We are fast approaching the post-competition banquet season! Over the years, I’ve encountered a lot of great way to recognize both mentors and students on the team.
The most memorable, though, are the mock award ceremonies. With honors such as “Most Likely to Build Robot Army”, “The Woodie Jr. Award”, etc.
What are some great mock awards that you’ve either received, seen, or think would be funny?
Paint a brick gold and call it the Best Intentions award. The award for the best idea that didn’t go so well.
Our team does this every year, coming up with a distinct award for every student. This is my first year with the team, and I won something having to do with coding, though I can’t remember the exact title (something like “Tireless Coder”). However, there have been some great ones that are completely unlike the normal robotics ones, such as “Ladies Man,” “Least Likely to Need a Doctor” (for an Apple fan), “Cincinnatus” (for our captain who was stepping down), and plenty of others that I can’t remember right now. And we’ve also done some more normal ones, like “Rookie All-Star.”
I love that idea for a “Best Intentions” award.
We give out awards for best snack during build season, perfect attendance, anything funny that happens during the season.
We have handed out “Mad Max” or “Grand Theft Auto” awards for excellence in driving.
One year a student worked on an O.I. concept that never came to fruition, he got the “Oh No, O.I.” award that year.
My favorite was the “Iron Stomach” award for a student that ate two Nick Tahou’s garbage plates at one sitting, and lived to tell the tale!
If they broke a part or fried electronics… mount it to a plaque and give that to them.
I saw “garbage plates” and looked immediately to your location – hello fellow native upstate-New-Yorker!
All great ideas…I especially like the Mad Max award for driving excellence.
I live in Rochester and tried it once. I honestly can’t understand the attraction.
I’m originally from Rochester. Garbage plates are gross if you think too hard about what is actually being consumed. But…it tastes like home!
Melted CIM motors really really STINK, though. :ahh:
We give out an award called Oh look, a squirrel! to the person who is the most off task during build season.
Zip lock bags are air-tight 
We did this a bit in our first couple of years, when we had more an “end-of-year party in the workspace” than a “banquet”. As we’ve moved towards a more formal banquet (this year catered, with a nominal fee for mentors and family members so that we get a good head count), we’ve dropped to only awards that actually are an honor. About 20% of the team will receive an award or honorable mention.
Even thinking back, I believe that most of the “mock” awards were presented by a student (or coalition of students), almost as often to mentors as to other team members. The only one that stands out was actually a serious award with a mock name - the “Tony Stark Award” was given to a particularly creative programmer who didn’t write a line of code for the cRIO - but his vision processing code on the raspberry pi has been usable for multiple games.
Student Leaders gave out paper plate awards, and I received, “The Mentor that doesn’t do Anything” award, still hangs on my den wall…
The year I met my goal. 
We have the officers put together a list of funny awards for everyone on the team and put them on paper plates, which we appropriate dub “paper plate awards”. This way we don’t leave anyone out of the awards at the end of the year banquet.
Some of my favorites include the “Certified citizen of florida award” which we gave to one of our eighth graders who the judges mistook for a senior, and the “First Lady Award”, which we gave to the president of the team’s girlfriend.
The mentors give out their own joke awards, but these are a little bit more refined, but only go to some of the students. These include awards like the golden shoes I received freshman year for my dancing and a bubble wrap suit we made for our safety captain.
I remember getting a “Tell It Like It Is” award for being perhaps overly honest about our robot (you might remember it, Megan).
We had a banquet last year and made little awards “certificates” for each member of the team. And by that, I mean five or so of us hung out at our president’s house that afternoon and made all of them by hand! Here are some of our favorites:
Compulsive Coffee Addict (mine)
FIRST Fanboy (for el presidente)
The “Hey Man” (one of our underclassmen’s catchphrase)
Batt-man (for our electrical lead, who now wears it on his team sweatshirt)
Where the Party’s At (for the kid who hosted all of our parties and various get-togethers over the season)
And many others! It was a bit of a process to come up with all of them, but we had fun with it!
Last year mine was “Most Likely to be a Freshman Forever” or something to that effect. Hoping for one that’s a little more memeingful this year.
Ha! I actually do remember that. And…it was quite fitting. 
I’m sure you’ll be pretty dankful for whatever award we give you this year!
When I hear that I think of a line from a song: Right now I’m a freshman in my fourth year at UCLA,
But, my goal is to become a veterinarian 'cause I love children!
I always wanted to give out a James Bond or some other spy themed reward/gag gift for head scout/scouts (I got into scouting because an older student wrote a very persuasive document that compared it to being a spy and gaining intel on the other teams).