[A. Leese]

I guess I really am very much a FIRSTer in that I really look foward to nats, year after year. I started going to nats in seventh grade when my team first started in 1998.

I love it from the beginning. I have to be honest that I will still go and probably have still a good amount of fun if my team winds up not going. I have enough friend's teams who may take me in as their own and let me root for their bot in competition, which is about as involved with my own team that I am at nats each year.

I mainly look foward to nationals becuase it lets me see my friends I know from all over and just for the thrill of hoping that some team will win (which usually is my own team until we get knocked out and i begin to root for the underdog).

I know that I will still go to nats, but the idea of my team not going as a team is upsetting. I just hope that everyone else focuses on that chance that we may still get to go, not that we may not. And that the freshies and newbies will work hard along with us veterans to make it so that we can enjoy attending nats as a team.

~Angela who strayed off-topic, but knows it's alright