[Chris Hibner]

For me, it was the last "breakfast club" of the build season.

Merging two teams can be a tough thing to do. Merging two teams with a lot of history and a lot of pride has potential for disaster. When we first realized that merging was all but certain, there was a fair amount of animosity about the situation and a lot of unanswered questions: what is the team name/number going to be? who's history are we keeping? how are we going to integrate the process and culture of each team? blah blah blah. I always hoped for the best, but I could see that there were going to be landmines to dodge.

Of course there were some growing pains, but for the most part the integration has gone well. I was really starting to notice that the team was coming together. Then at the last "breakfast club" of the year (which was an AMAZING pot luck, btw), Mr. Martus gave a great speech about how the team has come together and how we need to celebrate the unity and the birth of the new team, and how the merger has made us a much better team than just the sum of the parts. Afterward I overheard many comments saying how the merger may be the best thing that could ever have happened.

Mergers always have the potential for disaster. It makes me really proud of our entire group of students, teachers, metors, parents, and team alumni to put aside some of the past rivalry to make this new team work. I'm ecstatic to be a part of it. As always, nothing is perfect - but at this stage of the game it is working better than we could have hoped.