[J Flex 188]

First off, on behalf of Team 2505, I would like to express our sincere thanks to everyone who made the 2009 Waterloo Regional possible, from the Regional Committee to the enthusiastic volunteers, you made the event one of the most well-run and accessible that I have had the privilege of attending thus far this season.
As always, Waterloo was a small but well attended event and when those bleachers get full on Saturday it gets as raucous and inspiring to see as any other big time regional.

Team 2505 has an incredible list of individuals and teams to thank, if I left out anyone, please do not feel slighted, it is only because so many different people helped us in only our second regional of existence. Congratulations must go out first to Tristan Lall, our Head Engineering Mentor for the past two seasons and someone I have personally known since his and my own days as a high school student on Team 188. He has always been one of the most patient and responsible individuals I know in terms of explaining difficult concepts to non-engineering and non-scientific people like myself.
Congratulations to Teams 2609, 2056 and 2185 for a clearly well-deserved regional win. Ty, my heart is still beating after we had that last supercell thrown in during the tail end of our third Qualification, but thank goodness it ended up helping both of our RP’s.

Congratulations and many grateful thanks go out to the gracious and extremely professional finalist alliance of Teams 781, 2200 1334. The tenacious defence and no holds barred delivery of your strategy, even when the entire arena knew it was coming was nothing short of spectacular. Additionally, the time out that you called in our semi finalist match up was one of the most gracious things that I have ever witnessed or been a part of at a FIRST event. We cannot thank you enough.

To our extended support and 2505 family, we owe you a huge debt. Getting our robot working from no movement on Thursday to the level that it was on Friday was no small task and we couldn’t have done it without the help of the Willicks, Brandon, Beckett, Team 2702, 2200 again and 188 alum that were present. All of you know who you are and I hope you know the impact that you made on our team by helping us out.
Karthik, Paul, JNo and everyone else who kept the regional going and entertaining, its always a great job.

Finally, to Teams 2166 and 3040, thank you for being great alliance partners. You were professional and a pleasure to work with the whole way. We executed well and I feel if we hadn’t had our reliability issues on the Saturday afternoon, we could have given a run for the money for the eventual winners. Hopefully we can improve on it next week, but our thanks for your contributions.

Waterloo is always a blast to go to and I hope we can be back next year. Forgive my lack of brevity, but this was truly a great event to be a part of!