[Ken Streeter]

This message is simply to thank the many teams on the Archimedes field that made the 2013 Championships an unforgettable day for everybody on 1519. This will probably be a "tl;dr" for many of you, but we'd like to thank you anyway!

During the first three days of the event, there were countless teams that helped us in various ways. We thank all of the teams that tolerated our rudeness on Wednesday night when we shooed you away so that we could completely rebuild the top half of our robot with a different climber and improved shooter. (This might be the best thing about the Wednesday night pit time - uninterrupted time to work on the robot!) On Friday, we could not have repaired our shooter without the encoder MARS 2614 generously gave us, and the Red Devils 1334 repeatedly helped us out with things like thread taps, talcum powder, and encouragement. Other teams made space for us on the informal practice field to test full court shooting, and yet others provided stories of what tricks or techniques worked for them when making the long shots. Please know that you were each some of the many teams in FIRST that helped us this season and you deserve a portion of the credit for any recognition we received. Thanks!

During the qualification matches, our partners were generally fantastic in the strategy sessions, demonstrating the gracious professionalism of FIRST by being willing to set aside their own interests in showcasing their robot or simply doing what they wanted to do, but rather collectively working with us to come up with an alliance strategy that was in the best interest of winning of the match, even if it meant we or they would be playing lowly defense instead of high-profile shooting. Sometimes key, timely, penalty-free defense is the key to winning a match!

For 1519, though, this posting couldn't be complete without a big THANKS to our alliance partners, The Killer Bees (33) and Las Guerrillas (469)! We're especially thankful to the scouting and strategy folks on 33 who saw the potential in our robot and team to bring some significant capabilities and unique diversity to complete the 33/469/1519 alliance, despite our rather mediocre 50th place ranking in Archimedes and our 4-4 record. We made some significant improvements on Friday evening / Saturday morning which were demonstrated in our only Saturday morning qualification match. Before 33 picked us, we were concerned that we may be packing up our pit in a few minutes. Instead, our robotics team had the most incredible ride of our 9 years to date! However, we wouldn't have experienced any of it without 33 and 469 leading our alliance. We're thankful to have had the opportunity to play in the big show, with all of the FRC world watching.

The whole concluding day of the 2013 FRC Championships is a day I'll surely never forget. Thanks to 33 and 469 for inviting us to share the magic with them. We'd love to be allied with either of your teams again some day; I can only hope that your teams both feel the same. Thank you!

We'd also like to extend our congratulations to Team 3467, Windham Windup, of New Hampshire for winning the only judged award for veteran teams on the Archimedes division. Your robot transformation at the Pine Tree Regional was part of the inspiration that we could do a complete upper robot rebuild at the Championship event. It was definitely worth it!

There are a few other non-Archimedes teams that deserve our thanks, too: Without Team 435, The Robodogs, picking us at NCR, we might not have been in St. Louis at all! Back home in New Hampshire, we would have had little chance to develop the FCS in the first place without the practice field space of 1512, the Metal Vidsters, of St. Paul's School.

Thank you all!