The threepeat

[aaronD341]

I would just like to extend my congratulations to team 341 who has done it again! GREAT JOB guys, winning chairmans at Cheasapeake! This is the third year in a row! You guys rocked hard.

how many other teams have won chairmans multiple times?
~Aaron

[Yan Wang]

Team 191, the X-Cats, won the national chairman's award twice and is the only team to have done so.

[tkwetzel]

Team 79 won it at UCF this year, making it the third year in a row.
Team 236 won it at UTC this year, also making it their third year in a row.

[Nate Edwards]

957 has won the Pacific NW Regional Chairman's two out of the last 3 years, we were told last year that you couldn't win two years in a row at the same regional but several teams have done it. 103 I believe won J & J Regional Chairman's twice in 2002 and 2003 and won the Championship Chairman's Award in 2003 also.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by tkwetzel

Team 79 won it at UCF this year, making it the third year in a row.Team 236 won it at UTC this year, also making it their third year in a row.

Warning, This may offend you but please try and keep an open mind and carefully read ever thing I am saying and provide me with some reasons why or why not the system should or should not be changed.


In all honesty I think a 3rd win by a team in 3 years is a big slap in the face to all the other teams competing there.

Now I know I'm going to catch some flak for this one, but that was just my first thought when I heard 236 won at UTC. I love team 236 and all, but wow.. just wow.. Shouldn't we give someone else a chance?
(And for the record, my team was not at UTC so this is an unbiased opinion)

I know that The Chairman's award is the most prestigious award in FIRST, but this brings up a point.

Should last years awards be a considering factor when deciding a winner for non technical award from year to year or even event to event in the same year?
For us, we won the Radio Shack award this year at both Rochester, and NJ, which was quite a shock within itself, but the judges for these technical awards go by the results of one Regional, so that shouldn't be changed in my opinion.

I know that know one can not win chairman's in 2 regionals in one year if I am not mistaken, but why can they 2 or 3 years in a row. Should there be a limit before you have the honor to submit one the next time around?

There are a lot of teams that inspire and change the culture, and I think for this year at least the way things worked out, that the winner of the Championship Event Chairman's is going to be really hard to determine and I wish the judges the best of luck.

I'm not trying to say that the teams that won the Chairman's this year for the 2nd or 3rd time in a row are not deserving of it, but like I said.. I just saw it as a slap in the face to all the other well distinguished teams at UTC when 236 won it for the 3rd time in 3 years.

I don't know... This post may be deleted at a future time, but I just want to see what everyone thinks about it.

[Matt_Kaplan1902]

79 has won the Chairmans Award 3 years in a row but not all 3 were at UCF. Last year they won it at the Colorado Regional. Heatwave (312) won it at UCF last year.

I do however agree with Elgin that more teams should be recognized. Maybe FIRST should do what they are doing with the Woodie Flowers award that a team can update their submission directly to the Championship the next year.

[Chris Fultz]

The Chairman's recognizes sustained and continued growth in programs, and so just because you win one or two years in a row does not mean you have an 'automatic' for the next year. The teams change, the presenters change, and the judges change. I would expect that the teams that have won multiple times have continued to grow and expand their programs or they would be repeat winners.

Although the process is not perfect, I think the process works and I do not think the Championship judges could review 30 2005 regional winners and look back at 29 2004 winners and be able to determine a Chapionship Chairmans winner. It is different from the WFA due to the length of the submissions and the interview process.

[KenWittlief]

each year the chairmans award is given to the team the judges think deserve it the most, for that year.

How can it be any other way?

Would you not allow a team to win the regional two years in a row? If they won the previous year, should they be forced to sit out the playoffs, and let someone else have a turn?

To win three years in a row a team has to really be on fire, really doing something incredible year after year. Isnt that what the award is for?

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

To win three years in a row a team has to really be on fire, really doing something incredible year after year. Isnt that what the award is for?

Two points I have to make on this.

1) A Chairmans award is yes the highest award a team can be honored with, but I also think that when a team wins it 2 or 3 years at the same regional then it is telling all of the other teams that they have to be better than that one team who is "on fire" as you put it. Some teams we know are great in spreading the message of FIRST. They win awards, they host mini comps, and they mentor FLL teams. No question that they are great.

But for another team's perspective one view is that they should just give up on Chairman's since this team is unstoppable.

Now, the other hand is the perspective of seeing this unstoppable team and striving to be as good as they are. (Same thing happens in the actual competitions to some rather well known teams who have won regionals and The Championship events multiple times)

2) Another thing I noticed, but I think the FRC judges are biased towards teams who mentor FLL teams and hold FRC mini comps. Every team does not have the resources to do these things even though they have been around for many many years. If that is a requirement then state that in the awards submission rules in the manual, if it isn't.. then I don't know..
But it just seems to be.

<Maybe I will see if all the teams who won Chairman's this year has mentored FLL teams or Run a mini comp. It would be an interesting study and prove a bias if one exists..>

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

Would you not allow a team to win the regional two years in a row? If they won the previous year, should they be forced to sit out the playoffs, and let someone else have a turn?

No, and I think this is a bad comparison for one reason.
The game changes from one year to the next, but the main goal of FIRST is the inspiration of Science and Technology and that doesn't change from one year to the next.

BUT... I believe when a Team is deemed a Chairman's team then you are in fact giving them ammunition to go back to the community and spread the message even further. If that you give the same that ammunition every year, it kind of loses it's effect across the board to inspire Science and technology but in that one area where that team is from.

I just had a thought, but what if a Chairman's award winning team came with responsibilities. Just like a Miss America Pageant is not really a Beauty contest but rather a scholarship pageant and the message of the winner is to spread their goal across the nation (world peace, cure for a disease, etc.) FIRST should be a Inspirational contest and not all about the robots.
To do this, Chairman's award winners should be required to spread the message even further. Public Appearances, and everything else. When you win Chairman's this also gives you the ammunition to go to sponsors (new or old) and give them a proven strategy to help change the world.

[Alex Cormier]

well

congrats
congrats
congrats

i also agree with elgin (not very often )

[Ashley Weed]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

<Maybe I will see if all the teams who won Chairman's this year has mentored FLL teams or Run a mini comp. It would be an interesting study and prove a bias if one exists..>

I noticed this prior to the threads beginning and choose to not impose my opinions, because no matter what, all in all, there were judges somewhere at some point in time that chose X team over all other teams to be the Regional Chairman's Award Winner in year ####. It is above all, an amazing honor, and congratulations to all of them, as working with the students this year on my team, it is a long ... long process.

Elgin, in addition, if you pursue that, it would be amazing to see how many of them mentored other teams - more specifically "Rookie" teams.

[MasonMM]

I completely disagree with the notion that a team should not win Chairman's more than one year in a row at a regional event. Chairman's is about what a team has done over their entire history as a team, and it should be awarded to the team that has done the best job at it, regardless of if they did the best job the previous year. Any team can when a regional championship year after year, it just means they play hard and build good robots, well, a team should be able to win chairman's year after year if they really do the best job at it, at the regional level.

Another point, Many teams competition for chairmans are working to win it at a national level, or at least that is how it is with the robonauts, and the only way to qualify to compete for nationals chairmans award is to win it at a regional. This rule was implemented in 2003. So if the best regional teams won the award in 2003 and went on to compete at the national level, but only one of those teams won it at nationals. The next year in 2004 at the regional level, the previous years regional winners would be less likely to win the award based solely on the fact that they had one it the year before(this going by the thoughts of some people on this thread and some judges). The winning team at the regional would be the 2nd best chairmans entry because the best had won it the year before, so now at the national competition for chairmans there is the second best teams competition instead of the nations best, discluding the teams like 79 that went to a different regional to enter chairmans with the sole purpose of having a better chance to win at a different regional than one that they had one at a year before. Taking all this into account this year in 2005, i would imagine that the 2003 winners will make there return after the torch was passed to someone else during 2004, and now they are once again fully considered not by if they won the year before, but by what accomplishments they have made as a team.

In summary, i feel that at the regional level, it is completly legit and fair for the same team to win year after year as long as they truely are deserving of the award, so that the nation's best teams may be represented at the national level, and compete for the national chairman's award.

[Katy]

I think making formal rules saying that you may not win the regional chairmans two years in a row is unfair. It would encourage the most effective and powerful teams to slow or stop their work for an entire season and this would not be beneficial to the FIRST community.

However after winning a regional chairmans maybe next year that team should have to submit to another regional. Short of the regional in Israel...most of the time the regional chairman's winner is a team that attends multiple regionals or one that easily has the ability to. Moving to a different regional gives teams from the local regional a new chance at the award and also gives the winning team a chance to compete. Besides...it is always exciting to see a new face at regionals.

[Collin Fultz]

I know that 234 tries to submit in different locations every year---winning 2003 in Phoenix, 04 in Chicago, and submitting 05 at UCF---

Should teams have to? No. Because to win a chairman's doesn't mean you have to have a lot of money. If you can only make it to one regional due to money, there isn't a lot you can do about that.

Don't really know where I'm going with this.

Congrats to ALL the winners...the students.

[Katy]

Yes that is true but I think a lot of teams geographically have the ability also to just attend a different regional as their main regional.