[EStokely]

Hello all,
The PNW Regional is over and the boxes are away and the floor is swept.

I go back to the regular world of boring on Monday ( I teach high school) and I will have to endure many many "So, how did you guys do?" questions. And while they are sincere they won't understand the real answer. So I will tell them "We did great, we went to the semi finals and had alot of fun and got an award for engineering"

But I really need to tell SOMEONE the real story, someone who will understand.

So here is the real story.

We passed inspection on the first try and then went to add weight.
We missed our first practice match because we were changing motor plates.
We lost most of our matches but the robot ran great and everyone commented on our gripper and the team enjoyed the game. (We even got over the messed up team pairings we got stuck with, we played against 272 every match)
Mark Leon went to dinner with our team Friday night (Todai!!!)
(I now have him on speed dial on my cell phone.)
We were picked by a rookie who seeded 7th in first draft (Yea! 2046 who also won the rookie all star award)
We had a ton of fun.
We won the Motorola Quality Award for the gripper.
Our Freshman Safety Person collected enough tokens to allow us to get the pit award on Saturday (Yea! Emily).
I took 9 freshman and they are all hooked, including the one who has to move and promised to start a new FRC team.
I watched a lot of great robots do great things as well as ordinary robots also do great things.
I really saw kids changing the way they look at the future, and no it didn't happen in three days, it was the result of the entire season, but I believe they know way more than I ever did at thier age.
I got to dance to YMCA with Mark Leon
Over all it was a great year. I am losing a bunch of seniors I thought I couldn't do this without but they did a good job and trained thier replacements.

Oh yeah, I also won the Woodie Flowers Mentor Award. It was a great time.

Thanks for listening. I hope everyone has the same great time.

Eric Stokely
Team 360 The Revolution
Past Mentor of 258
"The Woodie Flowers Award doesn't fit into a top Segway bag very well"