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Awards and Documentation

There are lots of awards that can be earned at FIRST competitions.  They have an award that celibates greatness in nearly every aspect of FIRST. Some of these awards are judged only at the event based on how the team performs, acts and communicates. Other awards need to be applied for prior to or during build season.  Here are a list of all of the awards your team, or individuals on your team can earn;

  • Awards you need to apply for

    • Chairman’s Award – The most prestigious award at FIRST, it honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST

    • Woodie Flowers Award, Sponsored by Dr. William Murphy – Is presented to an outstanding Mentor in the robotics competition who best leads, inspires, and empowers their team using excellent communication skills

    • FIRST Dean’s List Award – Celebrates outstanding student leaders whose passion for and effectiveness at attaining FIRST ideals is exemplary

    • Entrepreneurship Award, Sponsored by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – Celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit by recognizing a team that has developed the framework for a comprehensive business plan to scope, manage, and achieve team objectives

    • FIRST Future Innovator Award, Sponsored by the Abbott Fund – Celebrates innovation and intellectual property creation inspired by the FIRST season experience

    • Media & Technology Innovation Award, Sponsored by Comcast NBC Universal – Award recognizes the team that develops and implements the most outstanding digital experience, marketing strategy, and rationale for digital channels to disseminate content to its audience and further the FIRST mission

    • Safety Animation Award, sponsored by UL (This is a pre-season award) – Recognizes the team that submits a short animated film that best promotes the current season’s team safety focus

  • Awards that are earned at the event

    • Creativity Award, Sponsored by Xerox – Celebrates creativity in design, use of component, or strategy of play

    • Engineering Inspiration Award – Celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school and community

    • Excellence in Engineering, Sponsored by Delphi – Celebrates an elegant and advantageous machine feature

    • Gracious Professionalism Award, Sponsored by Johnson & Johnson – Celebrates outstanding demonstration of FIRST Core Values such as continuous Gracious Professionalism and working together both on and off the playing field

    • Highest Rookie Seed Award – Celebrates the highest-seeded rookie team at the conclusion of the qualifying rounds

    • Imagery Award, In honor of Jack Kamen In honor of Jack Kamen, Dean’s father, for his dedication to art and illustration and his devotion to FIRST – This award celebrates attractiveness in engineering and outstanding visual aesthetic integration of machine and team appearance

    • Industrial Design Award, Sponsored by General Motors – Celebrates form and function in an efficiently designed machine that effectively addresses the game challenge

    • Industrial Safety Award, Sponsored by UL – Celebrates the team that progresses beyond safety fundamentals by using innovative ways to eliminate or protect against hazards

    • Innovation in Control Award, Sponsored by Rockwell Automation – Celebrates an innovative control system or application of control components, electrical, mechanical or software to provide unique machine functions

    • Judges’ Award – Award recognizes the team that develops and implements the most outstanding digital experience, marketing strategy, and rationale for digital channels to disseminate content to its audience and further the FIRST mission

    • Quality Award, Sponsored by Motorola – Celebrates machine robustness in concept and fabrication

    • Rookie All Star Award – Celebrates the rookie team exemplifying a young but strong partnership effort, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology

    • Rookie Inspiration Award, Sponsored by National Instruments – Celebrates a rookie team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school, as well as in their community

    • Team Spirit Award, Sponsored by FCA Foundation – Celebrates extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit through exceptional partnership and teamwork furthering the objectives of FIRST

    • Finalist – Celebrates the alliance that makes it to the final match of the competition

    • Winner – Celebrates the alliance that wins the final match of the competition

The are also awards for the volunteers at each event, here is a list of those awards;

  • Founder’s Award – Recognizes the organization or individual that has contributed significantly to the growth of FIRST

  • Volunteer of the Year Award – Presented to an individual, business, or organization that consistently excels in their efforts with proven results in the areas of Impact, Leadership, Personal Commitment, Community and Historical Contributions

 

How to Apply for Awards

Every year FIRST released the administration manual that contains a lot of info about how FIRST will run FRC each season. Within the administration manual is the awards section. Your team will need to identify all of the awards they plan on applying for and then run through those instructions.

We highly recommend you watch some of the videos below to get a sense for what it takes to apply and win each award at each level
 

Templates

To help teams improve their submissions, several veteran teams have created templates.  These are great way to get started if you have not applied for awards before. Here are some templates we have found.

 

Award examples by year

Another useful resource are previous year award submissions that many teams share.  Here are a few that we have found;

 

Sub Pages

 

Additional Resources

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