A HUGE thank you/congratulations to... the great state of MN

[Vikesrock]

A huge thank you to all the Volunteers that helped make the Northstar regional the fantastic event that it was, especially regional Chairperson Mark Lawrence and Volunteer Coordinator Laurie Shimizu.

The volunteers did an excellent job getting teams on and off the field in a timely manner. As far as I know we had no major field issues on any day of the competition.

Our robot had some electrical issues that caused us to not move in two matches on Friday. I knew that the problem was likely on our end, based on feedback from the light above our station, the driver's station, and our dashboard, but the volunteers running the control system made sure to check with us on our way off the field both times.

I also wanted to thank our alliance partners Team 171, the Cheese Curd Herd and Team 525, the Swart-Dogs. You guys trusted us when we told you that we had our electrical issues resolved and we hope we didn't disappoint. Your teams both showed tremendous gracious professionalism in our wins in the quarters and our losses in the semis. We greatly enjoyed working with both of you and hope you will continue to return to Minnesota and that we'll have an opportunity to play with each of you again. We just might have to see what we can do to get over to Wisconsin or down to St. Louis or KC next year too.

Congratulations to the finalist alliance of 1816, 2472, and 2418. We knew that your alliance was going to be very difficult for us to beat and it turns out we were right. Even when we managed to hold 1816 in check 2472 made us pay for it.

Congratulations to the winning alliance of 79, 2970 and 2549. 79 had proven that they were the robot to beat throughout the whole competition and when I saw them pair up with 2970 I immediately pegged them as the favorites to go all the way. 2549 rounded out this fantastic alliance and grabbed their second regional win in their two years of existence.

A special congratulations goes out to Team 2169 for taking home the Chairman's award. I was a bit surprised and disappointed when you guys didn't get picked for the Elims, but I hope the Chairman's makes up for it I knew you guys were instrumental in working on the FTC program here and that you were mentoring and/or starting some teams but I had no idea it was 20+ teams!!! It's great to see such a fantastic team rewarded for their efforts. If you guys are going to Atlanta and need anything, don't hesitate to ask and we'll do what we can.