Traditions/Superstitions

[holygrail]

Originally Posted by lgphoneeric

Team 2996 for the past couple years has had one of the Kuh-nig-its stick on fuzzies on our robot as a good luck measure.

We will be sure to have plenty of little stick-on bunnies for any teams who wish to take advantage of their "luck-enhancing" qualities. Don't let the googly eyes fool you though, they are surprisingly ill-tempered.

[Joseph Smith]

This year our robot is named Consuela, and one of our drivers got in the habit of talking dirty to the robot before matches. He insults her and implies that she exchanges favors for cash, so to speak. He didn't do this at our first competition, which went poorly for us. After he started doing this, everything started to work great. As a member of the pit crew, I was on the field during semis and finals at MSC. I started copying this habit, and I guess it works, because we won!
I'm doing this from now on.

[M.Wong]

Big tradition we had during Worlds involved food. Back when Worlds was held in Atlanta, we would always go to Cheesecake Factory as a team. It was a fantastic way to celebrate our success and bond as a team. Some of my best memories of FIRST came from those dinners at the Cheesecake Factory.

Not sure if that tradition was continued after I graduated in 2011.

[Woolly]

Originally Posted by holygrail

We will be sure to have plenty of little stick-on bunnies for any teams who wish to take advantage of their "luck-enhancing" qualities. Don't let the googly eyes fool you though, they are surprisingly ill-tempered.

Googly eyes must be the secret to success! Just look at the "ducks" on our climber!

But wait! If they're ducks, and ducks float on water... then team 1806's climbing hooks are made of wood... and therefore... WITCHES!

[Big Ideas]

Team Paradox has had 3 years of robots that did not work well until a particular BLUE C CLAMP was used to fix one problem or another. Sometimes the last day of build but sometimes in competition.

This year, the design team was doing a great job; so, no BLUE CLAMP was needed and the mentors started to get worried that something was going to require the clamp to work. To stave off disaster, a mentor and student created a laser cut "BLUE CLAMP" tiki to mount on the robot. Our robot stayed mechanically sound thru 2 regionals.

[PVCpirate]

My team has a pirate rubber duck(can't find a picture but it's a black duck with an eyepatch) that we always keep around for luck. It's lucky because we have lost it several times, but we always find it again. No one recently on the team really knows where it came from.

[OZ_341]

A less consistent but fun tradition we have had over the years is that a mentor must wear the Daisy Pot Mascot costume if we ever win a blue banner.
I had to wear it in 2007 Philly and 2010 NYC. I know Jared had to wear it in Philly 2010. I also jokingly told the kids in 2010 that if we won the WCCA that I would wear the Daisy Pot for a full day in school. I was very sorry that I made that promise.

[coalhot]

Originally Posted by Woolly

Googly eyes must be the secret to success! Just look at the "ducks" on our climber!

But wait! If they're ducks, and ducks float on water... then team 1806's climbing hooks are made of wood... and therefore... WITCHES!

I know 2495 had the best giant googly eyes on a robot ever. And they won their first district ever, and went to MAR!

[Matt_Boehm_329]

I cant say if it is good luck or bad luck, but 329 has had a piece for fruit cake on one of the I beams in the ceiling since either 2006 or 2007 which no one dares to remove. Clearly it is there for a reason and we shouldn't touch it.

[mcarobotics]

Our rookie team was given the use of an old rehab building for a build space. When we first moved in, it was a creepy old building with mice and mysterious noises. As we walked through, we turned a corner and found a 1 .5 foot long stuffed fish, complete with painted on teeth and creepy eyes, staring at us. After overcoming our shock, we decided to adopt it and "The Fish" became our lucky mascot. We brought it to competitions and demos and we like to hide it around the build room for others to stumble upon.
We hope to continue this tradition next year

[Jefferson]

As nod to our '96 rookie robot, our primary robot class in C++ is always named some version of TwoMinuteWarning or TMW, at least since my first involvement in 2010.

But now that I think about it... we used Robot Builder this year to generate the project. Our project is named TMW2013, but the primary class is Robot.cpp. Maybe this is the source of our lack-luster performance this season.

[Garrett.d.w]

Last year during the Spokane regional one of the parents jumped up and started cheering "Matthew Klockner, Matthew Klockner" really obnoxiously, which prompted the entire team to join in. After that we spent an incredible amount of time explaining to curious teams who this Matthew Klockner is (human player last year).
With his promotion to second driver this year we all decided to up the ante and made buttons that said "I know Matthew Klockner" in bold letters and a picture of his face in the center. Many a laugh was had over this and we ended up with a really successful regional. By the time we graduate we intend for him to be famous (maybe then we'll win a blue banner).

Anyway, our "robot tradition" is something that we do on our "bunnybot" scrimmage machines. We always try to incorporate a massive pigmouse into the design of the bot (think 20in wooden cube with all of the features of our logo). It doesn't make us do any better, we just have more fun with the bot. If there is no room for the wooden pigmouse, we do have a smaller "pilot" stuffed pigmouse that can take its place (it was our gunner last year).

[Chadfrom308]

We name our robot Audrey ___ each year... I dont know why, but we do

[lakstick]

Every year, our team goes and plays Whirlyball once or twice after our competitions, no matter how we do in the competition! If you don't know what Whirlyball is, it looks like this. Our team always has a blast, and most of the time, our night goes well into the next morning!

[IceStorm]

We made sure to "pet" the robot before every match.