Green is my dude. Known him for years and he's always a lot of fun since he's so friendly and competitive.
Probably one of my first heroes was Tread Baron, from years and years ago (so he probably will never read this). I met him years ago around the time 2.0.0 came out and we'd always dogfight on his server and I think Hide N Seek Hills too. He would always kick my butt, but he had such a sense of humor about it (like coming up with the "Kill Dartman Show") that it was always fun and never frustrating. He ended up teaching me a lot about dogfighting, and HNSH is still one of my favorite maps even if it's kind of weird.
Speaking of that map, I also have to give credit to phantom, who I used to see on there pretty often. He was very quiet, but also really really skilled, especially with dodging. We had a lot of dogfights that would go on for like 10 minutes, haha. Then, jumping forward in time, there are also Leibniz and Tamarack, who helped me evolve my skills and are just always a lot of fun to play against. And of course there's Tanx, who totally changed the game on that map with his laser skills. Love/hate/mostly-love his obstacle course too!
Obviously I would also have to include all the GU and Duc people too. I haven't been in the leagues very long but it didn't take long to notice that the community there is great and all the people I've met so far have been cool. Honestly if it wasn't for that I probably would've just stopped playing completely. Thanks to pam and hj for convincing me to join GU, and Snake and Khonk for bringing me into Reptiles and training me. Also to jadespacy for the help on Duc, and for sticking by and supporting an awesome old school map like Two Castles that was mega-popular back when I first started playing. And of course a texas man for all the 1v1s on public ducati before I joined--always fun to play and chat with, and I learned a lot from you! Not to mention kierra, who's probably one of the nicest players in the entire game. Orange Peanut is really cool too.
Louman gets credit for being the best mapmaker IMO. Wish he was still active, but he released an awesome body of work and I remember him being a very chill guy and it was always fun playing against him on his maps. I still remember the time we were playing 1v1 on Bridges, and I lucked out so hard by stealing WG from him while he was flying over the water...good times.
Mystic Valley is still one of my favorite maps--shoutout to Joe 90 who's my buddy on there!
A Meteorite for giving me my first admin role on his BZFX server, back when Boxy Wars was huge. Also BinarySpike who was an admin with me. Learned a lot from the two of them and had countless great times. And now there's Animal Lover, who is an awesome mapmaker and really cool person. It's so great to see someone with such a friendly personality put together a fun, well-designed map like Great Wall of China and then see regular players flock to it and develop a sense of sportsmanship, teamwork, and friendly competition very much akin to what you find in the leagues. And I'm really honored to be a part of that. It reminds me of how BZFlag in general felt back when I first started playing.
There are so many others I could mention, but obviously this is already a very long post so it's probably best I don't. I think I covered most of the main ones, and the rest know who they are.
Also,
BAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNN!!!!
