Long Island - team 716

[Andy Brockway]

By now, many of you have heard that we are not competing in Long Island.

I would like to thank all who stopped to talk with Dave Lindsay and myself while we were there.

The decision to cancel our trip was not taken lightly. The school had another trip scheduled for New York City today. With war and the threat of retaliation by terrorists looming, all trips to the New York City area were cancelled. The principal could not single us out and be fair to all.

What is fair? Dean said the game was not fair. The world has shown it can be unfair. This is a real world lesson for our students and everyone else.

The school board and the principal are our biggest supporters. Our club has the initial entry fee in the school budget separate from the department budgets. We have no home (yet) but the principal arranged for us to use one of the (heated) garages at the school to build and practice in. I believe it broke her heart to say no.

I would like to thank FIRST and all the officials at the event. With all their duties they made time to take care of our situation.

Thanks also to our neighbors in the pits, Teams 570 and 810. It was crowded with our crate there while we performed maintenance on our robot. Thanks for your patience.

Thank you to Teams 271 and 870 for your words of encouragement.

Special thanks to Team 467. They helped us work on our robot, repacked our crate and tools and reloaded the car. Thank you for offering to make sure our crate leaves on Saturday.

Again, thanks to all who stopped by. Your offers to help on the robot, provide drivers, tales of cancelled events and words of encouragement were appreciated. You helped make what started out as a very depressing day much less so. Good luck to all!

Pulling together in time of need, this is the power of FIRST