254 - Long overdue for a World Championship. What most people don't realize is the "senior" mentors on 254 are not long time NASA engineers. Corey, Travis and EJ are all FIRST Alumni.

I believe EJ was a student team member as far back as 2002 when the Poof's workshop was a storage room in the basement of a NASA computer center building. They shared storage space next to the original 'disk drive.' I mean a 3 foot diameter iron disk powered by a washing machine motor! Corey was a student from Woodside (Team 100). The original mentors on 254 - Jason Morrella, Steve Steve Kyramarios, Bob Homes have all moved on to other things.

The Poof's have always set the bar very high, but also have followed the philosophy of lifting everyone up to their level, not beating other teams down. When the Poof's won the Chairman's Award, I told Mark Leon, "Aren't you proud your team won?" He said, "They are all my teams."