Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

At the Cascade Regional, I was told that at least one drive team, maybe two, had adult coaches/mentors on them in the analyst position. Is this legal?

Legal or not, I think it's bad for a few reasons:

1. It imparts to the students that they don't have the ability to be analysts.
2. It deprives some student of a position on the drive team.
3. If, in fact, coaches/mentors have better judgement than students, it gives an unfair advantage to a team that has an adult on the drive team when other teams don't.
4. It just seems contrary to the FIRST principal that this is a competition of students, by students and for students.

And it begs the question, if an alliance won with a coach/mentor on thier drive team, wouldn't their win have a asterisk in the record books?

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

You should have been able to look this up yourself... From Section 1, Page 9:

So we see that the ANALYST must be a pre-college student. The other alliance, if they knew the rules should have pointed this out to the referees.

That is assuming, of course, that this was factual and not hearsay...

In my 17 years of doing FIRST, I have never seen this written down or stated by anyone with FIRST. Stating this as a FIRST principal would appear to be in error...

You may want to concentrate more on facts in the future...

JMHO,

Mike

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

The analyst should not be confused with the Human player that is functioning as a 4th analyst. In some cases there just isn't a 4th student up to the task or just a 4th student period. One of the teams on Olympic started 3 seasons ago with 3 students and 1 mentor so everyone was on the drive team. Last year they were at that same level. This year they managed to expand their program to 5 students!!! They also managed to be 5th seed!!!

If the analyst we are talking about is the 3rd human player, ie not the feeder then yes the are supposed to be a pre-college age students. However if we are talking about the regular long standing analyst position then a college age student mentor or adult mentor is perfectly legal.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

1) It is strictly illegal for the Analyst (or Feeder, or Drivers) to be an adult. I'm not sure of the penalty, but I would presume some form of practice-day warning, followed by various cards if continued (under Tournament rules--egregious behavior).
2) The Coach (Mr V, this is the proper term still) may be either an adult or a student. Team's choice. FIRST has specifically declined to make that decision. (These guys are easy to separate from the other drive team members--they have a unique button. IIRC, it's got a colored dot on it.)

If you think that an Analyst (NOT a Coach) is a post-high school adult, bring it up to the refs or other event officials. They'll do their checks or whatever they need to, and they'll come up with the answer of "they're legal" or "they're getting legal"--they just might not tell you what that answer is.

Regarding your point 4: Dave Lavery (who is a member of the FIRST Advisory Board, to my understanding) has made the point at numerous Kickoff events and posts on Chief Delphi: Teams that are competing without mentors are missing the point of FIRST. The idea is that students work with mentors to design and build these complicated machines that we call robots. Not mentors work without students. Not students work without mentors. Students draw inspiration from working with mentors. How they work together is left to the teams to determine individually.

Mentors+students design, build, test, and program the robot in not enough time, with not enough budget, and possibly while driving each other slightly crazy. The mentor-student combination is quite possibly one of the most effective out there--witness the powerhouse teams, most if not all of whom use that model to great effect on and off the competition field.

To answer your other points:
1) Not valid, as Analysts are a student-only position. If you're thinking of the Coach, I'll get there in a minute.
2) Not necessarily. Maybe the rest of the students didn't want the job. Maybe the team cycles drive teams, with an A and a B team, allowing more students on a drive team. Maybe none of the students wanted the tremendous pressure (YOU strategize on the fly for 2:00 and communicate the strategy to your drivers, your partner's coaches, and the Analyst for the alliance!). There are a variety of reasons on both sides.
3) Does it now. You're assuming that mentors have better judgment. It would probably be more accurate to say more experience, but we'll let that slide. That isn't always the case. Also, it's not uncommon for a student coach to beat a mentor coach. It's all in the strategy and the execution. Remember that pressure I mentioned earlier? Pressure can really break someone.

On to your final question: Because FIRST specifically allows mentors to coach as the Coach, no, there are no asterisks for wins that have a mentor in the Coach position on the drive team. There are questionable wins, yes... but they're not from the makeup of the drive team. They tend to be from somebody on the field crew making a large blunder (like calling something not scored when the rules said it should be, and then replaying the match 15 minutes later instead of fixing the score when it was brought to their attention).

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I've had this discussion with other coaches, and I have been in the stands and for just a few matches on the floor.

While FIRST doesn't have any ruling against or supporting their being adults on the floor (it is allowed of course), I have heard this two ways:

1) The adult mentor on the floor has more experience with how these games go. Based on that experience they are putting their team in a position to be successful on the field. They have more years experience handling a pressure situation, particularly if they do this each year. They also may hold more sway in convincing alliance partners of their strategy decisions than a student may.

2) The opportunity to lead and take leadership in a pressure situation is an experience students should have. Where else will they learn to drive the ship if no one puts them at the helm?

I almost went the #1 direction this year. In the past I have largely left the field operations to students. #2 won out because I've had years of competitive sports and sports coaching experiences to draw on. I will be happier with the results if I worked with those student leaders on how to lead others than if I took control away and asked them to watch how I do it. In coaching my work is before the match. During the match the work I put in in advance will reveal itself in how my students handle situations. If there are mistakes, I talk with those students after to correct them for the future.

My 2 cents.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Couldn't the legal mentor/coach step back and let his teams analyst step forward and effectively coach the drive team allowing the mentor/coach to move between teams in the drive team area to effectively act as the analyst?

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Salvatore,

I have heard the statement #1 in your post as really the main argument for an adult coach for many years. In my point of view, that is not even remotely the reason we do it. We can be successful with student or mentor drive coaches. Our reason is simple: Our team does everything jointly: design, prototype, build, test, marketing, PR, chairman's, etc. so why not the on the field action? Inspiration comes from witnessing greatness. On our team that inspiration is bi-directional. Every year I am amazed at how advanced our students are at various things and they always seem to teach me a thing or two. We try to work hand in hand with the students and that does not stop at the field border. As a matter of fact, my scouting captain taught me a good lesson at the Detroit District this past weekend, but that story is for another time.

Please note that I am not saying our way is better than your way, but it is our way and is perfectly legal with the rules.

Paul

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

In hypothetical terms, there is nothing illegal about this.

FIRST is not by the students for the students. Maybe thats how your team is run, but that's not what the program is about. FIRST's goal is to connect students with Industry Professionals with the hope that those professionals will inspire their students to pursue the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Some of the higher ups in FIRST have often said that if you're not working with Mentors from the Industry you're missing out.

It bothers me that you consider an Adult Coach and Unfair advantage - because it's not. EVERY team is allowed to chose either an Adult or a Student to be the Coach, no one is telling you that you must use either one. If you truly feel that an Adult Coach is so Advantageous, then maybe you need to reassess your priorities and see if you can fit an Adult Coach into your team.

Also, if you were to go back through the years and asterisk every team that won with an Adult mentor, then you'd probably Asterisk more than 2/3rds of the Regional and Championship winners in history.

(I do apologize if my tone is a bit harsh, I get a little offended by people who claim that Adult Coaches are a bad thing...)

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I'd be interested to know the resources that you are using to provide you with these ideas. What type of training are you receiving that is guiding you into understanding that FRC is 'of students, by students, and for students'? Why would an asterisk be needed in the record books? If you respond, please provide adequate resources to support your statements.

In the FIRST website, there is a page that you might be interested in reading before you respond. There are several links on that page that you might check into as well as spending some time browsing the FRC sections of the FIRST website. There are also many threads here in Chief Delphi that discuss roles of mentors and students on the teams, including drive teams, if you care to do a search. Basically, it comes down to how you want to shape your team and what goals your team will set and strive for. It doesn't have anything to do with judging other teams or having preconceived notions regarding what FRC is. Take some time to think about the word, partnerships, when discussing the roles of students and adult mentors/coaches on teams. It will deepen your understanding of what FRC is really about.

Jane

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I think that what BGiraud states above is within the rules, although it probably doesn't match the GDC's intent. (Then again, our team has a history of not correctly discerning the intent of various rules, so it's fully within the intent of the GDC.)

Since before ship date, we have talked about possibly doing the above, although we haven't yet done so at a tournament. I'm curious as to whether or not other teams have utilized this approach.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I think the GDC's intent was what the heck do we do with the extra human player :)

The rules are basically allowing 4 sets of eyes and 4 brains that are not allowed to touch the robot controls to help the drive teams this year. How an alliance chooses to use those resources are up to them.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

There is nothing that limits what a coach or analyst can do on any team or alliance (except that a coach can't touch the controls). During the match there's quite a bit of overlap between coaching and analyzing. There's nothing that precludes one team's coach from coaching / giving strategy to another team on their alliance (nothing new this year - it's always been that way). Basically you now have 4 student/mentor coaches/strategizers per alliance, of which at least one must be a student.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Having a coach/mentor on any team is an advantage but students still need the advice and help from another wheter it be a different team, coach, student etc.,

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

This discussion, as many know, has been brought up many times. There are many other threads that deal with the adult vs student coach scenario. Such as the link posted below to another thread on this topic.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=67426

But the original question that was brought up was about an adult analyst which is illegal per the rules. Now the adult maybe had the coaches badge but let their student analyst take over for a match or two so that they could be there to observe and instruct while also remaining legal. Team SparX did this in 2007 when I moved to Human player one match while my brother Cory (who was driver for 3 years) wore the coaches badge and helped our new driver so that he could learn from a college student with experience at the position. Just a thought.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

We have a drive team... that consists of a driver an operator a coach and a human player.
The only position that is allowed to be an adult is the coach position.

Depending on what the alliance determines, our human player may be throwing tubes this year, or being the "analyst"

On our team I act as the Coach... I am a mentor.
This is what brings us the most success and allows me to direct our actions if necessary. It also allows me to remind our team members to act in gracious ways and to assist other teams (whether they are in OUR alliance or the OPPOSING alliance) Normally I don't have to say anything... except act as an extra pair of eyes and look at the greater strategy.

I may wander across the entire back of the driving area and help other teams or adjust strategy on the fly....

This works for our team... it works for many teams. I learned from some of the very best, back in the Midwest. I got to see teams like 111, 71, 217, 45 and many others in action. I got to coach with them behind the glass. I saw many really great things happening.... I adopted this method..

You can certainly decide what your team wants to do but please don't put your value judgements on other teams.

Our team has seen several teams "stretch" the rules on the field... we discuss this... we learn from our actions...we simply won't do that.

We play by the rules and we act in as gracious and professional manner as we can.

My heart is still moved when my drive team mates are the first across the field to congratulate the team that just beat us ...

Sometimes mentors lead in order to provide the example for their team members.... sometimes we get to watch the students lead....

It is interesting to see just how much teams are like their mentors.... As mentors we have a great duty.... like it or not... we are role models... our teams will emulate us...good or bad....

This is a big lesson to learn

We all have lessons to learn...
students AND mentors...

Good luck on the field!!

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

1. Our student "analyst" didn't feel left out, he was our head strategist. Our Drive Coach never gets involved with the actual strategy itself, we have a student to delegate that with other teams than he tells the drive crew what's going on. He used the opportunity to help alert the other alliances like "minibot down!" and was able to be in a calm place to study the teams on the opposing alliance (scouting never ends at regional - it's year round for those who really know what they're doing). The adult drive coach on our team acts as the overall eyes for our drivers and pays attention to the clock (it's no different than coaching little league or soccer). Also we have a very close relationship between mentors and students on the team and having their drive coach there to console them right there when the Jag exploded during Lone Star Finals was nice. I even asked them and said that we wouldn't do it if they felt something was being taken away from them and they said it didn't, it helped them.

2. He didn't feel deprived or any other student on our team. Students and Mentors work together, it's all student designed and built but it's under mentor guidance so the student can learn on to design with realistic understanding with realistic goals in the short time and small budget we're given.

3,4. FIRST isn't a competition of by students for students (I believe it was by Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers :p ). It's about For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology and their mission statement. Teams will never be successful if they don't have mentors to help guide them and drive them. It should never be one or the other, it needs to be a beautiful synchronization of both worlds motivating each other and even though one is teaching the other more, I learn from my students and fall more in love with the team every day. Thus great teams like 16, Bomb Squad with the Novaks come out. If FIRST was about doing the competition without the mentors than they wouldn't have been working so hard to make sure mentors feel appreciated at the competitions and giving every mentor a certificate and pin to say thank you.

I will say this, not every team understands how to decide how much mentor involvement there should be but the teams that do understand that FIRST needs mentors and figures out that synchronization between the students and the mentors, the team comes out amazing. Look at the Hall of Fame teams, they include their mentors as part of the team, not outsiders.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

To me, as a student, it doesn't really matter how old the RoboCoach is. My only concern is that they don't get ape-crazy when the game starts.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

While having an adult in the analyst position is clearly illegal, having an adult mentor in the coaching position is not only legal, but I also recommend it.

Having been in both roles before, I can tell you that there is a ton of stress on a student in the driver/operator position. As a driver, you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Every move you make is set up to be criticized by your peers. As a student, I always looked to my coach (or coaches as they allowed two back when I was in high school) to be the voice of reason. I dont know that I could have looked to a fellow student in the same way if he/she was a coach.

A good coach knows how to let cooler heads prevail at the proper moments. A good coach will protect his/her students from the stresses of angry team members. A good coach will protect his/her students from the stresses of other angry drive coaches. Fact is, I have seen coaching styles from other teams that I would choose not to subject a student coach to, because maturity in a situation like that might cause an issue.

I also feel that sometimes the mentors should be allowed to have their fun. While this competition is for the students, sometimes you do have to throw the mentors a bone. To some mentors, coaching is an excellent reward for a great effort they put in over the season. After all...most mentors are just big kids too.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

There was a RoboCoach position only in 2008 (FIRST Overdrive), and like every human player position it had to be filled by a pre-college student.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I thought about this issue a lot when the previous version of this thread was busy: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=91144

This year I switched from student drive coaches to a mentor drive coach (me). I didn't realize how hard this job was until I tried it for an entire competition. My plan for future years is to give this job to a student in years when there is somebody that is committed enough and capable enough to do a good job of it.

For a student to do a great job as a drive team coach, it seems like a bunch of things need to come together. The student should be very assertive, quick thinking, very knowledgeable about the current game, have some knowledge of general wisdom from past games, be very good at communicating with the other teams, have the respect of the drivers, good at communicating with scouts on our team, able to concentrate on the rest of the field instead of being distracted by our robot. The list goes on... able to choose wisely which information to yell out, able to know when they should try to influence the alliance partners in a tactful way, able to keep their cool when other people are over-excited or frustrated, good at remembering to offer encouragement to teammates and other competitors, able to recognize new strategic options when novel situations emerge....

Basically, I think that the drive coach has a really tough job. Expecting a student to do all of that is a lot to ask. I hope to find the right student for the job some years, because they are out there.

I also think the coach has a significant impact on the competitive success of the team. And that is relevant, despite the fact that the competition isn't the main point of FIRST. Success in the competitions makes it easier to motivate the students. It's also a lot easier to take a defeat when we think we did the best we possibly could. And it doesn't feel that way if we were in the stands asking ourselves, "Why are they wasting time over on that side of the field? Why don't they go to the other side and do xyz?"

It does bother me to take up one of the precious positions on the field instead of letting an additional student go out there. It is a really intense experience that I wish I could give to all of the team members. For that matter, I have previously rotated drivers / human players / coaches to get more students out there. But that does make us less competitive, so it is a tricky choice. I know that if we manage to bring home a regional trophy (something that hasn't happened since I became the coach), it would be really exciting for the whole team, not just the drive team. There is a balance between the value of being competitive, which is shared by the entired team, and the value of putting one additional student on the field, which is a significant benefit for one person.

I don't have an opinion on the right way to do this. I'm just sharing a few thoughts since this is an issue I have been considering carefully.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I've got an honest question related to point 4 that's been plaguing me for a while now. In regard to just putting students on the drive team*, how inspired do students get by rotating through and/or taking a position they're really not ready for? I'm honestly curious, as I spent 3 years as a driver but the impact was definitively long-term. It was also heavily based on adult coaching (see Paul and Andy's posts), but anyway.

How do you spot students that need 'just being on the field' or 'just rotating through' inspiration? (This seems like a skill I should develop if they exist) What does it actually do for them afterward? Any cool stories?

*I am certainly not saying that's the sole point of student coaches--I served as one (and continue as a mentor)--but if the point is simply "depriving some student of a position", I'd like to address the trade-off between getting more students on the field and impacting a long-term drive team.


Comment on point #1: Honestly, if I had a student who was capable of being a good coach but team philosophy prevented us from using them, they'd by definition be mature enough to understand why. Primary reason being because the actual coach's name is Raul, Brian, Derek, Paul, Andy, John...

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Mr. V,

With all due respect, the word ANALYST has never before appeared in any FRC rules manual nor Team Update until this year (I have PDFs going back to 1998 inclusive).

The word ANALYST is capitalized as it has an exact definition for the 2011 rules.

I believe that you are the one confusing ANALYST and COACH.

There is no "regular long standing position" for an ANALYST in FRC.

The ANALYST must be a pre-college student team member.

Regards,

Mike

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

wevets, did we change your thinking about this topic at all?

WE all have to assume that the GDC is basically intelligent enough to write rules that reflect their intent. Being imperfect (as we all are) they provide the Q&A forum to clarify intent. If the GDC did NOT state that the COACH must remain next to the DRIVERs and that the ANALYST cannot stand by and speak with the DRIVERs, then we can say that the GDC did not intend to prohibit that action.
Some adults strongly believe that ANY adult is de-facto depriving a student of a position. I just as strongly differ with this belief: An adult coach, if selected by the team, can offer the chance for the entire team to have a winning competition, or (by not coaching) deprive the entire team of the same. This deprivation includes inspiration., since a regional win can be arguably more inspiring than 37th place and no matches after qualification rounds.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Totally understand where you are coming from and can see both sides. When my drive team lacks direction, I make sure a mentor is down there (myself or other) when the kids have a good handle on it, I leave it to them. I've also resolved inter-team issues where my kids were insisting on something that didn't make good tactical sense (egos instead of strategy...it happens). In the end I defer to Paul and Bob as far as a proven record of success and some solid teams. (Congrats Mr. Steele...you and your team set a pretty high bar that I'd like to reach as our program matures).

Each team is going to have their own approach...as long as it's legal, and it's for the good of the team...it's the right decision.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Since I was just discussing the relation to high school athletics in another thread, I'll use it again. In high school sports, who is typically the coach of a team? And if FIRST wants to model itself as a sports program for smart people, why would it not want to have a similar competitive feel?

While there are certainly instances of students helping to coach sports teams, they usually serve as an assistant, and it is not the norm. Similarly while there are students who can make good coaches for a drive team, this (in my opinion) is not the norm. Adult drive coaches can help to keep a drive team calm, especially for rookie drivers, and they can often give valuable experience to a team on what to do in situations.

I was on the drive team for 3 years as a student in FIRST, and I actually started as a coach before acting as a driver for the next 2 years. While I did well as a coach and enjoyed the position I can tell you that it was somewhat bizarre telling my peers what they did right and wrong in a match (even more so since I was 2 years younger than the drivers), and you tend to receive a little more criticism from other team members since you are a student yourself. There's also the unique challenge of communicating with other teams, especially those with adult coaches, because age is too often used as a way of brushing off your ideas. In 2005 when I was coach our team was ranked in the top 5 and had the second highest scoring robot at the AZ regional, yet I still encountered instances where an adult coach would not work with our strategy and simply tried to tell our team what to do. Student coaches can be successful, but they face some challenges that an adult in the position either won't have to contend with or is better equipped to handle.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Essay time.

Our mentor helps us with game strategy in meetings before the tournament, and helps us plan out what is going on, but for a couple of reasons does not want to be on the drive crew: he recognizes his tendency to focus too much on a single robot rather than on the whole game and he would rather watch from the stands that be down on the field. He feels that, in terms of strategy, it is his job to teach us how to play the game, not to do it himself.

This does not mean that we don't get his advice on how we're doing in matches. We always go up to him to ask what he thinks we did right and wrong... it just means that ultimately the decisions on the field are those made by us.

We feel that having student drive coaches increases the feeling of camaraderie between the drive crew and between different teams. Although I am two years younger than our team's driver, we respect each other and get along really well--and the age gap between us is certainly less than it would be between a student and a mentor! Students often find mentors imposing and don't question their advice, which we find can be detrimental to the team.

For some teams, though, qualified student coaches can be very hard to find. If you have difficulty finding a student to coach, I would recommend having one volunteer as a commentator at local VEX or FTC events. Coaches need to A) not get tunnel vision, which is fixed by having to keep running commentary on four robots at once, and B) be able to communicate, which is helped by being an announcer. Field crew experience from VEX or FTC is also really helpful for developing strategies and learning how to work with alliance partners. Students can be great coaches given proper training and opportunity.

Great coaches can be either students or mentors... but either students or mentors can be bad coaches, too. Really, it depends on what you feel is best for your drive crew. I don't disrespect teams with adult coaches; I just acknowledge that they don't do things the way we do. I also find the notion that one is inherently better than the other quite hard to believe.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

As a rookie team mentor (teacher) it was hard not to go ape-crazy when the driver kept getting close to the other alliance's scoring zone.

As a general observation, in the LA regional I saw many teams (some powerhouse) with an adult coach in the driver area. Sometimes hanging over the kids' shoulders even. I know my kids felt a little less stressed knowing I was there to give them direction when they got mixed up, and remind them of the strategy they worked on with the alliance.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I disagree with those who say it is "unfair" to have an adult coach or that such victories are tainted - FIRST makes this rule with full knowledge that different teams will take different approaches. If you're going to put an asterisk on victories with adult drive coaches, you may as well do the same for teams with large budgets or where adults build much of the robot. FIRST allows all of this, because there is no "one-size-fits-all" on how to structure a team. However, I agree with those who say an adult coach deprives a student of an amazing role and growth opportunity.

Mentors teach the students to solder, drill, tap, program, and design. Why can't mentors teach students to coach the drive team? We mentors set a higher standard for our mentoring when we seek to teach the students so thoroughly that they perform well enough to take jobs away from mentors. To me, saying an adult should be drive coach means the mentors are giving up on training a student to do the job.

It's good when a mentor helps coach the drive team to victory. As you point out, Don, it's less good if a poor student coach drags down team performance, and the overall team feeling with it. The best situation of all is when a mentor-trained student coach leads the team to great success. A team that achieves competition success in this way has accomplished more for its students than a team with an adult drive coach. It goes beyond a better FIRST experience for that student drive coach. It produces even higher inspiration for all - it gives every student on the team another role to strive for, another "maybe that can be me someday."

Tournament success is all the more sweet if you achieve it with greater student involvement - at the lathe, in the pits, in the drive team box. Mentors sell themselves short if they don't strive for that.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Don et al,

Yes, you have changed my thinking on this, but not much. I see where you're coming from and I acknowledge that others will see this differently than I do. Of course I can't argue with including an adult on the drive team when the whole team is 3 kids and an adult as was cited by Mr V in this thread. But that's the degenerate case and not common.

And it's quite clear that the rules allow for adult coaches on the drive team.

But I'll jump back to the sports analogy introduced by Donut: The coach may not be the quarterback even though the coach may call the plays from the side. The quarterback tells the team what the play is even though he may be green and scared. The coach will do his best to teach the quarterback before the game, but he won't go out on the field. Coaching is limited to what goes on between actual plays. The play is owned by the team.

I've read his post above this one a couple of times and I completely agree with PiKman. His "best situation" is, I think, truly best.

But I want to cite an experience I had with the senior coach of our team. I had been getting, shall we say, too involved with how we were programming autonomous. The coach and I discussed my behavior and he observed: "You are not willing to let the kids fail. I am." He was right. When the kids fully own the decisions, they fully own the victory. When the adults make many of the decisions and the team wins, the kids are on the winning team, but they don't fully own the victory. There's a difference. There's a lot of judgement here - kids can't be allowed to make harmful, dangerous or immoral decisions and they often need to be guided to pursue a decision to full closure or be made aware of alternatives. Providing and training judgement is one of our primary coaching responsibilities.

On the flip side, when the kids don't win, the common case, they should own that, too. Handling that with gracious professionalism, getting up and trying again, maybe realizing that they have a few things yet to learn and that their mentors are there to help them but not do it for them, is a very valuable experience. Helping the kids through this is a coaching job.

I've had this discussion with a few of our senior students. They don't like competing against adults on other teams. They think its unfair when they see adults on other drive teams and when, for instance, they see adults rushing in, even pushing students out of the way, to repair a robot damaged in competition.

I believe that we mentors should provide guidance and we should create an environment where the kids can learn to provide the leadership and ownership of the team and its results. They're capable if we let them.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

This is an interesting thread. As a FIRST newbie, I was surprised when I learned that it was legal to have a mentor in the coach position during competition. I was even more surprised when I started going to competitions and saw the number of teams that take advantage of this rule and the level to which some mentors get involved in the execution of the actual game. I was also surprised to read about the aggressive role that Amir Abo-Shaeer takes as described in The New Cool. My first year in FIRST and FRC has been full of surprises, but frankly, this is one of the less pleasant ones. I am against having adults in the coach position. This discussion so far has been excellent and has presented compelling arguments on both sides of the issue. I do not have much new insight to add, but I will try.

The arguments for having adults on the field that I am most sympathetic to are the ones about being there to help the students handle the stress, to protect the drivers from the ire of their fellow students, to intervene when competitive impulses start to erode sportsmanship. These are noble instincts, however I think a mentor can manage these issues without actually being in the coach position. I agree that it would be easier to manage them from on the field, but "easier for the mentor" does not necessarily equate to "better for the team".

The arguments for having adults on the field that I am least sympathetic to are the ones about making the team more successful and more competitive on the field. One of my guiding principles in making mentoring decisions is this: the drive to win should never come at the expense of taking opportunities for growth away from the students on the team. Of course having an experienced adult running the show during the match will improve the odds of winning, but it also deprives a student of a unique experience to compete and make snap decisions in a high pressure situation with thousands of people watching. For me, it is an easy call to make. Maybe this means that my team will never grow into a perennial winner, time will tell, but I can live with that. There are other ways to define success.

Finally, I think that some of the responders were a bit rough on the original poster and the assertion that having adults on the field goes against the principles of FIRST. It is true that there is nothing explicitly written in the canon to support this opinion, but it is still a reasonable opinion to hold. Everyone seems to agree that FIRST is about training and inspiring the technical leaders of tomorrow, it is not much of a stretch to conclude that putting a mentor into _the_ leadership position during match play is antithetical to this higher level objective. The best way to create leaders is to give them opportunities to lead.

-George

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I do not agree.

The mission of FIRST is "to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders" -- the word "training" does not appear. While the mission statement includes the phrases "build skills" and "foster life capabilities", I believe those are not what FIRST is "about". Depending on the team, they can be a tool for accomplishing the mission, but they are often a secondary effect of how the programs are run.

A great way to create effective leaders is to give them examples of effective leadership. You don't get good machinists just by giving people opportunities to use a mill; you get good machinists by having them watch and work with good machinists. If you have a good adult leader acting as the drive coach, you can inspire very good leadership from the students.

If you don't have an inspirational role model available, then there's probably no loss in having a student learn "on the job". But for those teams fortunate enough to have high-quality mentors, I don't see a reason not to take advantage of them.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

This is true. But, on the other hand, using a student as field coach deprives the other 3 students on the drive team another opportunity to learn and get inspired by working alongside an adult mentor.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

OK, that is fair, but I think my point is valid even if you remove the word "training" from it.

I agree with this 100%, and did not mean my original comment to exclude the need to provide examples of effective leadership. But the point I would like to make is that, throughout the year, there are thousands of opportunities for mentors to demonstrate leadership. I do not see the need to add one more at the expense of taking a unique and valuable experience from a student.

-George

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

FIRST is about inspiring students for "tomorrow", yet it's an unfair assertion to imply that FIRST isn't about inspiring the adults that can bring about change "today".

My overall take on coaching:
Mentors put so much work into organizing, fund raising, mentoring, and such -- why leave them out of the fun of competition altogether? I get no internal satisfaction from the cliche "we're all winners" when I know that if I weren't on the sidelines I would have played a strategy would have worked to win us a particular match rather than lose it. The core model of FIRST is a competition; while overarching message isn't ever lost on me, for 2 minutes at a time it's nice to be able to play to that model (with integrity of course).

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

Hmm, I'm not sure I see your point. I did not assert, nor did I intend to imply, anything about the role of FIRST in inspiring mentors. In my experience, FIRST inspires everyone involved, that is part of what is so great about it. But what does inspiring mentors have to do with with the current conversation? Maybe some mentors are more inspired and put more energy into the team because of the pay-off of playing in the game? I guess I could buy that, I'm just not sure what you're saying. Could you please clarify?

-George

Ah -- I see that you amended your original response while I was drafting this post. That clarifies things, thanks. I won't try to disagree with you. But I would like to provide this perspective: it can be extremely rewarding to hand over the reins and guide someone as they grow into a role, even when you know you could do a better job in that role yourself. I would encourage you to consider that as a source of future inspiration instead of the more direct inspiration of winning the game.

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

So I have a story to tell. I'm not claiming it should change the minds of the rather-not-have-adults-coaching thinkers (is that an appropriate hyphenation?), but it might be valuable insight. I'll preface it by saying that there are some great student coaches out there. However, they're rare, rarer than adults, and I think there's a reason for that. As always though, YMMV:

I was a student driver with an adult coach for 3 years. I valued it for a lot of reasons, but one of the more important was that I got to work alongside an adult in a high-pressure situation. He didn't always take it well (neither did we), but I learned a lot--no, a lot--from it, as did my fellow drivers. I sincerely believe I couldn't have learned that anywhere else. At the very least, I know we didn't have student that could have taught us that.

After 2 years, I started coaching some off-seasons myself. I'd done a few my first post-season, but I wasn't very useful. So I learned, and I practiced, and I beat myself up for stupid stuff, and I observed my own coach. I managed to really coach some senior year, alright according to my drivers. I firmly believe there is no way I could have gotten to that level in that time--as a coach or as a person--without an adult coach with me behind the glass.

This isn't to say that alumni must make the best coaches, or that this process is optimal. Rather, my point is that a very important aspect of driver (and personal) growth and coach training for me was actually being coached by an adult. This is primarily because I think it takes quite a while to make most really learn from-able drive coaches. I say that based on 5 years behind the glass, but feel free to object.

So if I can pick a coach that can teach drivers something about handling the irreplaceable experience in the box, or help them grow in any way (and there are a lot), or help train a new coach...well, that sounds good to me, even if they are an adult.

TL;DR: There are some things you just can't inspire and/or teach from the other side of the glass. Many of these things can only be taught by adults. (There may be a few very rare students, but not to the point that every team would be expected to have them.)

Re: Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team
 

I would just like to point out that Amir has created the most innovative FRC team structure I have ever seen; It truly is a blueprint of what effective FRC teams should be at the educational and institutional level. He routinely inspires a consistant and large group of students; His methods work.

One could argue that the fact that Amir, and the entire team for that matter, is so intense gets the students and team more excited, and more likely to learn how to do xyz to make component abc 2% better.

For students that are only on the team a single year, they do amazing things. I wouldn't argue with his methods one bit.