Have you ever won a competition, or a prize or an award?

In high school I won the library system’s poetry contest, twice. Photo in the paper, blah blah.

I won the German prize when I was at school for being the best in my year and I always felt that it showed how bad the others must have been for me to win it. I also won an award for being the best player in my football team when I was 12 and still have the trophy.

I’ve won the lottery a few times, but only ever £10 and I think the prize that I hated the most was in a bar where they had this table with various prizes and you would spin the pointer and win whatever it landed on. The prizes consisted of various drinks or money and what did I win? This cheap bracelet thing that was so badly made it fell apart as soon as you touched it. I think it was the booby prize of all booby prizes.

In eighth grade I won an award from my social studies teacher for “strangest” student. I took it as a compliment. He was pretty strange himself.

I won a number of school prizes in college because I was at the top in both of my departments. In grad school, though, I feel like a small fish in a big pond and I’ll just be happy if I get a grant this year.

I’ve won:

$10 in the CA lottery.

A few basketball and softball games, footraces, and bets on football games.

I won a friend-of-the-environment award because I walked to work one day.

Stupid jury assembly room computer- I can’t cut, paste, or undo text; and there’s no browser-based spell check (it’s IE, so what’s new).

I routinely won employment awards. I loved what I did and worked hard. I once won a TV at a golf tournament.

A few times, yes, but nothing major like a trip to Malaysia.
I won a pet rat in a 3rd grade tap & jazz dance competition.
I have won a couple of writing contests over the years, bottles of wine and goodies at raffles, and most recently my pet goose “Marwyn” won ” most photogenic” on a photography contest. He was awarded a plaque, trophy and ribbon. I use the plaque as a doorstop in my spare room. lol

The biggest was a citizens commendation award a few years ago from my local police dept. for rescuing a little boy from his druggy mom who was driving erratically on the highway. I received a nice plaque and was part of the community awards dinner party hosted at our local fire station.
The plaque is in a drawer, I have zero desire to display it, doesn’t jive with my decorating scheme at all. haha
Besides, I don’t believe in being rewarded for simply doing the right thing, although my act of intervention was considered “heroic.”

I won a library poetry contest at the military base I lived at when I was in the sixth grade. I was entered in the adult category and beat some grown ups, so I was pretty pleased. I was too embarrassed to stand up and read my poem though, which my Mom has never let me live down. I won a bike safety rodeo the same year.

I also won tickets to see Campbell’s Stars on Ice back in the 90’s. I had filled out a form and stuck it in a box at a Sherwin Williams paint store and when they called to tell me I’d won, I’d forgotten all about it. It included round trip transportation, dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory and seats right on the ice. It was pretty cool because it was right after Oksana Baiul and Nancy Kerrigan were in the Olympics and they and a lot of the biggest skating stars were in it. Loved it.

I won the Best Actress in a Musical award at a regional theatre I performed at for my role as Miss Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls.” That meant a lot to me because it was voted on by the public.

Lastly, I was chosen to appear in two fitness infomercials for “The Firm” back in the 90’s. I used their workouts and was active on their online forum, so when they decided to start doing infomercials they asked people to submit their experiences and I was selected for the first infomercial and asked back to be featured in the second one. It was pretty sweet. Free flight to SC, luxury hotel, spending money, the entire infomercial package free, met all the instructors in person, was taken out to dinner, had professional hair and makeup and we got to keep our on camera wardrobe. All that both times. That same year I was selected as a fitness success story for a fitness DVD company catalog called Collage Video. I got my photo on the cover, my story inside and got a bunch of free DVDs of my choice.

50 bucks on a scratch card.

Academic awards throughout grade school, middle school, high school and college. Much tougher competition in college so that the awards were less flashy.

In NJROTC I got a metal for outstanding cadet and academic excellence. I was actually pretty surprised, I didn’t think I was that good of a cadet. Most other awards I’ve gotten just had to do with academics, nothing too special..

When I was a little girl, I got a special spot in the fishing section of the newspaper for a huge bass I caught all by myself. That was probably my favourite and most memorable event of that sort although I didn’t really win anything, it just made me feel special.

In kindergarten I won an agenda book. The cool part was it was a raffle and I’ve never felt so confident in my life that my name would’ve been picked.

I won a piece of cake in grade five. That kicked ass.

Several including ballroom dancing in junior high, talent show in high school ( shared the award with three other members of our jazz quartet).

@Symbeline Did you save it? Is it in your frizzer?

@Symbeline : So it was not a lie!!!!!!

When I was about 15 I won a radio phone-in competiton in which I had to identify a song from just the first bar of the introduction. It was this one I was first to call in with the right answer and I won “ten top singles”. Note, not “top ten singles”, which I was expecting. What I received was ten demo discs of rubbish bands I’d never heard of that the radio station would otherwise have thrown away.

@downtide That sucks. That reminds me that I once won tickets to see Sting in concert from a radio station because I knew his real name (Gordon Sumner). It also came with tickets to a local dinner theatre. I used the dinner theatre tickets, but not the Sting tickets (gave them away). I was heavily pregnant and it was outdoors and not a very good venue.

I won a golf bag at a company outing. All I had to do was show up.

I have a ton of football trophies & a few for athletics, all from my later school years.
I won a local pool tournament about 3 years ago, organised by the lads down the pub, a cool little cup & several pints being my prize…which was nice.

I won the school spelling bee in fifth grade. I went on to the regional spelling bee and got second.

Also won a blazer at clothing store; by shooting a “hole in one” on a artificial green, 50 feet to the hole. I’m left handed and the only putters were one of the salesman’s, he was right handed. They felt sorry for me and gave me three tries, dropped it on first swing, they were not going to let me try two more times.

The first prize I remember winning was an art contest put on by the Denver Art Museum. I won a summer of free classes for my sister and I.

I was a semi-finalist in the National Merit Scholarship program in high school.

I was given a recognition award for volunteer service to the Foster Family Program in Santa Barbara in the 1970’s, and several awards for volunteer service in the United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps. in the late 1990’s.

I received a National award and free trip to the award ceremony for my self and my husband for my contributions to Yahoo!Answers. I have received several awards from my work on Answers.com.

I have been earning points and using them to enter contests on The Sacramento Bee newspaper Reader Loyalty Club for the last two years, but I haven’t won any prizes.

I can’t recall ever winning anything. I’m not talented enough to beat out the competition. I’m not lucky enough to win games of chance. But it’s not so bad. Everything I have, I had to earn.

On second thought, I really don’t feel like I deserve to get paid for what I do, so getting paid is like winning something.

I have won a couple of singing competitions.

I won the Little Princess competition at Butlins when I was about 5 years old. I sang Papa Don’t Preach by Madonna, not realising what it was about. My mum was probably mortified!!! I also won a prettiest baby photograph competition when I was about a year old.

I almost forgot- I have “won” way more Perfecto-fish awards than I ever wanted.

I had forgotten but I too won the “Prettiest Baby in the Bronx” when I was a year old. Luckily it was pre-Honey Boo Boo days.