[The Lucas]

First of all congrats to 836 Robobees for winning RCA and being a Finalist. I thought something might be brewing when you didn't win the Gracious Professionalism Award. Special thanks to all your members that helped the students of our MOEbile pit & me fix multiple robots. Also your robot probably gave the best individual performance in the elims. Best of luck at the Championship.

Congrats to 846 for winning REI. I sat behind your team and you were all very nice, and spirited. It was fun having you in Baltimore, thanks for visiting from Cali.

Congrats to Fred Needel for winning WFFA, long overdue. Congrats to the Shades for winning the second volunteer award, can't say I've ever seen that before.

Congrats to the winning alliance of 768, 1218 & 1699. It was one of the most interesting finals I've seen. See all of you at the Championship! I guess our friends, the CHAbots, will no longer be registering for Philly since they have their ticket to St. Louis punched. I am sure we will see them there Sat, anyway.

Thanks you to our alliance partners, 2199 and 2377. We fought the good fight against in the toughest QF matchup against 340, 1403, & 88. We lost the first match that featured the MD highest combined score of 194. In match 2, we had the unfortunate issue with C Company's DS reboot (their robot was fine, but never regained comms), so it was even more of an uphill battle. Our robot certainly could have performed better to give us a chance to advance.

To 340, it was great being your pit neighbors again. Whenever I got a free moment it seems like I spent it talking with your team members and/or admiring your robot. Your presence advanced minibots at this regional by leaps and bounds. You loaned minibots to many teams including the eventual champion 768. Your advice inspired minibots on 1218 and 1403 to name a few. I know we will be following the tips you gave use as we seek to improve Larry, Curly and Shemp (our minibots). Unfortunately, we never got to play on the same alliance, and the scheduler saw fit to pit us against each other in the last qual match, where we knocked you out of the top seed. It is not the first time we have knocked down a top seed, that ended up hurting our elim situation and it probably will not be the last. After the Robobees gave up their Captain's spot to join the #1 alliance it shifted our alliances into an inevitable #4 vs #5 QF showdown. Your alliance with Cougar Robotics & TJ^2 was formidable, I called out your picks in stereo, because they were the same as our list. You guys out played and out strategized us, well played. I thought for sure your alliance would go the distance, but I guess it wasn't in the cards.