[Louisiana Jones]

S.W.A.T. 1806 is thankful for so many things this weekend. We'd like to first thank all the volunteers who donate so much of their time to make these events a success. This is our 4th time at the Oklahoma City Regional and once again it was a great experience and such a well-run event.

We also must thank every team that had to play with us. Without the cooperation of these teams we wouldn't have been able to post what is now the 5th highest Max OPR of any team in the world (101.7). Match after match other teams allowed us to setup our ramp at the right feeder station, and almost gave us exclusive use of all 3 green recycling containers. This allowed us to create 3-six stacks with recycling containers and noodles on a consistent basis, and is the main reason we ended up as the top seed.

We would like to congratulate our friends and fellow Kansas City teams 4959 Millennium Falcons and 5098 STING-R along with their alliance partners 3931 The Cockadoodle Dominators. Each of these teams showed drastic improvements from their previous events. Both 3931 and 5098 were not even picked during alliance selection at their previous events, and after their performance in OKC they proved that they certainly were deserving of their spots in the playoffs. 4959 had their first experience as an alliance captain, and picking from the 5th position they were able to create a team whose average score was 3rd best in both the quarter and semifinals.

We also want to congratulate the second seeded alliance that was captained by our friends and fellow Kansas City Team, 1775 The Tigerbytes. Along with your partners 1296 Full Metal Jackets and 3507 Ubotics you created one scary good alliance. 1296 made stacks so fast that we weren’t even sure we would be able to keep up, and 3507 had a can grabber so frightening that we were forced to rethink our strategy going into the finals. We are happy that the 2 wild cards that our alliance possessed were passed along to such well deserving teams. We can’t wait to see all of you again at Worlds.

Finally we have to thank our alliance partners 4522 Team Scream, and 932 The Circuit Chargers for being so flexible and willing to work around our strategy. We met with 4522 when they invited us for dinner Thursday night at Rudy’s, and it was a great opportunity for our students and mentors to get to know each other better. We were also lucky enough to get together again on Friday night along with teams 4959 and 5098. We really enjoyed getting the chance to hang out with your teams and talk robotics, and hope to make this a regular occurrence. 932 was especially flexible when we asked that they make some significant changes to their robot in order to be able to grab recycle containers from the middle step. 932 was the big award winner of the event walking away with a Chairman’s, Industrial Safety, Entrepreneurship, and Regional Winner awards. WOW! We look up to these teams, and hope this isn’t the last time that we have the opportunity to play together this season.

I’d also like to give a shout out to an up and coming Missouri team. We were fortunate enough to have a pit next door to 5730 The Professionals. I heard from several of our mentors how great their students were, and we really look forward to competing with them in the future. Good luck to this young team.

We are looking forward to seeing all the teams at St. Louis. We are making a few more improvements to our robot, and can’t wait to see the improvements that everyone else is making. We are pretty close to having our 20 point autonomous operating at 100%, so get your can-burglars ready to go.