Just wondering, what was the smallest team to win a chairmans award?
Regional Chairman’s award or Championship Chairman’s award??
330 won regional Chairmans’ in 2003 and 2004 with approximately 15 students.
Similar to the BeachBots, we won at Silicon Valley with 15 students in 2003 also. 
According to TIMS only 14 students participate in 692, and they won the Davis CA. They deserved it to, quite a lot of outreach for a team of 14
If you’re a small team and do some big things you have a better chance of impressing the judges than being a huge team and doing a few big things…
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In addition, year round programs can offer a whole lot more than teams who only focus on robotics during the build/competition season. 
Although some teams can only afford to do that short FRC season. 
I’m going to try and push our team to do more events (outreach, etc), preferably things that don’t cost much until we raise more money.
Part of chairman’s is about developing business partnerships within your community. Remember, outreach isn’t just to other schools and younger children. FIRST is trying to change an entire aspect of our culture, including corporations and small businesses.
The way we’ve done it, students intern at local businesses over the summer and in return the businesses sponsor us. All of the internships are paid, and the reason the businesses benefit is because they don’t spend so much money recruiting high caliber interns. This may not work for your area though, so you’ll have to find something that will.
One of the things our team does is go to some of the children’s venues (in our area it is the children’s museum) and set up a demonstration of our bots. We even let the kids drive them with a person (one with very quick reactions) holding a hand over the kill switch. We also have one of the students coaching the young driver. The kids love it and it may peak their interest for technology. Most of the time we do this during school holidays when one or more of the adults can get off of work, or during the summer. It doesn’t cost much other than time and it is a great gift to the kids. We also have attended street fairs doing the same thing. It is a good idea to give a couple of people some protection for their shins (some folded cardboard and duck tape will help) and have them close to the robot just in case while the younger kids are driving. We found the 2007 robot works great since we have the rings and set up a simple piece of PVC pipe stuck into a small piece of plywood for a target to drop the rings on. Simple horse shoe game for the bot.
I see the point being brought up by this thread. I think more than the size of the team, student have to be determined to the cause in order to win chairmans.
Each year we have roughly 30 students but we don’t have as good a chance as chairmans as some of the other schools.
It’s just about how committed and determined the students are to the cause.
To answer the main question of the thread title: no, winning chairman’s doesn’t mean being a large team.
Its what you do. I know of a team that has like 20 kids on the team and they do a lot for their community and even throughout the country and never once have they even submitted for chairman’s. They do it because its the right thing to do. As long as you have that attitude, it doesn’t matter how large your team is.
I understand what you are saying here but it is an enriching and rewarding developmental process to submit for the Chairman’s Award (just as it is for the Woodie Flowers Award) for veteran teams as well as the newer teams. There is a lot to be gained by doing so, including improving/garnering skill sets that will serve individuals well. The size of the teams vary and it does put additional stress on the smaller teams, true, but time management is your friend during the build season… excellent time management = watch out world. If a team is impacting their community, why not share the news and successes/achievements? Why not share the way the teams have overcome obstacles, made innovative decisions, built stronger communities? How about how teams have inspired others to look a little more closely at the challenges that face our world and how science and technology can meet many of those challenges in ways that will empower communities, nations, peoples? Why not share by writing a CA and submitting it? 
I’m sorry that I don’t know the answer regarding the smallest team submission to regionals or to the Championship. It is an interesting question. I do know that many teams, from the very small to the very large - have an added increase in heart and spirit and that goes a long way towards achieving goals set by the teams.
Oh no, that’s not what I meant actually. The team I was referring to never knew that RCA was something that you had to submit and do a presentation for so they just kept on doing things in the community anyway. This will be the first year they’re submitting because they have some guidance with it :rolleyes:
Yeah, sorry if it came out wrong. I was just pointing out that they also do a lot with a small team.
This is a great clarification, Akash.
And you raise another good point, perhaps a couple. Awareness and guidance. The FIRST website is there, the manual provides all the information, yet there are teams who don’t give these awards a 2nd thought or who remain unaware.
The guidance part of it is something that others can help with. In many areas, there is mentoring with the robot build - mentoring with the CA and WFA are also areas that could use expertise/wisdom/know-how. There are teams who have stepped up with help in areas like the CA - MOE, FRC 365, comes to mind. Individuals such as Amanda Morrison have also made themselves available to help/guide in the past. Rich Kressly is another great mentor who encourages teams to submit for the WFA and to read each others’ submissions each year. Threads like this help get the word out and also help teams who read ChiefDelphi to understand that the sky can be the limit if they are willing to put forth the effort and to be open to new horizons.
Awareness and guidance - I think I’ll put those two words on my 2009 list of words, transforming them into action verbs - maybe not so much resolutions but working towards them.
Thanks Akash.
Sort of a turn on this thread, but what is the youngest team to win chairman’s??
We had boilermaker engineering inspiration last year as a second year team
I don’t know if they are the youngest or not, but 1816 won it in MN in their third year last year.
Technically…the X-Cats won 2 national Chairmans and the first was in their rookie year 
151 won it their rookie year as well…
O how good it must feel to be a legacy team like 191 :rolleyes:
Championship or regional? For Championship, I seem to recall 842 being the highest (and most recent). They’ve been around for a while.
1860 also won a regional CA in their third year (Brazil Regional 2008).
Technically in '92 we were but in that year everyone was a rookie.
There’s lots of cases of second year teams rising to prominence in their second year (locally 1511 is a great example of that) but on the National level ironically til MOE broke though a couple of years ago we were the highest numbered team to ever win a Chairman’s award (it never went past 200) so 842 winning a Chairman’s award is a huge deal. Maybe this will be the year a four digit team breaks through!
Ed, 254 was the highest numbered team to win Championship CA prior to MOE.
Ooops. Forgot the Poofs.