[Bruce Newendorp]

Team 525 and I would like to extend a huge THANK YOU to Mark Lawrence and everyone else who put in all the time, effort, and resources to put on this great new regional! It was a great event!

Congratulations to 1816 on receiving the Regional Chairman's Award and 1987 for the Engineering Inspiration Award! These are great accomplishments that that really promote the FIRST values and participation. I applaud your efforts.

Thanks to 93 and 2518 for an awesome Saturday afternoon! What a great alliance! You were fantastic partners and we really appreciate how we worked so well together. Team 93 is a great veteran team with all that valuable experience and 2518 is off to a nice start in their rookie year and will have many great years ahead. Both of your robots performed very well.

WOW - a 15-0 record!!!! Unbelievable!! I want to thank the teams we partnered with in all the matches throughout the 15-0 run. We did not get the wins by ourselves. Every win is a win by the alliance - you all were part of it and we thank you for working with us.

To the rookie teams - I saw many good rookie robots and I'm sure you all learned a lot and had a lot of fun. Good luck to those of you going to Atlanta and good luck for next year. We all know getting started is quite a challenge and you all did very well.

To Kenton Swartley and the students, mentors, and parents of the Swartdogs Team 525 - Thank you so much for the Woodie Flowers nomination and all the wonderful things you said to me. It really was a complete shock to me to win the award. This really means a lot to me and I am proud to have received it.

To all the students, team mentors, team coaches, volunteers, and staff of the Minnesota Regional - Thank you for all the congratulations and kind words on my Woodie Flowers Award. It's great to be around so many good people and I look forward to seeing many of you at Atlanta and at future FIRST events.

The Minnesota 2008 Regional was an awesome experience for my team and me and we will not forget it.