Student Coaches
 

I was wondering how many teams have student coaches versus mentor coaches. Our team has a student coach(me). What do the rest of you do?

Re: Student Coaches
 

Mentor Coach :D ...

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Team 1305 has a student coach.

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Student Coach. First year we had a mentor, it was good in the way that atleast one other person besides a student actually knows what its like to be down there so he understands when things don't go as planned and doesn't get jumpy and ask "why didn't you do this" about everything we do while on the field. I think a student coach is a good idea becuase usually students are more comfotable working with their peers as oppsed to adults when under stress/pressure.

1023 also does not have mentor involvement in alliance meetings before a match. 90% of the time, we go out, seek our alliance members dirver(s), HP, and coach, then have a meeting with them about strategy and what not. The 10% is when they get to us first, aka we're doing a minor repair or what not. :)

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We have a student coach (The one, the only, Steph) She does just about everything and is Team Captain with me!

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We have always had a student coach.

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We have a student coach (me :)). Because, on 573 as well as other teams, the coach does a majority of the strategizing, we made the decision based on the fact that the mentors wanted to give the high schoolers a chance to communicate with the other teams and, as a result, learn the negotiation aspects of FIRST.

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Although I started training to be a coach when I was still a student in HS, I am our mentor coach.....always wanted to do it and im glad i finally have an opportunity to...

Its hard to compete for a coaching spot when your coach in HS was Andy Baker :p 2003 was a nice compromise with the human player technically as a 2nd coach...

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Our student coach Britany at our pre-season bowling party. She was great at FLR!

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We had a student coach last year, who is the coach this year also but not a student. Student or Mentor we always have fun! :)

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We currently have a student coach(me), but we have had in the past adult mentors coach. I honestly find I work better with other coaches who are students rather then mentors, because it is easier to talk to them then a mentor who could be intimidating etc. Also to me a student coach would be better from the stand point of the drivers, as they are also in the same peer group and allow for an easier time talking over strategies, and what kind of improvements can be made, on either my end or theirs. I have come across a few coaches who were mentors, that would just flat out not listen to a thing I have suggested, most likely because I am a student, and to me students just listen better to each other and accept each others plans and ideas better. Although we do have a drive team mentor who is a college member of the team(Ogre), and he does do strategy with us before matches etc, so we still do have an adult working with us. I just find that this is what works best with my team, and every team structure is different, so what is good for one might not work for others.

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Last year, we used both. This year, the coach button was passed between the mentor (Orr) and the tor-mentor (yours truly).

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1403 will always have a student coach.


GO 1403!!!

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Team 116 I believe has always had a student coach. This is a try-out position every year. This year we took a vote to ask if we wanted to have mentors be able to try out and have a chance but the vote came back very strong for keeping it a student-only position.

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Our first year we had a mentor coach. Last year I was a student coach, and we had a student coach again this year.

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Team 647 has had two students coaches for the past year (only one driver).
We have found that the students study the competition more then a lot of the mentors, interact with the other drive teams better then the mentors and also dance, which is a requirement to be on our drive team :D .

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I'm a mentor-alumni coach. It works out nicely, because I was the lead scout as a student, and the current lead scout was my apprentice, and still is one of my best friends, so we communicate rather well.

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Team 358, in previous years had mentor coaches, alternating between several mentors...
This year we have one student coach... and he is doing a great job of coaching!

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Our team has a very green student coach again this year. It is a very strong tradition on 931 that all of our drive team members must maintain an extremely green appearance. Although some teachers and mentors have been mildly green, our green-ness pales in comparison to that of our students, who are among the greenest anywhere. :D

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We have a mentor coach. For us I think thats better, so there are no hard feelings between students. We all love our mentor coach anyway, and he acts like a student anyway, so its all good

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We have a student coach. It used to be where the coach was anybody and they did not really do anything but stand there, it was kind of like a reward for hard-working students but last year I made it so that the coach, me, actually coached it is still goes on today.

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<~ 25's Drive coach. Last year too :(

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We have a student coach - me. Every previous year we've had mentor coaches, but this year we decided to try something new and so far it seems to be working well. :)

Hey, didn't see you replied Bobby, thanks. :D

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Hi,
We use a student coach/team captain for Team 342. This allows us mentors to sit in the pit area during competition and just relax. :-) Watching the competition really gets our stomachs tied in knots.

Regards,
Chuck

Re: Student Coaches
 

RAGE hasn't had an adult coach in 5 or 6 years....if not more. The adult think it'be better if students do it. We have many scouts that help, Ogre just collect the info and does more than most of the rest of them. Corey as well (formerly 571). I was coach last year, a perspective changing job. It's quite a change from all other views of the field. Congrats to all coaches, it's not an easy job!!

Re: Student Coaches
 

this is a very interesting issue which i have had long debates about...this year 73 has a student coach, and 1511 has both (they alternate)

having been a coach both as a mentor and a student there are different things you have to keep in mind before you make the decision of who to put in there.

student advantages:

• more students on the field
• peers communicate better
• most of the time more creative at on the fly moves

student disadvantages

• students can get dominated by mentors in strategy sessions
• need to be able to think quick on the fly (this goes for mentors also)
• need to look at the whole picture instead of just the robot (i have found
• this particularly difficult for students mainly although i suppose that adults have the same problem)

mentor advantages

• more likely to stay cool and collected (not always the case but i wont say team numbers)
• gets mentors to have a change to "be in the thick of things"
• would be able to communicate better with other adult mentors
• will not get dominated in strategy discus sons

mentor disadvantages

• not necessarily good communication with the drive team (age difference)
• makes team look to have a mentor lead image
• reduces the number of students that can be on the field

overall i think that each team needs to weigh the options and make their own decision and there is no right and wrong. in my personal opinion i like to have a student out there but like to attend all the strategy sessions to make sure they don't get dominated by an adult. what it comes down to is who does the best job at getting the information to the drivers student or mentor you should put the best person out there.

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This year since our team is basically student lead we have a student coach up on the field, Scott. He's pretty good at what he does. We usually had mentors up on the field usually James but last year we tried out different mentors up there. Both can be good and bad. At times the mentors try to push their stragedy on the side this year but Scott does a good job in keeping things organized up there

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We play it by ear from year to year.
If there is a student that can handle the pressure on the field, strategize well, and be able to make helpful and productive recommendations to the drive team, then we use him as the coach.
Our mentor staff is always well read on the rules of the game and strategy is our forte so we can always step in if the student is not working out.
Usually, the drive team is left to make the decision based upon who they're more comfortable with.
We've used both successfully.

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I guess we pretty much have the best of both worlds too.

We have a young mentor-alumni coach who has done a great job coaching and being a role-model. Although he`s trusted by the entire team to make strategy calls, he decides to mostly rely on our student strategy lead to tell him what would work best. He welcomes any and all suggestions from the students.

Since he was in their shoes before, he knows what great ideas these young minds can come up with, as well as give guidance based on his own past experiences.

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Our team started out with a mentor coach. However, after the first couple years of doing this, it was decided that a student coach would be more appropriate. This gives the students more chance to get involved. We have found that a student coach is better suited for our team.

Re: Student Coaches
 

All three teams I've been with have had adult coaches. When I was with TechnoKats, it was usually Andy Baker, with various people including myself as the second coach when there were two coaches on the field (before 2002). Andy Bradley is our coach with The Pink Team.

What both Andys, and all good FIRST coaches have in common is good knowledge of the rules, good game strategy skills, and maybe most importantly, good communication and negotiating skills. It shouldn't be that way, but when the teams within an alliance are discussing how to play a match, adult coaches are going to get more respect than student coaches. In the eliminations rounds, the alliance captain team will presumably call the plays, but in the Q matches, a well respected adult coach is going to be more likely to "get his/her way" in calling the plays than a student coach, even a very good one.

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We use student coaches. They always do better than the mentor coaches. And this is a mentor speaking. Students can focus and deal with all the game-play possibilities a lot more quickly than adults, who tend to look at the 'global' issues.

Jon Mittelman
Mentor
Team 236

Re: Student Coaches
 

team 814 has had student coaches at least since 2003. I don't know what we did our "rookie" year...But I know team 232 (they're long gone now) used mentor coaches most of the time.

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1126 proudly goes with students as the coach.

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My teams has 2 student coaches but we're trying to see who the best for the
championship. Hopefully. :confused:

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We vote each year if we want to keep it student-only or open it to mentors. We keep it student only. Even if its open to mentors, they still would have to try out with all the students who wanted to do it, and a student might win.

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What kind of tryouts do you have for coach?

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We never even thought about having a student as coach :ahh: Our first 2 years the coach sorta got mad at the students which is horrible, but this year we have another mentor coach and we told him all he has to do is stand there and look for anything that we dont notice in the field, it worked out quite well because he was cool and didnt bother us except with compliments with our driving :D

Next year we will probably have a student coach though, if we have a student up for the challange.

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Our team has everything done by students.... We only let our mentor be a coach during one practice round.

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We are also gonna hold try outs for coach next year. We are planning on blindfolding the driver and the coach has to give directions while the driver is totally relying on the coach. We want to keep students on the field. We don't wanna win because we have 5 engineers trying to figure out strategy. We wanna win because the kids have worked hard and made an all out attempt for the gold. We want students involved as much as possible and we want everyone leaving the competition saying that was a blast! By having adults take over these spots we are reducing the amount of ways that students could get involved. Knowing this, our engineers and mentors understand that and support our decision in having only students on the field.

GO 1403!!!

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That's why we decided on a student coach. We didn't have tryouts or anything; one day at driving practice I started acting like a coach, and the mentors were impressed, so they told me to just take the job and do the same thing at competition.

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1027 has a mentor driving coach

See everyone in Atlanta!

Re: Student Coaches
 

One thing that is mostly missing from this discussion is that, since mentors are not allowed to be drivers or human players, the only position where adults can be "where the action is," is as a coach. There are mentors who contribute more "blood, sweat, and tears" to their team than most of the students, and who want to be where the action is. In the early part of my FIRST career, I was definitely one of those people. Now that I have had my chance, including being a coach when we won the the championship in 1998, I have less desire to be out on the field. Still, if I had never had that opportunity, I'm not sure I'd still be so active in FIRST. If a team has no mentors who have the desire, and skills to be a good coach, it makes sense in every way to use a student coach. If there are adults who contribute a lot to the team and have the skills to be a good coach, IMHO, they should have that opportunity.

The bottom line is that the purpose of FIRST is to inspire students. I suspect that the students of Team 71 have been inspired as they have won their 4 Championships with Brian Beatty as coach. I could use any number of other examples, but I feel that teams using adult coaches can inspire students as well as teams with student coaches, and that is what FIRST is all about.

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We have a student coach. The mentors don't have anything to do with our drivers or operators or coaches. They stay out of it on their own accord.

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We (Team Fusion) use a Studetn Coach, are drivers are very confident in him and he is good at what he does this is his 2nd yr as the student coach, he is a senior and will be missed greatly next year.

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Greg kinda already mentioned us... but we have a student & mentor switch off. I remember discussing this in previous threads, and I think this switch makes for an amazing dynamic... they switch off for practice rounds and qualifiers... and then one of them takes the helm for finals... our student was at the helm in FLRC and GTR, while our adult coached the Buckeye Finals. The dynamic is great, they watch from the sidelines and keep eachother in check. It gives our mentor a chance to participate, but keeps our students in control, and mentors the students to become greater coaches in the future. It also helps us with more eyes focused on scouting the field.

I would recommend this dynamic to any team out there.

Go Tommy & Larry! :) woohoo!

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I'm the coach for our drive team and I'm a student. I don't think our team would ever let a mentor down there; (with all due respect to our awesome mentors) we think that we can strategize on the fly much more quickly than any of our older mentors can.

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We use a mentor who is a good communicator. Mr. Driggs won the Sacramento WFA and knows the robot and drivers very well. If your coach is not a good verbal communicator, get a new one. Or maybe have him take communications classes. :D

Re: Student Coaches
 

Our team uses a mentor coach.

Last year I was a Senior on the team and a driver so I can speak first hand as to the advantages and disadvantages to both. In the plus column: the drivers have a great relationship with the mentor this builds trust, so when the drivers see something that the coach doesn't he doesn't get all worried because he trusts the drivers as well. If ever there were an incident with a rules question or something that happened during the match, it seems that from experience, the ref's tend to take an adult more seriously when they have a problem. When it comes down to it drivers will probably tend to listen to an adult coach more than a student, this can be both good and bad.

By far I think the best coach is somebody who knows the game to the fullest, doesn't crack under pressure, can clearly convey their thoughts to the drivers without yelling, and ultimately the best coaches are people that has driving experience, somebody that knows what its like to be controlling the robot, and know exactly what to tell the drivers when they need to know it.
essentially the coach is playing the game through the drivers, using them to move the robot to where it needs to be and performing the tasks that it needs to.

This being said the drivers on our team still take part in pre-match strategy building sessions with the other drive teams from our alliances.

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Team 1138 has a student coach, which is also the President of our Robotics Club. From what I hear, we have always had student coaches from previous years too.

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My team (948) had a student coach this year, me. The last three years, our founding advisor was our mentor coach. This year he left, and I since I had been in charge of the team for the past four years, and also the head of robot design and build, I was the captain. As a general rule, leadership or driver positions on our team are decided by meritocracy. If you do more work, dedicate more of yourself to the team, and = you get the desired role.

We did not have a mentor coach this year, because, it was realized that a student could probably interface with the drivers better. Although I am heavily (probably the most) involved in the actual designing and building of the robot, I am very hands off in the driver station. I give over-arching suggestions, but all decisions are of course made by the driver. Since I (purposely) have no driver experience, there is no way I can criticize driver decisions.

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do you think that this makes you a good coach? not to criticize but i am just trying to open myself up to new coaching styles and I was wondering if you feel its better to not criticize driver decisions, seeing as how we all learn from our mistakes and what better way to learn than constructive criticism.

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Interesting concept. I felt that part of what made me valuable as a "second" coach in '98 and '00 was that I had some experience driving the robot and, thus, knew it quirks. I guess if you don't drive the robot at all, you can watch how the match is going without the distraction of thinking about what's involved in making the robot "do its thing."

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I agree, the coach needs to be someone who's calm, knows the rules and the robot and feels comfortable with the drivers. Personally I think its important for them to know the mechanical system also since when theres a problem (like when our arm wouldn't extend at LI) I knew what the problem was and what we were still able to do without that ability.

I disagree with those who say that student coaches are not taken as seriously while talking to the other coaches, most mentors in FIRST respect kids and adults alike. I do agree however that the FIRST Officials/Referees for the most part don't take students as seriously, which is unfortunate since FIRST is for the students.

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we have a student coach...

Re: Student Coaches
 

I couldn't agree more with the three most important qualifiers for being a coach!

I am a advisor coach (21 y/o, driver for 3 years) who spends little if no time with the students or robot during the build period. I usually spend a weekend of my Spring Break at a regional observing the strategies with other members of our team. During the week of Spring Break I (and my brother 19 y/o, driver for 3 years as well) am in the shop driving the robot and learning the workings of it. The following weekend is almost always our first competition in which I get to know the drivers (I have always known both of them from previous years). For me knowing the game is the most important factor; however you need a strategy that you are able to execute and make changes on the fly if your alliance partners or even yourself have a breakdown. Another important factor for both student and adult coaches, you need to have a strategy based on the other robotics abilities before meeting the other alliance members. This allows you to sell your strategy based on what the other teams are good at and from what you have observed they like to do. If your team comes in to the meeting and is the most organized and planned out it is much easier to sell your idea as opposed to someone that isn't prepared at all. For us we typically wait until we are in the "on deck" area to talk to other teams about the strategy for that match. This is due to a number of reasons primarily both the drivers and I enjoy watching other matches (good strategy). I find that by discussing what my strategy team wants the drive team to accomplish right after the previous match it allows us "down time" to watch these matches and to digest what will be happening during the next round.

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Our try-outs vary from year to year. This year the judges had made flash cards of field situations and evaluated your response time and what you told them you were going to do next. That was to test both your ability to think quickly and your strategic knowledge.
Each year, the biggest part of the try-outs is the strategic "testing". The try-out has been flash cards, running "mini-games", and sketching out your response to various situations the 3 years I have tried out.
The other major aspect of the try-outs is communication. During the year with the "mini-game", during a few of the rounds they ran they would have the driver controlling the "robot" and the prospective coach tell him what to do. They have also done role-playing of various other team's coaches and scouts for when your debating what strategy you will follow. One of the judges acted as if they were a particularly troublesome to communication with type of personality, and they observed how you reacted.

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I've never been on the field as a competitor at a FIRST event, and would like to at some point. Having aged out of driving, that leaves coaching.

Until then, I guess I get to volunteer at events, which is still really fun. :D

Wetzel

Re: Student Coaches
 

Five keys to being a good coach:

1) The confidence of the drivers so that they obey your commands. MUTUAL RESPECT is of the utmost importance.
2) The game-knowlege and intelligence to formulate strategy and handle strategy sessions with other drive teams.
3) A willingness to listen to other coaches/drivers/scouts who may know more than you do in strategy sessions.
4) The ability and self-confidence to make fast, good decisions and stick with them.
5) Good drivers, good scouts, and a good robot.

You will never see a mentor coaching team 293 if I have anything to do with it. I am the coach until finals is over. I got the job last year primarily because the drivers had confidence that I knew what I was doing & talking about. I did a lot of scouting-strategizing last year, and it was a natural step to go from strategist to coach (see #2).

Student coaches versus adult coaches have their strengths and weaknesses. Mentor-coaches almost always fit easily into the leadership role as mentors are already leaders. However, the cohesion that can develop between a student coach and drivers is much greater than that between an adult coach and drivers, because the drivers don't have to listen to a student coach; rather they choose to listen to him because they have confidence in him. Student-coaches on average tend to be a bit sharper than their adult counterparts (however I'm sure there are many many exceptions), because the student coaches are usually selected more for their ability, and mentor-coaches are chosen for their experience.

I'd like to make two points in conclusion. First, the final decision of who coaches should be up to the drivers. Second, a mentor-coach should step aside if it becomes clear that there is a student who can handle the role.

Scott Weingart

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Has anyone done an analysis of the competition success of teams with student vs. adult coaches? I realize that "winning isn't everything," but it would be interesting to have data on this. Sorry, but I'm too lazy to try to compile it.

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You'd have to do that on a match by match basis in which there is too many variables. Your data would be skewed. You'd have to actaully run the same teams over and over again with different coaches to see. :)

Anyway, I don't think you'd see a different, it all depends on what the drivers prefer.

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I am the student coach of 1604.

Having people skills and communication skills is a key to being a coach.

Treat every match like you have to win to survive. Treat them all like it will be won or lost before the clock starts ticking.

the majority of the teams I was with at UCF had student coaches, most of which were very easy to get along with in deciding things like who starts where and who starts with the tetra.

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Team 306 had a mentor coach in the early years but now-a-days we have a student coach.