Quote:
Originally Posted by DonRotolo
wevets
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.
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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.