The Team Breakdown – The Importance of Team Morale

Nicolet FEAR prides ourselves mainly in being a student-led team, with a large emphasis on peer support. Members going to fellow students and friends for help leads to Nicolet FEAR becoming more of a family than a team. No other aspect of our team sums this up to a greater degree than the team breakdown does. At the end of every night or afternoon of hard work, we huddle together around a random member of the team and participate in leader to audience chant “47!” “86!” “47!” “86!” “47!” “86!” “Nicolet!” “FEAR!”

Our team continues to try our hardest to keep team morale high even in times of extreme stress, which a time-oriented competition like this can oftentimes cause. Each Saturday meeting, about halfway through we take a large break to decompress and relax before firing into our work again. Occasionally our team journeys to the school gymnasium or other local fun places to play games and further build up the strength of our team. The beginning of our season as well as the end are when we hold our large team banquets, hoping for and later celebrating a great season!  

In these ways, our team becomes stronger as a unit and inspires students to always be working among their friends as opposed to just their teammates. The way in which we support communication at all times and encourage fellow members to seek out each other for help leads to strong bonds between our team. Bonds created in this way can be clearly seen at competitions when we scream for our alliance, at community events when we display our team logo on large flags, and in our lab when we laugh and shout during our team breakdown.