Awards and Trophie alternative

[jvriezen]

In a recent blog post, http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...p-and-Trophies Frank discussed trophies and plaques.

I came up with an idea, looking to others to help refine it and see if it makes sense.

Currently, teams get trophies and plaques (2016) for awards that FIRST provides. What if we did things a little differently than the typical sports model here? We do lots of other things differently and I think this idea follows the pattern.

FIRST would publish trophy guidelines, for example:

• Size restriction -- trophies must be no larger than some HxWxL. (This assures trophies will fit on the awards tables and teams can plan in advance for pit Trophy displays that will accommodate the hardware.
• FIRST Logo - trophies must have FIRST logo of at least size x, and in accordance with FIRST branding requirements.
• Trophy must have X by Y inch area for affixing a brass plate (provided by FIRST), containing the award name/year etc.
• The producer of the trophy must include their team # and name on the bottom of the trophy.
• Maybe others relating to weight, materials, fragility/robustness, etc.

Teams would be invited to build award hardware (as many as they want) that meets the guidelines and bring these to events and turn them in to pit admin.

A set of students volunteer (maybe limited to those from teams that chose not to submit trophies?) to 'judge' the trophies and identify which trophies will be used for which awards--- e.g. the most awesome trophie for Chairman's, the 2nd-4th most awesome for Winners (in captain, 1st pick, 2nd pick order) and so on. Maybe the students are chosen by drawing if there are too many who wish to do it. Event staff may have to shuffle things around so that a team isn't awarded a trophy they made (or maybe that's ok?)

Unused trophies are returned to teams that donated them early on Saturday morning (last competition day). They might choose to affix their own brass plate and do a peer award.

Benefits:

• FIRST doesn't need to provide trophies (cost, transport, etc.)
• Teams with multiple awards over the years don't get identical looking trophies.
• Helps to 'Make it Loud' by prompting uninitiated to ask "Why are all your trophies so different looking?"
• Teams who don't manage to build a great robot this year might be able to build a great trophy and wouldn't it be cool to have built the Chairman's trophy?

What do you think?