Ok, this year team 461 is going to try to get letters for varsity jackets. However, the only person who seems to have a problem with this is our athletic director who, the last i heard, was against our team using the same jackets as the rest of our school sports. Dean created FIRST as a sport, and we are the only team representing our school at an international level. Basketball, football, or volleyball, FIRST Robotics is the only thing our school has to show off to the entire world, other than our foreign language activities.
I need everyone who recieves varsity jacket lettering to post here, and state whether or not you get to use the same jackets as your schools other sports.
I need a big, long list of posts saying that you get letters!
We do indeed get letters but they are different than the athletics, they have a little academic torch on them like the National Honor Society symbol. They are called “academic letters” but they are better than the sports if you ask me. But I do believe that a team should get the letters because they are still a team that the school supports just as a sports team is and the athletic director should just go fly a kite.
We get varsity letters on our team for every 2 years your on the team. I think that FIRST is a sport and that it should allow you to get a letter for it
Wow, I’d definitely cause a major stink with the athletic department. We have soccer jerseys that are similar to our school’s, and we may get jackets for the championship.
Why should they care anyway? Try an outside source, so your athletic director has no say over what you can and cannot have.
Our team is now recognized as an academic sport (effective this year) and our members are eligible for the letter and pin.
On a side note, those schools that are a sport (academic or otherwise), what do your pins look like? Our athletic department is looking and hasn’t found anything suitable yet.
Here’s a vote from Indiana. Southport High awards letters to veteran members - PM me and I’ll give you a copy of our letter requirements. We mostly stole it from MOE - they’ve got a fantastic white paper on CD.
If the athletic director is against letters for non-sports, simply remind him that band members get letters too (as well as academic decathlon, academic super bowl, spell bowl, drama, speech team, and tons of other academic extracurriculars). Also, it helps to have a stringent letter-earning policy.
Good luck and Boiler Up!
We’re finalizing requirements for varsity lettering to begin this season; our school district did not seem to have any preliminary issues with our decision, as the marching band already awarded ‘varsity letters’ to its members.
We get the same letters but we aren’t supplied with jackets. But I’m pretty sure they count as the same varsity letters that one would recieve from athletics.
To expand on Andy’s comment - our school, as some of you have previously mentioned, has also considered issuing letters of a modified design or inverted color order for ‘non-athletic’ letters (chess, orchestra, robotics, math, etc.). As far as I know, this has not been done and we continue to be eligible for the same varsity letters at the end of the year.
We have patches for our club and we can buy the same jackets and all.
Our basketball coach who coached the east last year in the McDonalds High School All-star game fully supports our team as well as our athletics director who is considered the best baseball coach in the state of Georgia. You gotta try and get some of the coaches on board with knowing about your team an appreciating your team.
These two bought into the idea because they realize how much time and work it takes to build one of these robots and they realize that when you compete, you represnt the school, your state, and even sometimes your entire country. Most FIRST teams put in as much time as some athletic teams at our school.
I think that if you can show your director how much work and effort you put into, you may have a really good shot.
The school does not give us letters or patches or anything. So last year, I got the team our own varisty patches, which the parents LOVED. I currently have mine on my varsity jacket. Most of the students don’t have a jacket (cause they didn’t do a sport) so they just have the patch, and it’s pretty nice too. Hopefully seeing all these students who receive a robotics varsity patch and that they don’t a jacket to put it on, will help the school see how much they should really see us as a sport. To get the patch, the parents have come with a citeria… ammount of hours you put in, competitions you go to, fundraising, etc.
Our school only seems to give out letters to VHSL (Virginia High School League) sports, so robotics doesn’t qualify. I don’t really care, though, since my cross-country letter just collects dust anyway. I get the same experience whether I get a letter or not, and I have plenty of other things to worry about, so I find complaining about not getting a letter for my involvement in robotics is a waste of my time.
I posted this up almost two years ago. It is in fact considered an academic letter. None the less, it is a letter worn proudly by every member of the team.
On my old team 301 we got the same letters as all the sports. After we merged teams, my new team 1250, at a different school, gives out letters that are different than athletic.
Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively is the definition of “sport“. According to that definition FIRST is completely a sport. Maybe your athletic director dont know exactly what the robotics team does. Maybe he/she needs to visit a competition to see what it’s really like to play the sport of robotics. This sport should really be recognized as a sport by all schools. As far as the varsity letters, out team has them. I attend Pontiac Northern our letter is white shaped as a N with Pontiac written in red on the inside out robotics letters are a red N with Robotics in white writing it is totally possible to have letters.
