[Petey]

What a terrific event!

A few notes

A) I can't believe how many teams didn't use 172's awesome ramp. Falgor, you guys were great for winning the spirit award and you designed the bot I wish we'd built.
B) Holy hell, the winning alliance was ultrapowerful. Congrats to 501/175/1834. I gotta tell you, I was sitting up there in the balcony when you were playing our alliance in the finals, just thinking "$@#$@#$@#$@#...there is to be a way to beat them. There has to be SOME WAY to beat them." But guess what? There wasn't. You'll do BAE proud at Nats!
C) Thanks to 1474 and 500 for picking us to be their alliance partner. I thought an alliance without a ramp be two and out, but boy was I wrong. 500, when we both scored in autonomous mode it was one of the greatest feelings of comp. We've been to the playoffs each of our five years in FIRST, but never to finals until now. Thanks for the trip.
D) Speaking of great feelings, how awesome of a feel-good story was Team 1991? Rookies, and half of their team is from the American School for the Deaf? I got chills when they won both rookie awards and the entire crowd, rather than clapping, signed applause.
E) I also got goosebumps during Dean's speech about changing the way we teach and bringing FIRST to everyone. I don't share his abject hatred for phyiscal activity--I like to walk, and I loved high school sports--but the man can speak.

Also, my team has a copy of the entire projector video feed from competition. We have to figure out our legal rights regarding it, but then we'll check on what (if anything) we can put on the web.