And if the aforementioned others don’t catch what you’re spreading, don’t let it stop you, either.
We have spirit leaders (aka Cheer Nazis) who will not let that happen.
If the kids don’t cheer the spirit leaders will track them down and make them cheer! That’s their job and they take it very seriously. If you want your team to be spirited don’t discount team spirit as unimportant but make it a priority.
At the 2005 GTA regional, a team (I think Theory 6) bussed a huge group of people…(about 200, from what I heard) so you might be able to get a bunch of students to come in and cheer in the competetions.
Another idea might be to bring your school’s cheerleading team, if you have 1.
It was 700 I heard.
Probably the biggest thing that can improve team spirit is to have 1 or 2 people on the team who are willing to risk their reputation, go out in front of the team, and start different spirit acts. Whether that means they yell something and the team yells something back, etc. Also, it is an even better idea to have a good dancer on the team to encourage more from the rest of the team.
Other than that, be sure to summon the spirit of team spirit. That may help. 
-Joe
Well my team has a seperate group for a spirit team. They come up with ideas such as dances, posters, noisemakers, anything you can think of to get a team going at a competition. They teach dances to the rest of the team, an get the others involved after everything is done they have come up with. It’s definently an expierence. Go crazy an shout any cheer u can, an do fun team stuff such as: hair dye, mascots, make your clothes match…anything u can come up with. Good Luck!! 
We’ve basically had to push our team to have spirit, though now we’re getting a lot better.
For us, doing things that people think are fun is what gets people involved.
We have sound cannons (thick cardboard garbage cans we painted silver) that the guys on our team LOVE.
We use glow sticks which everyone has a great time with.
You have to remember that going crazy is great. Everyone is just as crazy as you are when it comes to FIRST competitions.
This year we’re writing cheers and holding a meeting to teach them to the whole team.
We’re going to have glow stick routines and things like that.
Just explain to your team how much your dedication to FIRST should be reflected in your team spirit. 
Spirit is a good thing to have but hard to find reason to put effort into. Especially when it seems like sometimes the reason a team receives an award is because their number is drawn from a hat 
I don’t think it’s luck that we have won team spirit 3 out of the last four years at the regional level.
That would be some luck.
Besides which spirit is a good thing for the other kids to do than just sit there and stare like they’ve been hypnotised.
Trafalgar is a very spirited school so we’re just spirited by nature. I think you could try getting your school involved with robotics to pump up the spirit throughout the whole school - not just the team. Also think up cheers during meetings to have them prepared for during the competitions. When you’re at a competition, get somebody to stand up in front of your team and get everybody to yell them as loud as you can…try those they should help
there is a really bad problem with cheering not only on my team but in my school… the guy who got the ‘most spirited’ supulaitive in my senior class was all like ‘do i really have to go to this stupid game? our school is gonna suck anyway…’ so im workin with a really tough group here!!! i need more ideas!!! :ahh:
well im kinda the “unofficial spirit leader” on my team along with a couple of other kids, we dont have a seperate group for being spirited what we do is we have a bunch of cheers that we do and that everyone knows and when we are in a match we like to be head so we yell the cheers and before everymatch we have our game time huddle which gets everyone pumped to cheer. You can’t force a good cheer or a spirited bunch the enthusiasm has to be ther initially and the rest will follow
Well there lies the rub.
You can’t make them cheer you can only encourage them.
If they don’t respond then just keep trying. That’s all you can do.
“Hard to find a reason to put effort into”? I can think of plenty of reasons, mainly centering around one thing.
It’s fun.
The teams like the X-Cats and Waldo who come to competitions and are full of energy make the event more fun for all the teams, volunteers and fans. One of the biggest reasons FIRST is so different than other similar programs is because of the enthusiasm of it’s spectators. The spirit shown by these people help create that “Super Bowl” like atmosphere.
I really don’t think the teams with a lot of spirit are doing it to win an award. They’re doing to to try and spread some of the excitement that they’re feeling, and most of all because it’s really fun!
You think that the spirit award is chosen from a hat? You’ve obviously never sat in front of CD at a regional. The cheering coming from that section scared the parents half to death at our first regional and they very much deserved that award. As to encouraging cheering? I’m not sure why they wouldn’t. Talk to the kids and find out why they don’t cheer. Is it because their minds are elsewhere? They think they’ll look silly? Once you find out why they won’t cheer, it will be a lot easier to deal with those issues one on one.
Spirit, pretty much starts with motivation. Everyone has spirit but some just cant just make it appear out of air. Put together Spirit Leaders like what other people on this thread said, once they get members involved and into it, it will be hard to get them to stop.
Our team has almost no noticeable spirit. Our most extreme effort consisted of shaking coca cola cans with various bits of metal nuts, washers, trash, etc. in them, some didn’t have that, but we sort of didn’t care. Although there was this five year old kid thats I think is a mentors son that ran around with a GM banner as a cape with tons of buttons. He was the only spirited one at nats. But, I plan on learning to breath fire :eek: . That should get attention.
Most of the time i get so into the game. I scream or yell when somethings wrong! heheh, but I love to cheer. Our drivers say that it really helps them if we cheer so I’m glad that they like it too!
Should there be a sub-forum somewhere here on Chief Delphi to discuss spirit-related things? After all…it’s JUST A GAME!
Things to be discussed:
a) how to instill team spirit
b) how to pick team names
c) how to find graphics and fonts for team names
d) how to promote team in community
e) cheers, fun stuff for FRC events
etc?
Try to get your team to go crazy! Have them dance and create their own cheers, you could even make it a little competition of who creates the best one and can get the team to show the most spirit with that cheer at competitions! Maybe you could even try to interact with other groups who are already wild with spirit, I’m sure that they would be willing to help out with getting your team riled up! I just joined 433 this year, and I’ve found it a lot of fun to dance to the cotton eye joe and such, maybe you can get your whole team on the floor to do it? Try new things, ask your team how awkward they would feel dancing and shouting and if they would feel a bit better if they had a “leader”, you would be surprised at how many people will try if other “leaders” do the same thing!