We have just returned from Richmond, where Team 1418 was a member of the first-place alliance at the FIRST Virginia Regional.  In addition, the team received a "Gracious Professionalism" award from Virginia Commonwealth University.  This was in addition to the "Gracious Professionalism" award from FIRST which they received two weeks ago at the DC Regional (where they led the second-place alliance). 
 
We are so proud of our team which has worked very hard, not only to build an extremely competent robot, but which also has been of great help to a number of other teams.  During the DC Regional, our programmers helped a rookie team get their robot working (they had barely finished making it by ship date, and it wasn't running when our guys got involved).  Apparently, knowledge of their skills had preceded them to Richmond, where they were in great demand by other teams which needed help.
 
This week's contest was a cliff-hanger in many ways--we had some good rounds and some truly heartbreaking ones, with sensors not recording balls and the brake on the hanging mechanism not holding for the full ten seconds, but at the last minute, during the selection of teams for the finals, the  first-ranked team asked our team to join them. [Teams 1686 PI-oneers and 1086 Blue Cheese]  We heard later that this team, which had won at the New Jersey Regional, had seen our team on the NASA feed during the DC Regional and were watching for us when we got to Richmond. 
 
We hope to be able to take advantage of our opportunity to attend the National Championship in Atlanta next month, but, not having thought that we could make it this far, will really have to scramble to get there--raising money, making sure that our sponsor and kids can miss two more days of school, making all the arrangements for transport, lodging, and food, etc.
-CM