[Scott Ritchie]

Wow!!!!!!!!!! Great regional everyone. On the plane ride home yesterday I could here our kids telling other passengers about FIRST and describing matches they had been in. I always say your first ever regional is one you have the best memories from but after attending the AZ Regional for two years I don’t know if that is true. I am truly sorry that things didn’t work out for our alliance with 60 and 898 but we were honored to have you guys along for the ride. Since this was our first time to have the first pick in the draft I appreciated having 60 there to help us make decisions and I and my team learned a lot even though things didn’t work out the way we wanted. Thanks again to 294 for the great trophy. An award voted on by your peers has a special meaning to it and we will display this award in as visible place as we can find. Right now it is setting on the front desk in our schools office and will be on our morning announcements sometime this week. We will also display it at Chicago next week and Atlanta after that. 980 gave us a great run all the way to the end of qualifying. Go figure that it would be your team that would push us so hard for the top spot after last year with our arm battles. It is funny how two teams can build a history with one being in Indiana and the other in California but hey that’s FIRST.

As we were coming out of the stands after the Chairman’s was awarded to 330 I saw an emotional Chris Husmann and I fully understand his emotion. I don’t think it is emotion about winning the award but about the people that worked so hard along side you to get your team to this point. I have always said that I get a lot of accolades for this team but it is not me it is a lot of good people doing a lot good things. Congrats Chris and 330.