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[FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
Originally posted - http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...-field-coaches
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Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
I think Frank did a great job setting out the whole mentor vs student issue here, as it relates to the Drive Coach position, and also clearly indicating that the collected data shows that FIRST shouldn't change anything in this area.
For my team, I acted as the coach our rookie year, and for about 1/4 of our second year. During the second year, we transitioned it over to a student position, and it's been that way ever since. The transition happened specifically at the student's request - the team wanted to show that they had grown enough through the build season to stand on their own. Typically, it has been held by the programming team lead, as that individual is the one that can help instruct the drivers the most when things aren't working exactly correctly (try pushing this button, or that one, etc), and the one that needs an up close view to be able to fix things (if something breaks mechanically, it's easy to see what's wrong... if something in the code doesn't work right, it's hard to tell from the stands if it's a code issue or a driver issue). We've seen tremendous growth from our drive coaches over the years. They've all spent a few years in the position, and they all ended up as team captain's their senior year. Yes, when I watch from the sidelines sometimes I say "what are they thinking?", and in those situations it's easy to assume that an experienced mentor acting as drive coach would help the team perform better on the field. Maybe that's true. For me, I guess it's balancing out how on-field performance affects the inspiration on the team, versus the personal growth you can see from a single student fulfilling that role - I can definitely see this balance tilting either way, depending on the specific team dynamics. Without turning this into a raging debate, I'm wondering how other teams reached their decisions on who should hold the Drive Coach button (Student, Mentor, or even how you select a specific individual for the role) |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
It is worth while to go look at the statistical break down. It is fairly balanced until you get the 16 yr+ where it swings to adult coaches. I wonder if it is a change of mind set on how First should be run over the years.
The question also asks should it be allowed (I am some what neutral) rather than what your does your team do (our team will not have an adult on field coach as long as I have a say in the matter) We are a 5th year team. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
It might also be interesting to define the role of the drive coach.
I see the drive coach as being the meta layer on top of the drive team. In other words, I see them as more of an alliance coach and only dropping down to the drive coach role in order to handle exceptions. Normally, the drive coaches should be interacting with the other drive coaches for strategic direction, monitoring time and scores, and looking for inter-team interactions required to keep the alliance flowing and scoring. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
Frank proves once again why he is "The Man" and why that pesky "acting" must be removed from his title.
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Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
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I'm glad Frank is even addressing issues that we didn't ask about, this just keeps getting better. Each team makes their own decisions about drive coach, it's something I have been battling with myself each year. I don't think it's clear either way which way is best. Lately I have been coaching at least one off-season event with the new drive team. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
I try to avoid me too posts, but +1 for Frank!! (The other Frank not me)
It not only nice to know that First thinks about these things, but also the insight to why some things are the way they are. It is helpful when they come out with some strange, to me at least, decisions that there is really some rational people thinking about what will work. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
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Though this year, our drive coach spent more time coordinating the human players during the match than directing the drive team. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
Tacking on to what Sisk said, you can look at interactions between a drive coach and the drivers of the team as a window into how the team operates and uncover how and why the team acts at their competitive level. Coaches that are stuck into the spot to micromanage the drivers or exist to diagnose issues on the robot probably served in a role like that throughout the build of the robot. Some teams have a drive coach that talks more to other coaches than their drivers, as I have explained earlier, the best drivers have some weird telepathy type thing going on and they communicate through their magic unseen channels, leaving us coaches to digest what is happening on the field with our robot, the other robots on both alliances, and the clock/timed events.
I like the bit where instead of presenting pros/cons for each side and leaving it at that, he encouraged the teams to look at how they have been doing things and compare it to the other option. All teams from the underdogs to the average should be evaluating the effectiveness of each decision made and considering the possible benefits and drawbacks of a change to their SOP. I would say the powerhouses should as wel, but I'm sure they already do this anyway, and that's why they achieved so much over the years. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
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Prior to the match we all discussed game plans and felt confident about how the match would go. Murphy's Law being what it is, things didn't go according to plan. Once on the field, the coach of the HRT let his emotions get out of control and was yelling at not just his students but both mine and the other team's students because things weren't going according to plan. Neither the other coach nor I took this to pit admin or did anything about it. I later discussed this with another mentor on my team who agreed with my opinions of the coach of the HRT. I disagree with yelling at students in general, but if that's how your team operates, then you're well within your right. Unless one of my students puts you or someone else in great danger it's not your place to lecture or yell at them. Come to me and let me do that. On that note, a two and a half minute interaction with him continues to impact my thoughts and feelings towards his team. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
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I'm not sure which field coach you are referring too, but I'm sure they didn't mean to be offensive with their comments. One of my funniest memories in FIRST is standing behind the driver’s station while 67, 48, and 148 played a match together and JVN, Adam Freeman, and Travis Hoffman are all screaming back and forth at each other. In any other situation, you would have thought it was a seriously heated argument, but actually listening to them, it was just common in game communication spoken very loudly. Were they angry at each other? Nope, but they were darn sure that they were going to be heard by one another. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
I tend to favor having an adult as the coach. I see my role as formulating the alliance strategy and keeping the students focused and calm. During the actual match I mostly act as a time keeper and a spotter. The students could essentially do everything on their own. I think I might over talk and escalated the stress levels too much my over analyzing our strategy. I think I was too blunt and pessimistic with my own team. However, I wanted to be very polite and cheerful when working with our alliance partners. I notice their drivers were much more relaxed and I realized I was stressing out my own team too much.
I could easily see this situation reversed where a coach stress out their alliance but is nice to their own team. That would certainly be frustrating for me to experience. I think their is something much more upsetting to see adults mad as oppose to students, and rightfully so. In addition, I feel students can feel intimidated developing a strategy with an adult on another team. I have be fortunate recently to have a small team of student to work with strategy and scouting, they have been able to lead the discussions with other alliance members. I am there to guide them and finalize the strategy. Last year, I was pretty busy, so we swapped students out to be coach while I was on the sideline. It worked out ok. This year, our robot had a lot more strategy and time keeping required so I did all the coaching this year. However, I think for the offseason events, I will have some students coach instead. I try to pass on things to students. At first I was doing most of the strategy and lining up the robot. By LV students took over most of those roles. I know 766 used to use adults as coach, but have switched back to students do to a lack of mentors. I think it worked out because to drivers and coach are good friends. To me it depends on the team, if you have the resource, use an adult a coach. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
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16 years... that would be back in 1997 or so. Back in the days of 2 coaches on the field! Now, I don't know much of anything about that timeframe in terms of coaches, but it seems to my hazy recall of descriptions that if a team used 2 coaches, one had to be a student. This would have given teams around at that time a really good chance to figure out whether a mentor or a student was better, and go with that when the number of coaches was cut to 1. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
In my view, the role of the Drive Coach is to be a leader in pre-match strategy discussions and make sure the agreed upon alliance strategy is effectively communicated to the drivers before the match. During the match the Drive Coach is responsible for knowing what all 6 robots on the field are up to, being aware of the clock, being aware of the score, and making any strategic adjustments (or overhauls) mid-match and communicating them to their partners as needed based on the information available. The Drive Coach should not be giving step-by-step instructions for everything the drivers have to do (unless a peculiar strategy is called for that match). Our drivers should be smart enough to execute a predetermined match strategy on their own. The valuable information the Drive Coach can provide would be more like "the left side of the field is cluttered, so go around behind the pyramid this time instead" than "put the arm up and line up to the peg". Time spent telling the drivers to raise the arm when they do that multiple times every match could be better spent analyzing the field for things the drivers don't already know. The Drive Coach should also be driven to study their competitors to be best prepared for competition.
Team 20 has developed a sort of unique team structure over the past few years based on experience and continuous improvement. I will spare the details, but let's just say that part of our team history includes the bullying from adult Drive Coaches mentioned by Frank. In 2011 we made a conscious decision to go away from adult Drive Coaches in favor of students taking the position. From 2011 through 2013 we have developed a team structure with a Drive Mentor (adult) and a Drive Coach (student) and we are definitely converging on a structure we like. I was fortunate enough to be offered the position of Drive Mentor this past season for Team 20. I have never coached a match, but I was a driver my senior year in 2011 so I know what it is like to be behind the glass. I was behind the glass with both a student and an adult Drive Coach during that season so I feel that I have a rare perspective as to why this type of structure is important to our team. My role as Drive Mentor is NOT to be on the field with the team. My role at competition is to help lead pre-match strategy discussion and make sure that our scouting and drive teams are communicating effectively. I also pull aside the Drive Team after EVERY match to debrief about what went well and what can be improved. This is extremely important because we need to be able to focus on what we can control as a Drive Team without the distractions from others. We also need to do it after EVERY match because if we only do it after matches when the drivers perform poorly or the Drive Coach makes a questionable decision, the effect is to make it seem like every time I want to talk it is a punishment. Really all I am trying to provide is encouragement and constructive criticism based on strategic analysis to improve our team's on field performance. Emotions and focus are important to that. Outside of competition, the Drive Mentor's role is to facilitate drive practice (we have a practice bot and access to a full size practice facility), help select the drive team, work well with the team's Lead Mentor and support the drive team in anyway that will help improve on field performance. To select our student Drive Coach we look for character, personality, and skill, in that order. We have a multiple short essay test we administer to understand who takes the role seriously and how they would deal with tough situations at competition. How do we formulate a match strategy? When do we abandon failed objectives? How do we react to being treated poorly at competition? Does the candidate appear to understand probability, variation, and marginal utility in the context of strategy? Our student drive coaches have been nothing short of great each of the last 3 seasons and our on field performance reflects that (despite having poorly executed robot designs in 2011 and 2012). Sure mistakes are made, but rarely the same mistake more than once. When we made the decision to switch from an adult Drive Coach to a student Drive Coach, many mentors on the team were apprehensive about students being bullied into submission in strategy discussions or on the field by other adult Drive Coaches. I have only seen this happen to us twice in three years. Each time, while I consider the alliance partner's conduct unacceptable, we realize that there are things we could have done differently to improve upon the situation looking back and use it as a learning experience. I will say that the strength of our scouting system, especially this past season, has gone a long way toward having our student Drive Coaches heard. How can you ignore a respectful high school senior calmly telling you how many points each team on the field averages and how they do it along with a corresponding strategy designed to maximize our probability of winning a match? I am firmly in favor of FRC teams deciding for themselves on this topic. That is to say, however a team feels it can best achieve its goals and adhere to the mission of FIRST. I am only qualified to help make that decision for my team, not dictate how thousands of others run theirs. Based on our team history and philosophy, a student Drive Coach is the way to go for Team 20. I can see how an adult Drive Coach is the correct decision for others, especially since there are plenty of very inspirational figures in the robotics community who have worn the coach's pin. |
Re: [FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches
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Being on the driveteam isn't a relaxing job. It is downright stressful especially for drive coaches because they aren't at the controls but they do influence the choices their drivers make. My job this season has evolved as our drivers have gained more match experience. At earlier events with a new robot and new driveteam I spent most of our matches guiding our drivers through their movements and helping them prepare for what was next. When to play offense, when to play defense, when to hang, where to hang, etc. At the last event we attended I felt that most of what I did was helping our drivers plan what route to take to get across the field and looking at the big picture of the match. There were several moments our team encountered that were make or break decisions that drastically changed the outcome of the event for our team. Some of them were minor decisions and others were major gambles that in the end paid off, others didn't. These decisions happen all the time and teams need to put individuals capable of making these decisions in fractions of a second. Whether that is a student or an adult that is up for the team to decide but its impossible to say which group better exhibits these qualities. I know of many adults who are amazing drive coaches and I have met and worked with an equal number of student drive coaches who are just as amazing. |
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