What are your Team Traditions?

[RandomStyuff]

Ok, well, we have a couple and many are just so normal to me I'm sure I'm missing some, but here is what we have:
(These are since the "New Spikes Age" started, which was our second year, seeing as we were re-rookiefied, our school didn't let former members of the team back on for some reason, except for one which continued coming even though he was told not to)

- Every year we take a marker and put a dot on the robot in a mini-ceremony. It's called the lucky dot, and the dotter has to be a certified dotter. This stems from a class tradition in my class in 10th grade, when we'd have a girl called Chen run around the class before tests and dot everyone's hand for luck. So far the only certified dotter is Chen, and she is leaving this year, so we need to start a certification proccess....

- The person leading our morales always comes to the competition wearing wings.

- The person leading our morales is always short and noisy (this includes the year before the "New Spikes" too)

- We have an ending ceremony every year, but so far it doesn't really have anything interesting

- On the last Friday before ship-date, our mentors buy us Chinese food.

- I don't think this is considered a tradition, but it kinda fits here too:
Every year our school shuts us down. Our school's administration decides we aren't worth the effort. Then after 2 months of lobbying they find us an impossible condition for keeping the team alive, thinking we won't be able to do it, and thus getting us off their backs. Every year, so far, we have managed. Then they decide that they still don't want the team, and then we get one of the sponsors to buy the KoP and registration without the school's approval, so that the school can't say no.
It's a game we have been playing with our school's administration for the past 4 years: at first it was only if you manage to get a major financial sponsor. Then it was only if you manage to get a technical sponsor with fabrication abilities. Now it's somehow we have to find a robotics teacher that will teach robotics in their school, but he can't be a former team member and WE have to pay his salary from OUR budget.... but, we've never failed so far....

[Hadar]

our team is very young, so we have very few traditions.

1. when you guys have the kick-off in the US, it's about 6pm here, every year we get in someone's house and watch the kick-off together and eat XD

2. scouting dies as we reach our game, nothing else matter except of cheering our team, it's the adults responsibility now XD

3. a new tradition from the championship (that i hope will stick) is to gather the all team and yell "EMEK HEFER" as loud as we can!

4.a "children pile" is a must, at least once a day!

almost forgot:

5. mechanics is always perfect, every problem we have is caused by our programming team!

[Foster]

* We have hand prints or names of our seniors on our shipping crate.

* Custom made awards for our seniors:

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by lscime

This will probably become a tradition:

Somehow "hug robot" ended up being #10 on our drive team's pre-match checklist. Let's just say it got hugged every time, after all, the list says we had to....

I do seem to remember a time or two when the robot was not hugged, and losing the match...

[alicen]

not really a tradition, but still funny;

we have a lot of students who will come through the lab and leave their bookbags, then go somewhere else unrelated to robotics and the team. so if this person happens to be an important figure on the team (ahhem, our president) we drop a 5 or 10 pound weight in their bookbag

[Jared Russell]

Thanks for sharing, everyone. Lots of really cool ideas and awesome stories in this thread!

[ras103]

103 has a few good traditions,
We have an wrap- up party at the end of each school year for all the students and mentors.
We Take Zeus, our Cy-"BEAR"-sonics mascot to every competition.
While at the Florida Regional, the whole team goes on a few rides together.
We eat dinner every night together during the build season.
....
I'm sure that there are a few more that i can't think of right now!
But all those others you all participate in are cool!

[targus]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

i REALLY hope you are kidding. you should be proud of your achievement this year!

I can answer that. The Gnome is for the Robot (Miss Daisy) and Pit. So if there is any problem with the maintenance / electrical and of course, the biggest problem is the programing(er) The Gnome tends to get hurt. We also have a mentor that does not like gnomes and tends to attack it, at a drop of a hat. BTW, it is not me.

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

-Making the rookies drink Beverly (its DELICIOUS!)

Hehehehe That is the most brillant thing you could do to anyone. :

[onecoolc]

1. There is no work on the Robot on Sunday. Period. This is enforced by our Coach's wife, who wants her husband back once a week.

2. The robot (so far) is named in recognition of a member of the team who has contributed far beyond the call of duty. (Romar for Enmar, and Michelangelo for Mike)

3. An gift of undiscussable nature is thrust upon a team member or mentor late at night the first competition night of our first regional, to be discovered the next morning.

Our team is still really new, so I'm sure we'll make more later. ^^

[Ryan Caldwell]

Every to do list ends with "attach anti-mater dark-energy EMP nano-bot accelerator gun".

We never manage to get to the end of any list though.

[rulesall2]

We only have a few-

1. The advance crew in Atlanta has to eat their Wheaties before each day of competition.

2. The driver always gets picked up by the systems operators before each match in what has become known as "The Lift." (BTW nowhere as cool as 1124's Superman, which we did with them at WPI. If you don't know, they have red capes, and the driver leans down and pretends to fly with his arms sticking straight out, and the systems operator shake the driver's cape to simulate it flapping in the wind.)

3. We play the game Pneumatic tubing at competitions. (Its the game spoons, but we play with pieces of pneumatic tubing because its all we have around.)

[kjolana1124]

Originally Posted by onecoolc

1. There is no work on the Robot on Sunday. Period. This is enforced by our Coach's wife, who wants her husband back once a week.

That's Friday for us

Our team has a pep rally every year before our "home" regional (Hartford). The community is invited to see the new robot, learn about the team, and eat free ice cream. It's AWESOME.

[Katie_UPS]

I forgot one!
We have a team hand game (like patty-cake) and a running high score (its hard to explain, but its based on how far you get).

[dag0620]

Lets se;

1. Movie Night before kick-off

2. During our Friday Night Work, we always have Slushy, we usually also have our weekly team meeting to get everyone on the team on the same page.

Thats about it, i'll post more if I think off them.