N.B.: Yes, winning the awards isn’t the ultimate goal of FIRST–but they do act as a good yardstick as to what a team has accomplished.
If there were a mythical Triple Crown of the FIRST Robotics Competition, what would the three awards or achievements be?
seems easy enough to me…
Chairman’s
Event Winner
WFA
I think 67 achieved it last year, 2005.
A regional win, a regional chairman’s, a championship win, and a championship chairman’s.
I’d say for one event a Triple Crown would be Chairman’s, Event winner and Woodie Flowers Award.
Champions, Chairman’s Award, Woodie Flowers Award.
I had been calling it the “Triple Play” after last year’s game but “Triple Crown” is better. Those are the 3 Highest awards in their Category.
Several teams have done it at Regionals: 25 at Trenton, 111 at Midwest, 365 last year at Philly.
No team has done it at Championship in one year. I haven’t checked if any team has done it at Championship over their entire history. If 45 wins Chairman’s they will have done it.
I’d have to say
Chairmans
WFA
Event Winner
I don’t think anyone’s accomplished that at the championship, yet. However, 25 did it at the regional level.
If you want to follow the strictest sense of the award, the Triple Crown of FIRST could only be winning three separate events.
Separate events like animation?
I would imagine three seperate competitions, like horse racing.
Exactly. If you explore their website, the horse must be three years old and must win all three events: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.
This is true, but since the awards we’re talking about are in different fields, I think we can let it slide. (The robots have little or nothing to do with Chairman’s, after all.)
The Champion/Chairman’s/WFA combination was pretty much what I was thinking. It also leads to some interesting data:
HOT (67) is the only team to have the Championship Triple Crown, as they’ve won the Championship (2005), won Chairman’s (2005), and had a mentor receive the WFA (Dave Verbrugge, 2002).
The TechnoKats (45) are almost there (1998 Champions, Andy Baker won WFA in 2003). They could complete it next week with a Chairman’s win. 71 is in the same boat (Champions 1997, 2001, 2002, 2004, and Bill Beatty won WFA in 2001).
65 can’t seal the deal this season, but they’re also close (Champions 2003, Ken Patton WFA in 1999).
I just compared WFA winners with their team’s awards–did I miss anyone who is also close?
Correct me if im wrong but i believe that WildStang won the “Triple Crown” all in one regional. At Midwest 2006 Dan Green won WFA, and the won both Event Winner and Chairmans at Midwest also. They also won the Radio Shack Innovation In Control Award too. And at wisconsin they won yet another event and Radio Shack.
I think for teams that have won all three of these in won regional or championship should recieve the “Golden Triple Crown”.
Don’t forget Baseball’s Triple Crown, which is leading your league (AL or NL) in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in (RBI), in the same season. Doing this is VERY hard, in fact the last person to do it was Carl Yastrzemski in 1967!
So I think the FIRST triple crown should be really hard to accomplish and it should be for 3 awards in the same year.
I think HOT Team nailed it with a Regional Chairman’s, Championship Win and Championship Chairman’s all in the same year! I doubt if this will happen again in FIRST for a long time.
(I left out regional winner because there are a lot of them. Also Woodie Flowers is more of an individual award and I wanted to focus on team awards.)
What about the following combination of team awards for “Triple Crown”:
Championship
Chairman’s Award
Engineering Inspiration Award
The WFA is really an individual award, although winning it is clearly a team accomplishment.
I don’t know if Chairman’s and Engineering Inspiration are mutually exclusive awards at a given event, but according to FIRST’s documentation, they are the highest and second highest awards that can be bestowed on a team.
event-wise, i think it would be one regional, championships (of course) and an off-season. so for roger’s triple crown, you’d have to win the GTR, championship, and IRI.
We call it the “trifecta”:
WFA, Event Winner, and Chairman’s.
Wildstang got the “double trifecta” over the past 2 years in Chicago.
Whats the WFA without the recipients team?
1997: Liz Calef, FRC 88
1998: Michael Bastoni, PNTA
1999:Ken Patton, FRC 65
2000: Kyle Hughes, FRC 27
2001: Bill Beatty, FRC 71
2002: Dave Verbrugge, FRC 67
2003: Andy Baker, FRC 45
2004: David Kelso, FRC 131
2005: Paul Copioli, FRC 217
While I agree that the Woodie Flowers Award is an individuals award, I also see it as a teams accomplishment to be proud of. With out the team, the mentor would not have been recognized by a panel of judges over hundreds of other entries.
Personally i think a FIRST Triple Crown might consists of a combination of the following in the same year [on a corresponding level]:
Rookie Year Regional:
Post Rookie Year Regional:
Rookie Year Championship:
Post Rookie Year Championship:
There haven’t been any teams that have won Chairman’s and Engineering Inspiration at the same event. Have there?
Because both awards qualify a team for the championship, they give them to different teams.
They are mutually exclusive at a given event. Some Chairman’s Teams win EI at a different event where they didn’t apply for Chairman’s. This year, 357 won EI at Florida, then Chairman’s at Philly. At some regionals, EI is given to the runner up for Chairman’s.
I think of Chairman’s, Champion & WFA like baseball’s Triple Crown rather than Horse Racing. The 3 categories (AVG & HR & RBI) are loosely related like CA CMP & WFA, unlike Horse Racing where the 3 races are the very similar (different distances, but pretty much the same horses).
I agree that because WFA is really an individual award I wouldn’t include it in a team “triple crown” feat. EI and CA are NOT actually mutually exclusive, but I highly doubt any team will ever win them both at the same competition. I think there’s kind of an unwritten rule not to give them to the same team, similar to how you never see a team win two technical awards at the same event (they will give them a more global technical award instead of two specific ones, for example).
I’d give a “quadruple crown”:
Chairman’s
Champions
Technical Award
“Computer” Award (Website, Animation, Inventor, etc.)
I was also thinking Engineering Inspiration Award because it is after all the second highest awards FIRST gives out. 