[KrazyCarl92]

Congratulations to 1939 on their Chairman's Award! Your team was really helpful when different firmware and software versions weren't properly up to date on Thursday, and I was glad to see a team take the award who was constantly reaching out to other teams to help them out. Thank you!

The winning alliance of 245-868-4256 was a really powerful combination and it was great seeing your alliance play. 868's highly accurate high goal scoring and targeting coupled with their smart all-too-rare decisions to switch to low goals upon defense at the drop of a hat was a huge contributing factor to their alliance's capturing ability throughout playoffs. Lots of teams (**especially high goal scorers**) would benefit from taking notes out of their play book. 868 also shared some inspirational words with our kids on at least one occasion, so thank you for that! Congrats on the win!

Thanks to teams 3504 and 2016 for asking us to join their alliance. It was cool to have our team called by name at alliance selection rather than just a number, shows teams are starting to learn who the "BONDS" are. Thank you again for being open to our strategic input even as a rookie team and 3rd member of the alliance. 3504's defense was a tremendous asset when facing the scoring power of the #1 seed in the quarter finals. In QF 1-2 and 1-3 I count somewhere around 50-70 points from the opposing alliance prevented by their defensive play! They took an opposing alliance that "shoul've" scored 8-10 high goals and brought them down to 9 and 10 teleop boulder points in those 2 matches. It helped take us within 1 low goal boulder of advancing to the semifinals, and if nothing else helped demonstrate vulnerability in the #1 alliance's strategy and robots.

I was thrilled to see the Girls of Steel (3504) awarded the Engineering Inspiration award and advance to the World Championship; we are looking forward to seeing you there! Hopefully teams will take note of your strong defensive play and take that into account when alliance selections roll around.

Congrats to 5809 on their Rookie All-Star award. I hope both of our teams will have a wonderful experience at the Championship in a month!

Lastly, huge thanks to Team 3138. We were really hoping to see you guys awarded a spot at the World Championship and it will certainly be different for our team to compete without your helping hand every step of the way. In any case, the gracious professionalism award was very well deserved! And our team was thrilled to see Colleen and Bri both earn a Dean's List Finalist award! You've both been an inspiration to our team and even if the robot won't necessarily be in St. Louis, we are glad to have such close friends joining us at the Championship.