I've been "behind the glass" as both a student coach and mentor coach during my time in FRC (as well as every other position during off-season events while I was a student). There's a lot I learned in both roles, and I hope I've managed to share a lot with others as both a student and mentor coach. I've bested 1114 every time I've faced them (and only once been aided by a broken Simbots tread
), and I've also been humbled by a #8 alliance in the quarter-finals. There's a lot that goes on in coaching, and it really is up to each and every team to determine what best suits them.
For 116, we always had student coaches. That's the decision the team arrived at long before I was a member, and how it has continued to this day. I was the lead drive coach there for two years, with the same driver, operator, and human player both times. We developed chemistry together, and that time together was a large part of how we functioned as a "unit." Selections of every position were accomplished via try-outs judged by the mentors.
1712 viewed the role of the drive team very differently, especially when I first joined. There were no try-outs for drive positions, and they were almost more of a reward for particularly dedicated (and qualified) students. The coaching position was filled by a college mentor who was a former driver, and I became the back-up coach for him. We ran two drive crews, each of us coaching one of them.
Over the years the situation changed. Some years we ran one drive crew, others we ran two. In 2009, we used a student as drive coach (but I stayed involved in pre-match strategy planning). The general factor that remained the same was a pretty high drive crew turnover after 2008. It was relatively rare to keep more than one member of the previous years' crew on for the next year, mostly due to graduation. We rotated a lot of people thru those positions. Particularly during off-season events, where we lacked many key students and driving is almost an "open" position where lots of students get a chance.
As a result, the coach became a position of stability. Having a mentor coach to step in year after year to help train, educate, and guide new drivers is something invaluable to us. Without a practice robot (and usually way too little time to train our drivers), I help communicate many of the tricks I've picked up over the years to our new drivers.
I feel that the drive team owes a responsibility to the rest of the team and our alliance partners to get the most out of our robot in any given match. For Dawgma, having a seasoned, experience coach is a critical part of accomplishing that. It may not be so for all teams, as it certainly wasn't for my high school team. But given the reality of our situation, it's what works for us.
Is 1712's sytem the best system? Absolutely not. But it was originally the result of the team's philosophies (which paid dividends in many areas) and later a team in transition as a whole. Hopefully we can introduce more stability (both to the drive team and overall) in the coming years as we continue to find our way forward.