As many of you know, team 1266 is very serious about look.
For those of you who haven’t competed with our team, on practice day, we come in normal clothes (team tee-shirt, jeans, safety glasses). But the next day we come with Ridiculously large mohawks, liberty spikes, and hair horns. To me it feels ritualistic waking up early in the morning to get my hair tugged, and sprayed to mohawk perfection, and then wearing it proudly throughout the day at comp with people asking, “How did you do that?” and “Can I feel your hair?”
So, thinking about it, I was wondering about other teams competition rituals.
What do you do each day at comp? Is there something manditory you have to do? some strange superstition your team feels everyone needs to do for success?
Before my team enters competitions a few of the guys on the team, usually drive team & pit crew, will get their heads shaved into mohawks for good luck!!
Also this is more of a personal good luck ritual I did this year but at each competition I would wear a specific pair of pants each day, dependent on whether it was Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, I followed this to offseason events as well and it proved to be very successful!! It’s kind of like a lucky jersey, except with pants:p
Not sure if it’s a team ritual yet, but a fellow mentor (Sunny) and I started a tradition in which we take members of the team to Dairy Queen after competitions for ice cream. It’s become a running gag, and the first time we convinced a student to get a cake with us (which he later regretted and stated that he would not eat ice cream ever again).
Ever since I was on 1592, started as a student back in 2007, we always went to Bubba-loos in Orlando for some of the best BBQ around. Over the past few years, it would seem a few other Florida teams have joined in on that tradition as well.
Another is more of a prank; normally on the team’s final competition dinner, we pick out someone and tell the waiter/waitress it’s their birthday and get them to go through an entire birthday routine. Their reactions, both students, parents, and mentors, are absolutely priceless. We have also done this a few times while on plane rides to travel competitions but the restaurant ones are way better.
Another minor team ritual is that robot names have always rotated each year between male/female names.
We also try to go to a travel regional that will have snow because 90% of team members never have or probably never will see snow in person for everyone; which makes it a very cool experience. We also try to get most of the team members to go to the airport in flips-flops, shorts, and hawaiian shirts.