Besides the Blue Banners, do many teams bring and display trophies in their pits?
Total rookie question…but my team asked me about it last night. At first glance I thought it might be a little tacky, but they are quite proud of them.
This is of course for a FLL team, but I thought asking the FRC crowd would get the best advice.
I don’t have specific FLL knowledge but here is how it pretty much works in 1675’s pit so far:
Blue Banners from the current or previous year.
Awards from the current year (exception in the past has been our WFFA trophies whenever they happen to make their ways to the venue), although with our new pit setup starting at championships last year we don’t really have a good display place for trophies.
We’ve been less skilled at displaying our judged awards, but we always have at least one of our regional championship banners hanging.
/old man rant
A banner or an award from this year is OK but I think past years banners and awards are very tacky.
/ end old man rant
Since we don’t have much to brag about, we’ll usually try to put out whatever awards we can. Didn’t do that in KC because of space issues, but since OKC gave us 10x15 we happily put up a little awards table. Usually though, we’ll just hang our 2010 OKC banner plus put out our Rookie All Star.
The one section of our pits is a trophy case. We put all the awards we can in them. I dont feel that its tacky but other teams might. It is a great way to start conversations with people that are just being introduced to FIRST. They are usually like “WOW! look at all the awards that team has”, and then we usually start talking to them about our team, about FIRST or FRC, and our Robot. Great way to promote FIRST IMO. I say Show them off, You earned them, which give’s you the bragging rights.
just my $0.02 CAN
this old man agrees … and we don’t even do this years stuff
Maybe I’m a little younger but I think regional win banners from this year and chairman’s wins from maybe the past year or two. Trophies and medals are better kept at your school(s) and sponsor(s).
I’ve also broken far to many FIRST trophies to want to take them to many places.
Awards from this year. Blue banners can be from any year. Getting one is a big accomplishment, I see no reason not to be proud of your teams pedigree.
I agree and I am young man:ahh:
I am well versed in the FLL world and to me it’s a personal opinion to bring them or not. Every team is different. It’s more to keep track of and to bring to an event. Plus they are breakable like all awards.
My personal opinion is that if you do bring them you should only bring the ones that at least one student on the team helped to earn. By that I mean the age group is 9-14 so if you have a student who joins when they are 9 and that team wins an award you should include that in their awards until that team member has left. If that is still unclear shoot me a message and I’ll try to clear it up.
We decided not to bring our FLL awards this year, to any tournament. We were fortunate to snag a display case in the school, so everything is in there (helps publicize the program to the rest of the school) and it’s not really worth getting it out for tournaments. Since the most anyone would be on one of our teams is 2 years (and even with that the makeup of a team will change) there’s not really a “team” that won any previous award.
For FRC, we’ve been bringing this year & (sometimes) last year’s stuff. I think blue banners (and probably trophies) from last year & this are appropriate, and Chairman’s for another year or two. My views are not necessarily that of the team as a whole, so you may see something different in St. Louis. 
When I attended World Festival a few years ago as a FLL participant, I do not recall many teams bringing their trophies.
Thinking it though, all the teams that attend WF have either won the Champion’s Award in their own region or were nominated for values. So, I don’t think having trophies there would really be needed as everyone has about the same level of achievement. Additionally, you might risk the trophies being broken or lost. Besides, without trophies, you’ll have more room to display posters/store giveaways. 
Congratulations to your team! Have a great time and have fun interacting with other teams!
We bring our Chairman’s award banners from '92 and '94 all the time. It’s a pretty cool thing to show off.
How many of the team’s current students were even alive when those awards were earned?
I think everyone in the thread would make exceptions for CCAs 
We do not bring any banners or trophies to our pit. We do have a quilt backdrop made up of the t-shirts of the FLL teams we have started/supported. And several monitors for team photos and sponsor thank yous.
The rest of our pit is stuffed with tools and spare parts to share with other teams. No room for fluff! 
We have brought blue banners on occasion, but not the trophies. They are a pain to travel with as they are kind of heavy and could break if not handled properly. When we earn an award at an event, our mentor usually carries the awards onto the plane to make sure they are not damaged during the flight. Second, they take up space in the pits. Hanging a blue banner does not take up very much room, but trophies can easily get in the way. Then that also goes back to them getting damaged. Having them in a tight, crowded space means they might get knocked over at some point.
Ditto. We operate under the theory. Teams should already have this info when scouting.
That must be the reason FIRST gave the districts the smaller trophies.
We have a saying on our team:
“When you lose you don’t say anything. When you win you say even less.”
-Clinton-