[MichaelBick]

After last year, our team was extremely motivated to greatly improve. Personally, I was motivated by the build blogs of the cheesy poofs/rawc, by the accounts of 1717 in the New Cool, and the little tidbits I've heard of 973's small, but strong program. Instead of taking their programs and deciding that the robots were fully mentor built, which they are obviously not, we decided to take them as example of what we wanted to be. All of our students made the conscious decision to strive to be better, and hours of hard work later, we have the satisfaction of becoming regional finalists, a position our teams has never held. This just comes to show that hard work pays off, and that no matter what, you should find teams that you think are examples of what you want to be, and strive to be more like them.