Quote:
Originally Posted by Monochron
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In 2014 our team had a student drive coach - Jake Fisher - who is the voice you predominantly hear throughout the match. He had drive coached several VEX tournaments and an off-season FRC event prior to earning his spot as Drive Coach for the 2014 FRC season. Quite frankly, he did an amazing job, especially for a student.
The success of a Drive Coach depends almost entirely on the strategy that is developed amongst the alliance prior to the match. Without that strategy, a Drive Coach is nearly powerless to have a meaningful effect on the match.
Once your team develops a solid system for ensuring the best strategy for all 3 teams is created, agreed upon, and thoroughly understood by all before every match, the role of the Drive Coach becomes quite straight-forward: Understand everything about the strategy pertinent to your team, and do everything humanly and robotically possible to execute that strategy as faithfully as possible. If any deviation from the strategy happens, the Drive Coach needs to inform the other 2 alliance member Drive Coaches clearly, loudly, and immediately on the field during the match - no exceptions!
Deviations to the original strategy happen often (although the better the team, the less often it happens - this more than anything else is the mark of a "good" team - I don't care if your
robot itself is average, good or great, I care far more whether your team can consistently execute an agreed upon strategy). Nothing tarnishes your team's reputation more than deviating from a strategy and not immediately informing your alliance partners why. Your Drive Coach is the singular person responsible for making sure that never happens... no one else.
If you watch the video, our alliance consists of 368, 340 and 610. Prior to the match, we agreed on a strategy where 610 would inbound, and we would play a "ground-game" where we would kiss pass to 340 immediately upon inbounding, then 340 would advance into the next zone (or farther) and kiss pass to 368. 368 would then move to shoot in the high goal, and 340 would support them by setting picks to clear space in the offensive zone. 610 would drop back and play defense, and be ready to receive the next inbound pass immediately.
It was a simple strategy, especially for 610, but you can still hear the amount of instructions Jake is providing for such a simple strategy. Details are very important. Managing which side to inbound, ensuring the robot is in position BEFORE the inbounder delivers the ball. Instructing which robots to play defense on. Reacting on what to do next based on where in the cycle you and your opponents are. Did your alliance partners miss a shot? Should you play defense a little bit longer? Or cut and run back to receive an inbound? Do you need to hit an opponent to free up an alliance partner who has been hemmed in, thus delaying the cycle?
610 spends a lot of time simulating and working through different match situations between competitions. Jake would've done hours of strategic work-ups on mock matches. Prior to a competition, we select 5 random teams who will be competing at a regional with us, and we will construct what we feel is the "optimal" strategy for our alliance, taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing alliance. We will keep generating random sets of 5 teams until we feel we have a good overall understanding of what the different "types" of matches will be at the competition. Usually, only about 3-4 general match strategy "types" emerge. Jake would've basically memorized all of them, and could specifically recite second-by-second what 610's best role (and others) would've been in each of those situations. It is a bit extreme, but we are very demanding of our Drive Coach, Strategy and Scouting Sub-Teams in this regard.
The members of 610 will be the first to tell you that we don't necessarily build the best robots out there. Our machines are usually reliable, and do the simple things relatively well, but rarely do we produce a real "gamebreaker" machine that performs spectacularly well. We rely heavily on good scouting, strategy and drive team execution to squeeze out as many wins as possible, and it works!
Good luck and best wishes in your new role as Drive Coach! It is truly one of the most fulfilling roles on any FRC team. You can potentially make a very large impact on the team's on-field success!