Does FIRST give out too many awards? (Opinion)

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Ryan Foley

I agree. The "play of the day" and similar awards were the only ones to recognize good strategy, none of the current awards do that. Honestly, there are a lot of awards, but I have to agree with Andy, it's better to have more awards for many teams. If you only had a few awards for a few teams, all the other teams would have a hard time making a name for themselves. Plus, having an award under your belt helps teams get more support, which is vital. Kevin also makes a good point, more awards = more happy people per regional.

Actually that isnt totally true. The Xerox Creativity Award is given to a team that does something, ANYTHING creatively, and in the award speeches it even mentions strategies. Also, 1033 won a judges award in VCU for strategic innovation. Also, a pure strategy award would be arbitrary and would be totally impossible to come up with a true winner. Every robot is different and they all need specific strategies tailored to them, their alliance partners, and their opponents. There is no "standard" of which you could compare each strategy to. The only things you could possibly compare them to is the strategic opinions and papers that teams like 1033, 116, and 229 produce for themselves and others. And like I said, that is nothing more than their view.

Originally Posted by shyra1353

I think that there should be a limit for the amount of awards a team can win per regional. Yes, I understand that some teams deserve 5 or more of those awards at one competition...

And typically, teams dont win more than 3 awards per regional. And they are usually from totally seperate categories. It is very rare to see a team win two technical awards, or sportsmanship, spirit, and/or imagery, or chairmans and EI. They will typically only take one of each "category" or awards, or broad area of different types of awards. And usually they wont take one from all of them. You might see a team win AVA (animation), Xerox (technical), and a Woody Flowers Award, but you probably wouldnt see a team win Industrial Design, Innovation in Controal, and Driving Tomorrow's Technology. It wouldnt be fair only to recognize a teams most impressive feats if they have the best in each section of the competition. If the team is that good at website, technical robots, on the field competition, sportsmanship, and inspiration, so be it.