[wheeler]

As a teacher/mentor of a repeat winner of the Chairman's Award at the Peachtree Regional I have decided to comment.

The Chairman's Award is about the changing of culture, being the team that others strive to be and making an impact on the future of not only younger children but your peers as well. If everyone would understand the real meaning of the Chairman's Award they should find themselves motivated by repeat teams. I know for a fact that teams at the Peachtree Regional have contacted me to see what we have done to earn the award for two straight years. I shared with them the work of the team so that they could work to compete against us. It is competition that makes you rise to the next level. We welcome the challenge of others trying to (knock us off) rise to the level that we have set for teams in our region. I do agree that this should be a region issue. We feared the possibilities of submitting our entry to the Peachtree again this year, but we felt that it would be a slap in the face of the team that does win that year. When you set a level of expectation and others are striving to meet or beat it you owe them the opportunity to be compared to you. By not submitting our 2006 entry to Peachtree we would only taint the victory of the possible winner and for that we did submit again to Peachtree for the third straight year. There are many wonderful teams that have raised the level of play for the Chairman's at Peachtree and this is how the repeat winners affect the culture. The Peachtree Regional ended last night and I was sick to my stomach about the chances of a third straight CA at the same regional. Knowing that some great teams had submitted this year (116, 1102, 1261, 1414, 807, 1648, and others) I was excited about the level of competition this time. We knew that teams were making great changes in their communities and that this might be the hardest year for a CA yet. During the awards I was nervously sick to my stomach as they got closer to the announcement of the CA. I heard them honor many teams that had worked hard this past year in their outreach and growth of FIRST and that just made me worst. At the presentation of the EI award they were making the remarks and I knew that the judges job this year was difficult. They awarded 1102 with the EI award for the second straight year (way to go 1102) and then I went into tunnel hearing. As Dave Lavery read the script for the CA I heard nothing else in the arena. The students had worked thousands of hours for this moment and as he read I waited with baited breath. As he started the part about what the judges said, I started to go weak and when he announced 1002 I jumped with excitement and then got dizzy and emotional knowing that the students had been rewarded for all of their work. This is why the CA is the most prestigious award and why repeats need to continue. I await the calls from the teams to find out what they need to do for next year so that again they can challenge us next year as we all raise the bar for the CA at the Peachtree Regional. And yes I will submit at the Peachtree again next year, I will not abandon my region and those who strive to challenge us.

sorry for the length