[Jonathan Norris]

Wow... what a weekend... That was simply an amazing regional, everything from the atmosphere to the level of play on the field was top notch. There was a great group of teams there, who all showed that Canadian teams are some of the best in FIRST. As Karthik announced to the crowd the offensive qualifying matches on Friday made Waterloo the highest scoring regional to date, and with GTR next weekend expect nothing less.

Congratulations to 1114, 2056 (amazing rookie!), 771 (first ever win) on winning the regional, and 1305 Congrats on winning the Chairmans Award! It was great to see 1114 pick an (amazing) rookie team 2056 and 771, a great group of girls who deserved to win, for their alliance. Thanks too 1241 and 2076 (great ramp!) for making a great alliance. If we could have fixed our manipulator we would have had a very good chance on those two last matches. 2076 your ramps were great, you were the reason we made the semi-finals.

For my team Waterloo was an up an down battle, on Thursday we installed a new (roller style) manipulator which we had been designing an building since BAE where we saw our original design was not effective. After BAE we knew that we could play defense, but we wanted to be the offensive team like we were last year. In our first practice match (that we showed up to), we scored 6 ringers a large leap from the 0 we scored at BAE. When our robot was working we showed that we could be one of the top robots in the competition, but the problem is we ran a nasty streak of bad luck. It seemed like every qualification match we played there was an electrical or mechanical problem that held us back. We are working hard and GTR will be a different story.

Thanks again to all the familiar volunteers who make this an amazing competition and all the teams that made it a fun weekend; 1114, 1503, 771, 2056, 188, ect. see you next weekend!