[popnbrown]

This was actually a pretty interesting issue for my rookie team this year. At our regional event, I would stand with my team as they were in queue and would listen in on the strategy talk but we had a student as our coach. He really took into strategy and for the rest of the event was always out of the pits talking to teams about strategy.

I would always ask him about our strategy, why it was that way, whether it works for us, etc, and I think that helped him really understand how to play the game, and to also pick out who should be doing what. I didn't go onto the field during the regional, and from what I could tell it seemed like there was minimal talking between him and our driver because our driver yelled back at him and so he decided it was best to not talk again (I found out post regional).

It also seemed like many other Coaches, adults and students were intimidating our driver and coach (they're both 7th graders). It also seemed like many adult coaches would disregard our student coach, and either talk directly to me while in queue or talk straight to our driver. It was pretty upsetting to our student coach, as he wanted to be involved but others didn't let him be.

At World Championships, I started to accompany them as the "Coach" but our student coach did strategy and was more involved with the driver. After I noticed there was 0 communication between him and our driver, I warned them both that this was no way for a drive team to act, and our driver needs to listen and our coach needs to talk. When he did talk, I realized why there was tension our coach wasn't focused on our strategy or what we were doing or our human player and rather his own agenda. Ex - he told our driver to go defend 254 (he's obsessed with dem Pofs), when we had the ball and were trying to drop it.

My experience being a coach, you can't take anything personal out on the field, your alliance partners will yell at you, everyone gets their blood pressure pumped but as soon as you leave the field or the match is over, everyone's back to their regular selves. My team members being so young, I don't think they saw that there was a different mask put on when you got on the field. Getting on the field, helped as coaches would yell at me rather than at our driver or student coach.

In general, I would agree with it being a student coach, however being on the field allowed me to encourage the students and directly be involved with this part of the process. It tremendously added to my perspective of what was happening and allowed me to give better feedback and mentor the entire drive team.

It's a tough situation, because I want the students to be the ones who not only come up with strategies but develop the skills to react real-time and change the strategy if need be. However, it doesn't help to be yelled at by others as that puts a frowny face on them. It's a difficult position as I can't help if I'm not there, but me being there doesn't develop those skills...I'll likely need to put more thought into this, and we'll figure this out as a team.

Not sure what to do going forward, but we'll see how it goes. Maybe sticking with 1 driver, 1 student coach, 1 adult coaching mentor, 1 human player maybe the best for us.