[Mark Sheridan]

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.