was doing, the results, and I'm the one always bragging about what he did - he keeps it low key.

One of the teams he helped with a problem that we'd been having had won no matches at So Cal Regional then he solved a problem for them.

Their next match was against us and they won.

D'oh! I went and gave that rookie mentor a hard (j/k) time about that. We had a great time and LeRoy's task has become a tradition for us now - check the bottom teams.


I've been asked yet again by newer mentors/students, why spend time on the crate, why spend time on the mythology of our team... I rediscovered a paper yesterday at the shop that I'd found online when we began the journey to the Chairman's Award. This is the paper that helped guide me. My copy of this paper had paint on it, I had some trouble making out some words, and I had to retype it to post on our web.

fyi, the #'s he mentions in the article are team numbers.


Why go for the Chairman's Award?