[Craig Roys]

It seems that some have the idea that the rules should tilt in favor of the rookie teams and I disagree with that. I'm not against rookies being successful, I just believe that the success should come from hard work...not from an advantage in the rules.

When we started in our rookie year (2006 - a game many of you have researched this year!) we expected nothing to be handed to us and we expected it to be hard. We weren't disappointed...we went 1-7 in our first competition and the one win happened because we were lucky enough to be paired with 1114 in that match. But we learned from all of it and used it to improve. We played better at the next competition...and at the FIRST Championship.

Every year we've used our own experiences as well as learning from the successful teams around us to continually improve. We don't expect to be better just because we've been around another year...we expect to be better because we work hard to do so. Maybe one of these days we'll get that blue banner! Not having one just gives me more incentive to keep going and work to continuously improve.