[ChrisH]

I just wanted to send out a few Thank Yous

First to Team 294 and Team 330 for partnering to host the event. Team 330 has recently been blest with the use of a very large facility, but they are a small team. There is no way they could run their robot and host a competition without help.

The facility we used, while large, required a great deal of cleanup to get it ready for the competition. Teams 597 and 980 came and helped with getting the facility ready. Their presence and willingness to jump in were a great encouragement to me. The Hope Chapel leadership also asked me to convey their thanks for your helping with the rennovation project. It should be complete in time for the Pre-Ship Scrimmage.

Special thanks to NASA Ames for the loan of the field, Ken Leung and Krystine Throughman for driving it down to us (9 hours in a truck each way!) and Team 1538 for providing the plexiglas (and driving two hours each way to do so!). The WRRF control system worked great.

Team 1070 provided the music and Team 599 handled cueing and field re-set.

Individuals that deserve special recognition include:

Cindy of 294 and Richard and Dakota of 330 who together mopped most of the 20,000 sqft of the competition area the night before. This was a thankless job that much improved the environment.

Dave Drennon allowed us to use his personal sound system. Terry Wells handled the field control system. Jon Jack and Ken Leung acted as refs. LeRoy Nelson and Marni Hagar did scoring. Andrea Wagner made the awards and ran local publicity in addition to running 294. Eric and Yulia from 599 ran cueing and Reset respectively and did an excellent job.

A few numbers:

Ten teams were represented by 12 robots

We ran 2 practice matches, 27 Qualifying Matches and 6 Elimination matches betweem 9:30am and 4:03pm. Compared to a Regional this doesn't sound like much. However, each team took the field a minimum of 10 times. So they got a Regional's worth of play in a few hours.

The best part was locking the door to the building at 5:06pm with the field re-loaded on the truck and the room cleaned out. Thanks to all the people who helped with the teardown and re-packing. Nobody from Hope Chapel, which owns the building, really believed we would be gone before the 6pm service.