Quote:
Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog
I have to say as the Head Coach of 4607 I was not sold on this idea (I thought a much simpler stacking U-Bot would suffice). However, the student leaders had their understanding of what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. So us mentors got in line and followed the dreams of the team.
This is typical of FRC 4607. We have a great group of mentors - but when we started this program a couple of years ago we made certain to put in our bylaws that the students make the decisions and the mentors would help to facilitate their growth.
And every year this team continues to amaze me with their out-of-the-box ideas and their perseverance. We have had some success in the past - but this year the kids brought it to a whole new level. I don't know how we will fare in week 6 at North Star - but at this point I don't care.
This team has flourished with our student leadership making the decisions and our numbers verify that something incredible is going on here. Our first year we had 24 student members - 2 years later we are at 51. We are now behind only our State Champion Football team in terms of student involvement at Becker High School.
I know I may come off as bragging - but I truly am proud of this team. It has been the highlight of my teaching and coaching careers. FRC has truly changed the way I teach and coach.
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Our team definitely made a huge step in our organization and the way we do things this year. Throughout the concept phase, we had a few ideas flying around. The typical "GodBot" as we like to call it, or "CatDog" as a mentor called it, where we pick up totes and containers and try to do everything ourselves. We also had a concept where we focus specifically on totes coming out of the feeder station, as we wanted to work well with an alliance, more along the lines of the F.I.R.S.T spirit, and it was something we hadn't done before. The student leaders of the team chose our tote-only concept, while every mentor wanted to do a GodBot design. As we are a student run team, we designed and built the tote-only concept. This is one of the first years the students have stood up and taken demand of the concept choosing stage, and it worked out great for us. We did not score high by ourselves, but we managed to do exactly what we designed our robot to do. The entire design is done purely by students, other than mentor intervention to make sure we aren't breaking the laws of physics or our CAD program. I personally think it's a good sign when one of our head mentors has to come to one of us students to ask us a question about the design, rather than vice versa.