Should FRC Team name = HS athletic team name?

FIRST General Forum
#38

Our high school mascot is the Marauders, so we stuck something technical in front that wasn’t robo- or -otics and turned into the Mechanical Marauders. Though we share a name, we developed a gearlike marauder head (the “gearhead”) and use black and yellow as our colors, not the maroon and white that is in my profile pic. It helps us tie into the school and the community, and also lets us make a lasting impression and retain our own identity.

Side note: making your shirts black means that any pit grease/grime/dirt doesn’t show up as easily at competition, and helps to maintain a clean uniform look, though tie dye and other colors certainly do pop.

#39

Though, your team is at least named after your town.

#40

Before using a high school team name for your frc name, do a quick search on blue alliance and make sure there aren’t other teams with that same name.

#41

Our school mascot was a tiger so we just keep the tiger and redesigned it for robotics and got the name TechTigers. But, we have different colors than the school because if we were a school event, we wanted people to know that we are robotics.

#42

:wink: Gonna go the whole thread without mentioning 624’s original team name?

#43

My team’s name is a homage top both the high schools mascot the Joseph C. Wilson High School Wildcats and the sponsor Xerox. Thus we are the X-Cats.

#44

Our high school mascot is a tiger. From 2001 to 2006 we did not have a consistent name and changed our look every year. We had a tiger image on our shirts one year - I think it was 2002. In 2007 we became the Swartdogs. It was a name our students had wanted to use prior to that honoring our lead mentor Kenton Swartley who founded the team as Team 332 in 1999. Kenton said he would agree to the name if it were an acronym. Immediately one of our students said Students Working Around Robotics Technology. We’ve been the Swartdogs from then on. We are very proud of his 16 years of dedication and how this has all led to many FIRST teams in this area.

#45

My high school’s mascot is the Knight, so we decided to take on a Monty Python twist. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there is a scene where a French Knight yells “You silly English Kuhnigits,” which gives us our name, the Kuhnigits. Every year our robot is based off a character in the movie: Cave Beast in 2014, Killer Rabbit in 2013, Black Knight in 2012, and more.

Also, I haven’t seen 1986 post, so I will add in their name. Their school mascot is the Titans, which they changed into Titanium. Their FTC team is then Aluminum.

#46

Our name was inspired by the athletic teams.

There are two high schools in our town, simply called Newton North and Newton South. Newton North calls its teams Tigers, and South calls its teams Lions.

The robotics team may be the only team/club/activity that spans both high schools. So when the club was formed six years ago, Ligerbots seemed obvious.

#47

I think Shaker is an awesome name for several reasons. The Shakers made world famous designs of outstanding quality, simplicity and durability in their buildings and furniture that are a high mark even today. That is a tradition that any robot builder should be proud to shoulder. And, even if folks aren’t aware of the history of the name, “shaker” can instill awe. As in, shaking the ground, or, making one’s opponents shake. So wear it proud, 2791!

#48

Ok ok, you got me. Time for a story, though this is before my time so everything may not be perfect.

So a long time ago, we were originally the C.R.E.W. The Cinco Ranch Engineering Wizards. Oh boy. That didn’t stick around too long, so after a trip to championships one year I think someone decided it was time for a change. I believe we were inspired by Team 180, SPAM, and their superman theme. We thought that would be cool, so we ended up with a superman theme as well, except based around his weakness, Kryptonite, in which we substitued the K with a CR, for Cinco Ranch, to make CRyptonite. Now we go around with this punk superhero style with the spiked hair and radioactive green on everything, from our clothing to our hair to the lights on our robot. That’s all I know of our imagery history sadly : /

#49

Since our school is a half day career center that students from many schools attend, the school itself doesn’t have a mascot…

However, after redoing the display/trophy case in the front of the school (and sticking our logo prominently in the middle), we have started discussions in regards to making our team name the school mascot.

#50

That’s a really cool way to think about it. I like the name a lot better now! Hopefully we can also develop a reputation for quality, simplicity, and durability… (Need a bit of work on that last one I think!)

We always just made jokes about “building robots by candlelight / without electricity”.

#51

How many Spartans and Tartars and Saxons and Warriors are out there? Looking over the list of FRC teams nation/worldwide, it gives a sense of distinctively to name yourself something a little unhinged from the school.

Go TorBots!

#52

Our team name, ShockWave, is very loosely related to our schools mascot, the Crimson Tide. Our logo is rather different visually from the Tide Guy (attached below) or the G that most of our school uses, but our color scheme is similar besides the fact that we have yellow, a brighter red, and we use a lot more black. Another logo idea that our team considered was a red-filled version of the Tide Guy, clutching a lightning bolt, and an alternative idea for our name was the Crimson Capacitors, both of which are much closer to our schools mascot.

I missed this discussion rookie year, but personally am glad that we went with something as different from our school mascot and imagery as we did- even though our school mascot is already pretty unique. It has helped to make our team highly recognizable within our school, and the vast majority of the feedback has been positive.

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#53

Our team, the FireBears, has nothing to do with our school’s athletics department, which is the Roseville Raiders. In hind sight, it might have been useful to be the Raiders so that we could reasonably claim to be a sports team, and get the perks of that, but the Raiders isn’t a name that stands out at all. FireBears? That stands out. Also, fun fact, the name was voted on, so if FireBears hadn’t won the election, we would have been the Electric Bananas.

#54

Originally our team was run out of Case Western Reserve University, even though all of its members came from our school (HB). At that point we were called TeamHB (super creative, I know. Not sure about mascot or colors back then though…).

Fast forward to the fall of 2010 and we lose the space at CWRU, which is when we moved back into our school. However, that same year we ended up changing our name to have no relation to our school whatsoever and we’ve been The Fighting Unicorns ever since, with blue and pink as our colors.

#55

When founded in 2006, McKinley Tech HS in Washington, DC was known as the Phoenix, as McKinley Tech was shut down, remodeled, and reopened in about 2004. Evidently, the alumni complained about changing from the original name for athletic teams, the “Trainers,” so the “Phoenix” was abandoned by the school. The school colors were silver and maroon through out this period.

The robotics team was already known as the “Phoenix,” which, we thought, fit the robotics team, as we were always rising from the ashes of the previous season. We altered this to “Firebirds,” got official, written permission from GM to use the Pontiac Firebird logo for our team materials, and changed our team colors to red and black, adding in orange, yellow, and white where necessary to add flames to our logos.

#56

We have 2 schools and the team names are only vaguely related to the athletic team names.
We have the Cowboys, and the Indians.
We are the Pi-o-neers. Kinda sorta in the same old west theme, but with geek cred.

That being said, the athletic department gives robotics team members a varsity letter if they meet the criteria.

#57

The town of Goodrich likes to tout that we are the only school in the country to use our school’s mascot: The Martians. We are named after the soldiers of Mars, the Roman God of War and Agriculture. The school’s choice dates back to the early history of the 1900s when Goodrich was a school in a farming community and wanted to recognize the Mars.

The team name was chosen long before I was on the team, but the reason it was chosen was because of the relationship the school has to the name. The logo with the grinning Martian head that we have used since our beginning and the green color is unique to the robotics team and were chosen and created to give the team a strong brand and a unique color that stands out among all of the teams in our competitions. The school’s mascot is a helmet with the word Goodrich incorporated into the helmet and has recently became a constant fixture on the team’s robots.