The blog has been a little quiet lately as we’ve been preparing for Atlanta. It’s next week already! Feels like we just got back from Baltimore where we had a great time. Qualifying in 1st place with almost 50 qualifying points between us and 2nd place was quite the accomplishment. Unfortunately due to a Jaguar (motor controller) blowing and some fantastic playing by our opponents we were out in the semi-finals. It was a disappointing finish for sure but a great accomplishment none the less and I for one am blown away by the teams performance and can’t wait for Atlanta.

Speaking of Atlanta we’ve had good luck so far raising the funds on short notice. We were very fortunate to have one of our main sponsors this year JCPenney donate enough to cover the cost of registration (in addition to what they had donated already) as well as a donation from Show Ready Events. Mike Sr. and his company Fleet Ready were able to hook us up with one of his clients ABF Freight who were very generous as well by providing us free shipping of our cart, tools, and spare parts to the Championship. No road trip this year (thankfully!) And a special thanks to Team 2415 The Wired Cats for accepting the shipment from ABF and bringing it to the Georgia Dome for us. Thanks guys! There are some more deals in the works so once those are finalized I’ll post them here too. Although we’ve raised enough to get there, our students and mentors have still had to spend hundreds of dollars each to get there, so we’re still looking for any additional contributions to help bring the costs down. Anyone interested in helping fund the team can make a donation right on our website through paypal! Super fast and super safe, so if you were thinking about donating check out our home page!

On a semi-related note; FIRST Founder and innovative-genius Dean Kamen was recently on the Colbert Report showing off his robotic arm and talking about FIRST. The arm is truly an incredible piece of technology! Check out the video:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/269864/april-05-2010/dean-kamen

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you all in Atlanta!
-Mike Jr.
Mentor/ Driver Coach

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