I’ll try to keep this a bit shorter than my thanks from the Microsoft Seattle Regional. 
Foremost, my entire team wants to offer its gratitude to teams 118 and 343 for being a part of our alliance. We are truly honored and humbled to have had a chance to play so well with two of FIRST’s legendary teams. We, too, wish we could have played a little bit longer. Archimedes Division Finalist is just a footnote in your storied histories, but it’s a tremendous accomplishment for my team and it would have never been possible without your help.
We took risks and made changes to strategy for nearly every match and that was probably the most fun I’ve had during FIRST matches in eleven years. 118, thank you for being willing to let us load up super cells into our machine and thank you for brilliantly telling our payload specialists to keep empty cells on the ground and out of sight. I don’t know if it worked to confuse our opponents, but it sure gave my team members in the stands a moment of pause. 343, you came through at every opportunity and were easily our alliance’s scoring leader. Switching to loading from the payload specialist also paid off tremendously and was a great idea.
While I appreciate that you each tried to defer to me to decide our strategy, I am indebted to each of you for everything you did to make our alliance strong. We chose your teams because you had solid, amazing robots – but we knew, too, that we were getting a lot of experience on the side. My team has never competed at the level we’re at this year and having your experience and knowledge to draw from was as valuable as having your awesome robots on the field with us.
I want to congratulate teams 222, 1218 and 2753 for putting together an amazing alliance of unrelenting scorers. Y’all made sure that there was nowhere we could go for refuge and made the finals the most challenging matches we’ve played all season, hands down.
Honorable mention to 1503, 1538, 1649 and 176 for being very, very scary. Your alliance simply crushed us in that first semi-final and forced us to completely reevaluate our strategy. It’s a shame that 1649 had troubles in the second match and, as was our experience in Seattle, I think if we’d gone on for a few more matches, it’d have been a dead heat.
The best part of my season, however, was not winning the Microsoft Seattle Regional or seeding 6th at the Championship Event or working so closely with FIRST legends or even being finalists in our division. It happened a few hours after our fairy tale had ended when one of my team’s other mentors told me about the outpouring of support for our team and our alliance from our friends. Folks at home were watching the webcast and cheering out loud, our friends were commenting to Facebook in a frenzy, and best of all, our teammates and friends from throughout the northwest all came to Archimedes to cheer us on. Thank you (!!!) to everyone on 360, 492, 1318, 1425, 1569 and 1983 for your support. I am not exactly to sort of person that cries a lot, but y’all got me close. 
Thank you, thank you, thank you. The robots are fun to build and the competition is intense, but knowing that there are so many amazing people out there that are excited and happy to see our team and our kids succeed is the absolute best things that’s ever happened to me and our team at a FIRST event.
