Thread: Elitist Teams
View Single Post
  #11   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 25-03-2012, 11:41
mathking's Avatar
mathking mathking is offline
Coach/Faculty Advisor
AKA: Greg King
FRC #1014 (Dublin Robotics aka "Bad Robots")
Team Role: Teacher
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Rookie Year: 1999
Location: Columbus, OH
Posts: 634
mathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond reputemathking has a reputation beyond repute
Re: Elitist Teams

Incidents like the one you describe Joel are one of the things that irritates me about FIRST competitions. (That said, incidents like that irritate me at work, they irritate me as a track coach, the irritate me when my kids are in activities. It is not unique to FIRST.) These types of incidents are one reason we have almost always had a mentor as coach instead of a student. Our students will not behave like you described, at least not more than once and not without an apology.

This is not to say that mentors don't exhibit this type of behavior. I agree with moogboy that most of the time I have experienced this type of behavior in FIRST it has been from mentors. But a respected mentor can tell a student to stop bad behavior and it will stop. This isn't always true with student coaches. In the last 9 years we have played many matches, and had only four different coaches. Our current coach is in his 4th season and has coached every match but one (I coached that one so he could watch from up high) in that time. He is good at the technical aspects of coaching, but his best attribute is his amazing ability to work with anyone.

As for the elite teams knowing what they are doing, I have found that this type of behavior often occurs when a great robot masks on the field strategy faults. But that is irrelevant. If a team needs you to change strategy, they should politely say "Hey, can you move over a little so we can pick up those balls? Thanks." It is not only more polite but more effective and leads to better cooperation and teamwork.

As a sports team coach as well as a robotics coach, I think that the biggest mistake people make in evaluating alliance partners is over-focusing on how well the robot works and not focusing enough on how well the team interacts with its teammates. We had a year when we were allied with 48, at their first regional of the year and they were without a fully functional robot. But they played the game so well, and complimented our strengths and weaknesses so well, that we won a match against the two best robots that we had no business winning. Their coach that year was calmly walking between all three teams suggesting actions that worked really well. As a coach, it was probably my most thrilling game ever. That feeling of everyone being on the same page, everything clicking. We absolutely would have picked them as alliance partners, but for the fact that one of those two top teams picked them first.

I think it is worthwhile to approach a team mentor after an incident like that and calmly, politely explain how their team's actions made your team feel. One year, after much reflection, I told another team's lead mentor that we did not pick them for an alliance partner because of the behavior of one of their mentors, who was their drive team coach. We respected the team, and I didn't want them thinking it was something we had against them. But this mentor was their coach and made our drive team very unhappy when we were paired with them during qualification. Enough that they decided they would rather play with someone else even if it meant decreasing our chance of victory. The head mentor thanked me for coming and talking to them.
__________________
Thank you Bad Robots for giving me the chance to coach this team.
Rookie All-Star Award: 2003 Buckeye
Engineering Inspiration Award: 2004 Pittsburgh, 2014 Crossroads
Chairman's Award: 2005 Pittsburgh, 2009 Buckeye, 2012 Queen City
Team Spirit Award: 2007 Buckeye, 2015 Queen City
Woodie Flowers Award: 2009 Buckeye
Dean's List Finalists: Phil Aufdencamp (2010), Lindsey Fox (2011), Kyle Torrico (2011), Alix Bernier (2013), Deepthi Thumuluri (2015)
Gracious Professionalism Award: 2013 Buckeye
Innovation in Controls Award: 2015 Pittsburgh
Event Finalists: 2012 CORI, 2016 Buckeye