[Riverdance]

One year ago, we had just finished the roughest season of our team's existence, including rookie year. A power struggle with our head mentor led to him being removed from his position and he took our bank account and sponsors with him (all in all about 32,000 dollars). We had spent a season rebuilding, refinancing, and figuring ourselves out. Our robot was paid for in large part of the pockets of mentors and families. We had moved work spaces two weeks before build season started in an effort to get ourselves under the wing of the school. We were, in short, a mess. Hartford District 2014, we were finalists only by the strength of our alliance partners.

We just got back from Hartford 2015. We have a lot of our old sponsors back, and some new ones. The school district adores us. We put together a strong community outreach program and didn't have to focus so much on internal affairs as we did last year, because we are already much more stable. We have a rookie team of our very own, 5686, the Wirecats! Our new parent mentors are fantastic, dedicated people who want to see the students succeed. Most importantly, after a year of rebuilding, we have landed solidly back on our feet. This year's strong recruitment program has gained us nearly double the members we had last year, and all of these kids have worked incredibly hard to ensure that this year, we qualified for NE District Champs!!!

As a team who, prior to last year, had not been picked for an alliance since 2011, I can say with a lot of happy tears that this victory means a lot!