[Adam Freeman]

Public thank you to the teams and volunteers in the Carson division. We had a great experience participating and working with all our qualification partners. Volunteers were very friendly and helpful on and off the field (significant improvement over previous years).

Couple of specific shout outs:

4488 - Thank you for selecting us! Short of being on the #1 alliance, we were realistically hoping to be playing with you guys on Saturday. We did not have the greatest showing during our qualification matches. My drive team and I made a ton of mistakes trying to do too much. Luckily you guys believed in our ability to execute our with our can arms and only put up our two stacks.

You created a perfect alliance that developed synergy faster than I have ever experienced! Your entire team is extremely impressive! Very well organized and prepared for any possible situation. Your robot was so consistently great at executing your match responsibilities. You guys deserved to be on Einstein, I feel really bad that our machine failure was responsible for not getting you there. You guys are well on your way to "powerhouse" status and I'm sure have an Einstein appearance in the very near future.

225 - - Ahh...WOW! I didn't see very many matches this weekend, so I had no clue you guys were that good. Seeing how quickly you guys were clearing the landfill and creating stacks, we probably could have even maximized aour scores a little higher by letting you clear out in front of our scoring platform even more. Your container righting and delivery was amazing. You guys were a pleasure to work with!

5659 - Unfortunately, I did not get to interact with you guys at all. I appreciate the amount of work you were putting in to be retro-fitted with 4488's special device. I wish I would have gotten a better opportunity to meet and interact with you team.

254 - Seeing my friends, who I only see once a year, is what makes this entire Championship experience so special! Talking robots in the pits, watching matches field side, hanging out in the evenings is always better when you guys are there. Would have been incredible to get a chance to work with you guys. Hopefully it doesn't take another 12 years to get a chance to play together. You have the best robot in the world for this game. The level of work and detail you guys will do to to be the best is inspiring and terrifying at the same time. I have no idea how you guys do it. I hope we get to see you guys again someday.

973 - Similar to Poofs, seeing our Einstein partners and friends from last year was extremely fun for us. You guys deserved to be the #1 pick, your performance was incredible. Keep your heads help high, stuff happens so quickly in these 2min matches, that require split second decisions. It's very hard to always be perfect under that amount of stress and expectation year after year. You all have a great attitude and we are very happy to call you friends of the HOT team!

16 - Seeing Meridith, John, and Brandon this weekend, re-living our old Einstein experiences from '08, and having you in our corner for the Finals was awesome! I'm glad we could both get into the Semi's before we had to fight it out for cans. Working with and against you is always a blast. Similar to 254 and 973, you guys are on that list of special friends that we get to see once/year. It's good we are taking advantage of it before this opportunity gets taken away from us.

Thank you all!
-Adam