National Championship or National Chairman's

[Koko Ed]

To play devil's advocate the same could be said about the championship. The big contraversies that happen here on Cheifdelphi are because teams do blatant things to gain an advatage on the field. From whether the robots are student built or engineer built to rumors of teams trying to get around FIRST's rules by doing such things as weighing robots with a hollow battery or using practice robots at competitions and then taking the parts off and putting them on the 1st robot.

I think the main culprit is the need to get awards in general. At Buckeye last weekend we cheered out butts off all day long and we're dissapointed, even hurt when 808 won the Spirit award but not winning the award did not effect our overall attitide. The team continued to scream, yell, dance and have fun for sake of fun. The prospect of an award did not dictate our attitude. What speaks more about you as a person is not how you win but how you lose. It's real easy to be graciously professional and viewed as great when you are sweeping up awards left and right and place on a pedastal everywhere you go. But what about the teams that don't quite get over the hump?

We have never won a competition in 13 years of existence and I'm not going to lie and say that we don't want to but I honestly take more pride in winning awards like team spirit, sportmanship, judges award and chairman's because that's judging the entire team at the competition. The on field stuff is often dependent in how good your strategyn or driver is. That's just a handful of people on the team, most of the time. The rest of the team is just spectators.We honestly do care more about having our kids inspired and we are constantly battling with ourselves do we want a competive team or do we want kids inspired and we always choose the latter. Or infrastructure is to require our kids to do, at least, one year on the robot and they are encouraged to try all aspects of the team so they get the full FIRST experiecne.

I think too many teams veiw thier season a sucess or failure on how amny awards they have compiled that year and if they got none then it was a failure when that is not the case at all. FIRST is privlidge that I am glad to be a part of and any award we recieve is a blessing to be cherish not an expectation to be agonized over.

[duckyday]

wow.. interesting questions.. this is a topic i have considered myself with us running for chairman's this year... it is weird because this year we did a lot with the community and the team... it is only our third year and a lot of the original core group is graduating, so i think we wanted it to be special for them...everytime we did something, in the back of our minds the chairman's award team was thinking "will this help us get the award?", and every once in a while we suggested something to the team to help us be a more qualified team... it carried more weight coming from us...

The chairman's award shows a team straight off how important it is to embrace gracious professionalism and your community... when a team understands what the chairman's award is about, they understand the spirit of FIRST... this is something that beyond a doubt is a benifit of the chairmans...

You have to wonder if the award is becoming a bribe for a team to embrace that spirit, but i think it is pretty obvious when a team does something for no other reason that to get the chairman's award. if my team, with our 1 lego league team and lack of mentorship of other first teams, both of which are traditionally valued by the chairman's award judges, can win at our regional over teams who had many more of those things, I think you have to admit that the award works the way it is supposed to.

We put a lot of effort into winning the chairman's award, but we also put a lot of effort into being a good team... i think the seniors will go off with the memory of that and that the freshman will continue with the memory of that and carry it into the next few years...

Winning the regional chairman's rocked on every level... it let our entire team see how important our other activites are and made some of the more engineering driven members recognize the value of the chairmans and marketing teams. To watch our team come together with this award and our pursuit of it, was so important and amazing that i can't help but think it is an incredibly powerful award.

Were our team to win a Regional Championship that would be great too, but that would almost be just another subteam winning something... like the software group getting Leadership in Control, or the Marketing team getting the imagery award... The chairmans involved our entire team, in all the activities and presentations we did this year and in the history of the team.. it involved both past and present members and mentors... and we all are better for having been involved with it.

It is FIRST's most prestigeous award, and for me there is no question that it deserves to be...

[ngreen]

I think the chairman's is a more worthwhile award.. Is is more exciting? Probably not.

Winning the chairman's award means your team has made it in FIRST. The award means very little but the journey you took to it means everything.

Championships are more exciting because it happens so fast. Teams can become champions after having a hard Friday. Or you can make a run at it with little experience. My team was ranked 1 in Archimedes until our last match and you know the teams that came out of there. Given a little luck and minus a tip and we could have been competing for the championship.

But we are even on the same level as some of the chairman's winners. Maybe a couple more years and we will be.

[Greg Mills]

I think the Chairman's Award is the top. Every competition we have ever won or lost was, in the end, a result of luck. Alot of hard work, a good robot, lots of practice, but in the end , either good or bad luck. The Chairman's Award, on the other hand, is a great recognition of the quality of the program. I have always told everyone that the Chairman's Award is not something to try to win - you build the best program you can and then let it be judged. Never do something just for the sake of an award.

I have always been more impressed with any award than with winning a competition. I have some medals from over the years but the awards are sweeter.

I am most proud of the enduring program we have. Five National Chairman's Award Finalist (in the old days), One National Chairman's Award, and one Regional Chairman's award, since '96.

[Michael R. Lee]

Competitions are the result of whether you got lucky or not. In 2002, my High School team was lucky to go on to win in our division, muchless placing as Finalists. 311 picked us, the reason.... we beat them at KSC that year and had a good bot that they wanted then. But liek to pick, some teams jsut get lucky on who they are allied with.

Chairman's Award shows in most cases that here is a team who is an example of FIRST values and ideas, a memebr of the community, etc.... yeah medals and the other awards are nice but really the only teams that have any sort of "bragging rights" from year to year are Chairman's Award winners. If you win a competition, its only good until next season. And who wouldn't like to go to championship every year with out worrying to qualify?