[IraJason]

And thank you Kressly, for doing such a wonderful job. And not just for our team, but for all of FIRST in general. Between being a Senior Mentor, Mentor for 1712, and "doing the other thing" (AKA teaching English), he does a lot. He's helped guide and shape our team and it's members since our team's very beginning. When he's not working with us on the robot, he's usually in his classroom looking at the latest threads on Chief Delphi. He is so deeply involved and connected in FIRST that I'm starting to think that everyone knows him. But those connections and duties also mean that Kressly spends much of his time during matches running around making sure that everything is running smoothly.

To see Kressly along with our drive-team during the elimination matches was amazing. The look on his face was a look of excitement. We got to see the part of Kressly during those matches that showed his true devotion to our team.

And to know that those powerhouse teams that we had been competing with for the last two days were able to recognize us and knew who we were was best of all. Of course it would have been great to win that last match and make it farther, but after talking to other teams and being congratulated on how well we did made up for it. I knew I was not expecting to make it as far as we did knowing who was in our division, but we worked ourseleves up to the top anyway. During our team meeting after saturday was over, we all discussed this greatly. Winning more would have been really cool, but where else would you be able to meet the creator of Youtube and and ask him to watch one of your winning matches? Or talking to some of the greatest teams in FIRST and being told how great a bot you have? Sure we didn't win, but the greatest satisfaction was celebrating with our team over the fact that we went from a barely fuctioning robot the first day of philly our rookie year to having a galileo semi-finalist robot our second year. It brought our team closer than it has ever been before, and that is what FIRST is all about, being able to get people to work as a team. I know that the 12 kids that we brought to Atlanta (as well as the mentors) have all been affected positively by this experience. Each of us was able to come out with something good or an amazing story that we won't soon forget. I know that was the case for me. I will miss my team next year greatly, not because I won't be able to work on the robot, but because I won't be able to share in the amazing experiences that will occur in the future. It is something that I will truly miss going out of High School.

And for Kressly... he is definitely a nutty one, but he's our nut, and we wouldn't trade him for anything.