Quote:
Originally Posted by AFron10
This past weekend at championships I had the opportunity to stand on the field level and be right near the drive teams. Personally our team uses a student coach. As I watched divisional elimination matches I noticed some terrible things. For one of the matches there were 5 seconds left and a human player wasn't paying attention and then forgot to put the ball in play. All of the sudden the adult coach from there alliance (who was on a different team but on the same alliance) ran over and started to yell at the human player and included multiple inappropriate words directed to the student. The student already felt bad enough about it and the adult coach yelling at him didn't help at all. Their alliance won that match so he cooled down. I just think that the drive team should be only students so they can discuss things together on a peer to peer level.
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Completely agreed, I believe student coaches are better because they can relate to their drive team and other drive teams on the same level. Speaking from experience, I was our team's human player this year and at world champs, one of the adult drive coaches on our alliance came up to me and asked if I'd ever human playered before. I was shocked and when I said yes, I've been our HP at both our regionals, he asked if I was sure I knew how to do it properly, and if I was confident in my abilities because I'm only 5'0". He then proceeded to tell me in a voice I would use on a five year old, 'See, you don't touch the ball until the pedastal is lit up' and demonstrated how to take the ball of the pedastal. It was a little hurtful and I don't think it's fair for any adults to speak to students like that.
That being said, I understand that not all mentors are like that, so if you have mentors that can relate to students, then they make awesome drive coaches too
It all comes down to the idea that yes the drive coach is the leader of the drive team, but they shouldn't abuse their authority, whether they're a mentor or a student.