[BionicAlumni]

First off I would like to thank all of the teams that have showed support for Team 60. You are showing the true meaning of FIRST. I promise you all that Dean would be very proud of you.

A day in the not so far past I was also a member of Team 60. I was a part of the team in the years before be had the wonderful help of 2 of the most amazing people I personally have ever met. Glen and George care more about the people on this team than I think anyone will ever know. I can tell you how many sacrifices I have seen both of these gentlemen make for the good of the team. The long nights and weekends spent at the shop away from their families. The weekends spent at completion. I know this is nothing new to any of the teams reading this. It is a theme we see over and over again with every team. This after all is the spirit of FIRST.

I will never forget the first day our team met Glen and George. Here we are 3 weeks into building our robot looking at a table with a bunch of parts spread across it thinking what do we do with all this junk? (Sound familiar?) We decide there is a piece of aluminum that needs cut and we don't have the tools to do so. Someone suggest that we go out to a machine shop and see if they could do it for us. A few team members go out to the shop and with no hesitation at all Glen is quick to cut the piece for the team. After cutting the piece Glen asked the team members exactly what they need the piece for? The team members explained FIRST to Glen and ever since that day Glen and George along with the rest of us were hooked.

I once asked Glen how anyone on our team could ever repay him for all that he has given us? You know what the answer I got back was? The only way he ever wanted to be repaid is he wanted me to someday make the same kind of affect on another kid as he had made on me, and at that moment I made that promise to him. Glen and George are truly in no stretch of the word my HERO's. Everyday I strive to someday be able to live up to my promise and repay them for everything they have done for me.

OK now that you have read threw all that emotional BS your wondering so what? What does that have to do with this thread at all? Well what I am trying to show you is that FIRST makes a difference. FIRST isn't about some silly robotics competition or who wins a regional and who doesn't. FIRST is about exactly what its name says. For INSPIRATION and RECOGNITION Science and Technology. It doesn't matter who comes out on top after the finals. What matters is that students and inspired and mentors are recognized. If FIRST changes the life of just one member on your team then your team is by far the biggest winners of them all.

After attending the LA regional just days ago I really believe in FIRST even more than when I was on the team. I saw the competition as a spectator and it really opened up my eyes.

Go out there and talk to every team that you can. Make friends. After leaving the program its not the robots that we made and the awards we won that I remember it’s the people I met. People that without FIRST I would have never even had the opportunity to meet. People that I still talk to today on almost a daily basis.

Well I figure I have babbled on enough I hope some of you can understand what I just said. Thank you very much for reading it all.