[Jon Stratis]

Unfortunately, I had to try to answer a question from the students on my drive team this year: "Why can mentors be drive coaches?" The team had very bad experiences with several mentor drive coaches from other teams - they felt disrespected, belittled, and ignored. That's something that should never come from a mentor involved with FIRST. We all want to go out there and win, but we should never be doing so at the expense of one of our alliance members.

I will say that poor interactions much less severe than encountered this weekend have caused my team to cross highly ranked teams off our pick list at past events.