[Holtzman]

First off, I must thank FIRST for its thorough investigation. They did a pretty good job of keeping us in the loop when it was appropriate. Frank, Matt, Ryan, and Kevin were all very supportive through this difficult time for us.

To all the people who have thrown in their two cents, I ask you to consider this. You have absolutely no idea what we have been through this season.

I had to stand in front of a room full of my students, parents, and our sponsors and explain to them that after we had worked so hard, and come so far, that someone felt the need to intentionally disable our robot on Einstein and prevent us from even competing on the world’s biggest stage. How many of you can say the same thing?

I attended the Einstein Weekend with Eric Mech, one of our graduating seniors. Eric never left the school before 9pm this season. He was our lead programmer and poured his heart and soul into the team. All the teams on Einstein were brought together and told about the FCA attacks at a meeting on Sunday morning of the Einstein weekend. We were told that FIRST had evidence that our robot was specifically targeted and disabled. I raised my hand and asked what evidence they had, and then Frank Merrick told me that the person had openly admitted to it. I got up and had to leave the room. I was furious. Eric stayed, and handled the news a lot better than I did. He graduates this year not knowing of what we could have achieved.

Would we have won on Einstein? Maybe, maybe not. 180, 25, and 16 were a very strong and deserving alliance. If we had lost to them, or to 987, 233, and 207 on even terms, we would have held our heads high, and congratulated the better alliance. I'm proud to call many members of these teams friends. But the fact is we were denied the chance to even compete by one incompetent jerk.

Trips to Einstein don’t come around very often. Even if you build the best robot in the world, you still need a darn good bit of luck to make it there. I just hope we get the chance to go back and play on even terms.

We in no way blame the entire team for the actions of this individual, but do feel they should stand up and acknowledge that a member of their team was responsible for the FCA attacks on multiple Einstein teams, and potentially others at the Championship and other events. We will give them time to do this properly while being respectful to the innocent members of their team.

On a separate note, the events of GTR-E have absolutely nothing to do with the events of Einstein. All the Canadian teams at the championship were hugely supportive, and we thank them all for that. We are looking forward to playing with 781, 772, and 907 as well as the rest of The Eh Team at IRI next weekend.

I will close with one rather ironic story. I had a gentlemen come up to me on Thursday at The Championship, and thank me for a recent post I had made on Chief Delphi on an unrelated topic. He told me that 2056 is usually very quiet, and likes to let their robot speak for them. Under normal circumstances, this is the way we like to operate. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to let our robot do the talking when it sits dead on the field.