From Bill's Blog: Merits of replacing bronze participation medals

[Mr. Pockets]

Originally Posted by Alivia

A problem I see with this is that not every student who is involved with FIRST works on the robot/works with tools. Some students on teams may never pick up a tool during their career. Remember, there are many facets of robotics that draw students in. Animation, writing of the Chairman's Report and Woodie Flowers Report, film crew, other documentation, programming, outreach, fundraising, etc. Therefore, it stands to reason that not everyone would be able to use the tools as much as one might think. The same could be said for medals (i.e. not everyone finds them as meaningful as others) but I think this is especially true for the tool idea. Although safety glasses could be a good compromise, as everyone uses those eventually.

Fair point, I really hadn't considered that. The main focus of the idea is adding practicality to the participation awards so they can be viewed as something special to the new people and something useful/practical/not-junk to the long-time veterans. Hmm...

Maybe custom made T-shirts for each years game. Bigger than pins and a tad more versatile (though also probably more expensive). I'm really just tossing out ideas.