[AdamHeard]

Wow. I'm still shocked this happened, I have so much to say I can't possibly fit it all in this post.

First, I want to thank the people of 254/968. I grew up admiring and learning from their design and style, and am now good friends with them. They have helped us in so many ways over the years, and even now that we're a team that can solidly stand on it's own, we have so much to thank them for. I'm stoked that both our first championship wins were on the same alliance!

I was also happy to see our friends on 968 and 987 pull out a division win (we were hoping to see you in the finals!); I know 968 is a small and somewhat understaffed team like us, so it's awesome to see them reach such success. 987 is just one of those teams that seems to do everything right; if you think their robot is good, the rest of their team is even better! I'm still waiting for them to get champ chairmans.

As for our alliance, wow! I'm still surprised we were around to be the 23rd robot in the draft; we were pretty capable offensively (~6 tubes a match), and many people told us we had the fastest minibot in the division. This combined with 254 and 111, which everyone already knows about, allowed an alliance with an absurd amount of strategic flexibility. The first match of eliminations was truly our first match on defense (it just made sense, 254 and 111 were clearly better at scoring, and with our faster minibot the alliance wanted us to be in position to fire). It was very comforting knowing that in case of a breakdown, or real effective defense from the other alliance, we would be able to switch to scoring and keep up most alliances out there. It was also nice having three minibots that were very fast. I'm glad that even though we were the "defensive robot", we contributed a lot offensively by nearly guaranteeing a first place minibot each match.

The people on the alliances we worked with were great; we planned and worked well together, and every match just seemed to go great. We rarely got in each others way, made some switches midmatch to help each other out, etc...

The alliances we faced on einstein were great, I'm just sad that 781 was down both matches; it'd would have been nice to get an even match instead of 2v3.

Of all the teams we played in the division level, 469 was just awesome. We had pits nearby them, and although we'd never met nor played with any of them before, we were talking and getting along great all weekend. It was awesome to see both of us in the division finals. They not only had a very capable offensive machine, but played some awesome defense when necessary as well.

It was awesome to have so many awesome mentors that I grew up looking up to congratulate us on our victory, it was very surreal! In 2007 when 330 won, they had many spare Einstein seating wrist bands, and let my entire team (294) sit with them. I was glad that since we brought a small team, we were able to return the favor and hook up 330 with some good seats (another team I grew up looking up to! thanks guys!)

I'll cut myself off now, I could go on for days, Thanks everyone! It was a great time!