The threepeat

[wildcatsfive]

You may look at my team number and think this is a biased post, and maybe it is, but here's my honest opinion.

1.) The Chairman's Award is the greatest thing to happen to FIRST, period. By definition, the award goes to the team that embodies the spirit of FIRST and displays qualities that other teams should emulate. As the most prestigious award in FIRST it is the most coveted (or should be, in my opinion). The concept behind it is genius. You have 29 regional winners trying to catch up to the national winner and countless other teams trying to catch up to the regional winner. In the end, FIRST benefits. The Chairman's Award (and the concept of FIRST, of course) is the reason for the tremendous growth of the program. If teams really want to win the award, they will continue to do more to further FIRST, which helps get more kids invovled in the program, helps FLL, helps the disabled, helps the world, which is what FIRST set out to do. And if you look at the CA this way, the threepeat champs are good for FIRST. Teams will continue to strive to beat the perennial winner.

2.) Prohibiting the number of times a team can win the award goes against the spirit of FIRST. If these teams are continuing to win, it means they are continuing to improve. Why should a potential national champion be denied the opportunity to win it all just because they won a regional the year before? If this rule took effect, the eventual winner might not actually be the best in FIRST.

3.) Repeat winners are not just resting on their laurels. I can tell you from experience that there is no way we would have won a second or third Chairman's Award if we could not prove that we had done more over the past year. As the writer of our submission, I agree with the Canadian poster. Our 2005 and 2003 submissions are very different. We won in 2005 because of what we did over the past year, not our '02-'03 accomplishments. The body of work is impressive, but one must continue to build upon it.

4.) Winners are acting like pageant winners. I'm willing to bet that most champs are using their status to get more sponsors and give more presentations. Since winning for the first time, I know that our team has done so, and I think the others have to, because to win they must have the qualities to do so.


Sorry for the long post and sorry if I offended anyone.

[ctshirk7]

Purdue was great. the boilermaker regional was very well organized and very efficient. thanks to teams 1272, 1038, and 554 for helping us out in the finals. 1038 and 93, it was a lot of fun cheering with you. hope to see everybody in Atlanta!
-curtis shirk

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by 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.

Almost, but no. 103 won in NJ only in 2003. Team 175 won in 2002 and also won the biggie that year.

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Two points I have to make on this.
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.

These two outreach efforts are awesome, but biased judges? Not true. Look at the Hall of Fame members:
103, 175, 191, 151 (and probably others) - no mini comp
Also 103's involvement in FLL was minimal in 2003 and was only one small blurb in a CA entry filled with "other stuff"
341 - a threepeater, runs a mini comp, no FLL, but you should see all of their other outreach efforts - many that don't require many resources.

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I heard some organization use to give out a 'humility award' pin and if you pinned it on your lapel, it dissolved into nothing the chairmans award is sorta like that, if you set out to win the chairmans award, you wont but if you do everything you can to promote the mission of FIRST, you will and if your only concern is to promote FIRST, it doenst matter if you win or not right?

Right. Trophies and awards are very nice external motivators, but the real winning is in the effort. Always was and always will be. Inward satisfaction, in the end, is all that we can "control" anyway. We all learned that stuff in grade school, we just forget sometimes.

I'm glad so many care about the positive culture change. Congrats to ALL winners. Maybe you have medals and maybe you don't, but you know who you are and we thank you for your efforts.

[KathieK]

I encourage all who submitted an entry, and especially those teams who win the Regional CA competition, to share your accomplishments (see this thread) so other teams can learn from yours. I've been amazed at the wonderful things teams are doing!

[spadercool]

Maekin Magic has won the Peachtree Regional's Chairman Award twice and I think its good for them because they can get more community support.

[macurtis]

Team 74 won the Chairman's Award in 2001 and the following two years we submitted to Chicago because we didn't want to make it look like we were trying to dominate the West Michigan Regional, which is what I'm guessing many people are worrying about in respect to consecutive repeat Chairman's recipiants.
But the thing is, once you win, that doesn't mean you just halt all efforts to promote FIRST. Even if there was a limit to the number of concsecutive wins, that doesn't mean that a team just puts their entire promotion of FIRST on halt for a year, that would actually almost be counterproductive.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by macurtis

Team 74 won the Chairman's Award in 2001 and the following two years we submitted to Chicago because we didn't want to make it look like we were trying to dominate the West Michigan Regional, which is what I'm guessing many people are worrying about in respect to consecutive repeat Chairman's recipiants.
But the thing is, once you win, that doesn't mean you just halt all efforts to promote FIRST. Even if there was a limit to the number of concsecutive wins, that doesn't mean that a team just puts their entire promotion of FIRST on halt for a year, that would actually almost be counterproductive.

Even teams that have won the award should never cease their efforts to promote FIRST because you are now ambassadors of the program and you should want to see the program grow stronger. Just because you made it to the mountaintop doesn't mean you don't want to reach higher and share the incredible feeling with everyone else.
I think all the Chairman's finalists should have their submissions on display at the Hall of Fame so people can get an idea who will take a spot next to the Chessy Poofs next year.

[Ali Ahmed]

OK here goes my opinion.

I feel that gracious professionalism has a lot to do with winning CA more than once at the same regional. I am not saying that the team that did win are not professionally gracious, on the contrary they very much are. I am just saying that if a team knows they did everything they could and will probably win but they have won before, they should let some other team try for it. For example, last year we were certain that we would win the CA for SoCal but we dropped out to give another team a chance. That coincidentally won us the Judges award but whatever. Thats just my honest opinion.

[richardp]

It seems to me that this award is not as east as repeating last year so anyone to win multiple years deserves credit. If a team wins multiple years in a row then great for them if they win a regional multiple years in a row then they still have things to fix and make better since they didn't win the national award. They should continue to work harder because they just set them selfs up to the national level and should try to make the most of it. Any team resting on their laurels will be knocked down sooner or later by another team that is showing to the judges how they are year after year spreading the FIRST message. Just because a team has a great year or two does not make them a contender for the award. Also some teams are required to summit the award for funding (NASA Teams) and if they have won a regional they should not just quite since they already have to summit. If they are gonna submit they might as well put the effort into it.

[santosh]

Okay. Well now that nat's has been over for about 2 weeks. I believe it is ok to win it multiple years in a row. This is for the best team there is. It is like the BEAST, they have won the Nationals Championships like 5 or 6 times. It would be pretty dumb if they were no longer allowed to win it because they had won it before.

Plus, if a team won it many years in a row, it is ony because they deserve it. And it would motivate my team to work a lot harder on outreach and spreading the word of FIRST.

Infact it has happened. The past 2 years, we have won the Peachtree Regional Chairmans Award (hoping to win it again to complete the 3peat). In 2004 we recieved an honorable mention for National Chairmans but nothing this year.

This has only motivated us to break through and make a huge push for winning th National Chairmans. This is after 2 years of work and not winning the National Chairmans. (This is no one's fault but our own, for not doing enough, and the winners Chesey poofs and The Hot Team for being so freaking amazing.) But this has kinda inspired our team to break through that low number mold and win this thing, so watch out for us next year.
I don't think any team really feels a slap in the face but infact it motivates them to do more and try the next year.

[Lil' Lavery]

Well, if a team hasnt won the "ultimate prize" (the championships chairman) but they do have success at the regional level, why should we say you cant compete this year for your larger goal because we want to give the other regional teams a chance? That would be just as unfair to the big shot as the little. I mean, sure 341 has won 3 straight regional chairmans, but they havnt won the championship. The last two years they have been a finalist, an honorable mention. That shows how good, and how close they are coming. But for us to say to them, "sorry, you cant make it all the way this year, wait 'til next" is just a bit cruel. I mean, what about the seniors who dont have a shot at winning that year?
Plus, the chairmans isnt a guaranteed award. You dont have to be a huge team to win it. Just because you have a big sponsor, lots of cash, hold an off-season, sponsor 10 lego leagues, and mentor 30 teams doesnt mean your going to win. In 2003, team 388, who is from a little town in the very southern tip of Virginia, and who isnt exactly a rich team, won the NASA/VCU regional chairmans. They dont hold an off-season. They dont do many of the things a larger team does, but they did show outstanding gracious professionalism, amazing role model characteristics, prepared well, and did the rest of the things the chairmans award is for. That proves anyone can win it. This year, they won Engineering Inspiration at NASA/VCU.
There have been plenty of repeat or threepear chairmans winners, but with the current rule of once you win championships, you cant enter again, you wont see a team win a regional every year for more than maybe 4 or 5 years, AT MOST. By then a team should be able to break through to the championship level. And even if they dont, if they can best exemplify the qualities of FIRST, dont they deserve the chairman's award?
Isnt the chairmans award about showing role model characteristics that other teams can emulate to better acheive the goals of FIRST? If you want to compete with a multi-chairmans winning team, why dont you emulate them? I mean, their characteristics obviously work, so why dont you blend them with yours? They win the award for a reason, so follow their lead, and become a better team because of it. Team 116 does that. We have adapted characteristics of the reports, presentations, and the teams of championship and regional winning chairmans teams, and this year we were labeled "Strong Contenders" in Annapolis (where we lost to 341), and last year we also came close judging from the single comment on our paper and full marks in all but one category in VCU.

[tkwetzel]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

There have been plenty of repeat or threepear chairmans winners, but with the current rule of once you win championships, you cant enter again, you wont see a team win a regional every year for more than maybe 4 or 5 years, AT MOST. By then a team should be able to break through to the championship level.

I agree with most everything else you said except for the quoted part. I believe that we will see a lot of top notch teams win regionals year after year. With the growing number of regionals and only one championship award, we see more teams win the regional award than can win the championship award. 30 regionals this year, so it would take 30 years for all of the regional winners this year to win the championship award. Many teams are going to continue to do great things and win on the regional level, but if there are 30 teams like any of the ones that have already won the championship award, then it will take a long time before they can all win it.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by tkwetzel

I agree with most everything else you said except for the quoted part. I believe that we will see a lot of top notch teams win regionals year after year. With the growing number of regionals and only one championship award, we see more teams win the regional award than can win the championship award. 30 regionals this year, so it would take 30 years for all of the regional winners this year to win the championship award. Many teams are going to continue to do great things and win on the regional level, but if there are 30 teams like any of the ones that have already won the championship award, then it will take a long time before they can all win it.

But not all of those 30 teams are the teams that win a regional every year, so they would not be a valid point in this discussion. Ill clarify my statement a bit.
Of the teams that win regional chairmans every, or almost every year, you shouldnt see them win more than a few regionals before they finally manage to break through to the chairmans level. There are plenty of team with the capability to win one year, but do not have as solid an entry as the next. Each team may not rest solely on its past laurels. The other teams that register an entry at each regional will have worked over the past year, so the "defending" team must be able to work hard and fend them off. Not many teams have that ability to be the best every single year. And of the few that do, they should eventually merit a championship chairmans award.