Shane's Opening Statement

[Co Host Tom Westman]

Where Shane will post his opening statement.

[Shane Powers]

Hello jurors, may I say that you are all looking quite nice today. I want to start by saying how much I've enjoyed this game, so I want to thank the host(s). Thanks Colby for starting it off I guess (I hope you're okay). But a big thank you to Tom for keeping it going when Colby disappeared. You did a great job, and made a great finish to the game! Also, I want to thank my fellow castaways, you guys made this a lot of fun!

The game definitely stated very slowly for me. Zeapore never lost immunity, so I didn't really start playing the game for a couple of rounds. I chatted with some people, but didn't make any alliances that early on. The first alliance I made was with Yau (a whole lot of good that one did me...). During the tile breaking challenge, I formed another alliance with Stephen and Corinne. I knew this alliance would take me further since they both played hard, so I planned to stick with them as long as I could. Not much else to say about pre-merge, it was pretty smooth sailing.

The merge brought the actual start of the game for me. When Eliza self-voted, I knew it was the beginning of the downfall of Zeapore. I started letting Stephen call the shots in our alliance to put a bigger target on his back (sorry Stephen), which was pretty important when he came up with the plan to blindside Jonathon. Corinne went home sadly... Now Stephen and I knew the next move was to get Amanda out. Stephen used his nominating power and (with a little help from Ozzy's idol) Amanda left. That is when I entered win immunity or go home mode. At this point, I only trusted Stephen. We fought hard to keep each other in the game, but after Jonathon spared us a week by self-voting again, Stephen left.

With five people left, I won immunity again, and Yau began to beg for his life. I really didn't want to keep him around, but the opportunity to blindside Coach came up. He was Ozzy's biggest ally, and he was also a threat. With the final immunity challenge coming up, Ozzy and I made a deal to keep each other for the finals. Since I figured he or I would win immunity, I wanted insurance to give myself a chance to make it to the end. After winning immunity, I decided to honor the agreement we had, but sadly, he lost the tie breaker challenge.

Now here we are. At the end. I ask for your votes jury because I fought harder than Yau and Sandra to stay in this game. I planned to lay low at the merge so that I wouldn't be a target, but when my alliance fell apart, I did what was necessary to make it here. Some of those challenges sucked, but I had to win them, or I wouldn't be here.

Thanks for your time.