[abigailthefox]

We had an adult member decide by themselves that they would be our drive coach this year, after numerous years of student coaches. The adult mentor has only coached during a few matches at an offseason event last year (IRI).

I am not sure of the entire history of my team (did we have an adult coach 8-10 years ago? I don't know) but I can speak for the last several years, and we have been one of the more "student-run" focused teams, with student coaches in addition to student leadership.

Personally, I disagree with the choice for an adult mentor to coach this year, and also with the manner in which this decision was made. Last year, we had a student coach, and it was our most successful year (won our division at champs). This may well be correlation not causation, but it doesn't indicate any kind of ongoing problem, or that our current drive set up wasn't working well.

I believe that a student coach helps foster community within the drive team, because students interact with each other differently, and teenagers tend to understand each other better than they understand adults. A drive coach job is all about communication and understanding.

Some people say that adult coaches can be more intimidating when talking strategy, or calmer under pressure, but our drive team actually discusses strategy as a whole with other teams--it is not an exclusive job of the coach. Our two drivers embodied each of them--one driver was the most bad a** person you will ever meet, who exudes confidence and is assertive in conversation, and the other was incredibly calm under pressure, and very logic oriented. Our coach possessed these qualities as well, and they made a great team. They were respectful to adult coaches, but did not defer to them unless the adult coach could prove beyond a doubt that their strategy had merit.

With an adult coach, you lose a chance for a student to gain that valuable experience. This year, our team is way younger, and desperately needs experience. It probably won't be our most successful year, in terms of wins, and I think that means we need to put some focus on what we can do this year to increase the collective experience and FRC knowledge team members have. It's not the year to put an adult in for (the questionable logic of) win maximization.

Furthermore, I am honestly a bit irked by the fact that this decision was made exclusively by the mentor acquiring the position. While he is our lead mentor, he chose to make this decision on his own (team members did not know that this would be our plan this season), and effectively coerced our mechanical lead into agreement. He stated his intentions to her (she is wonderful, but she's also a very soft spoken sophomore who tends to avoid conflict), and there wasn't really any team deliberation or informing before the decision became final.

Our team captain is a student and all of our leads are students, and we pride ourselves on being student run. Do we win everything? No. Are we a super elite team with awesome sponsors? No. Do we learn a lot? Oh yes. Do we have fun? Almost always (build season is still maximum stress season). But this year I fear that our student leadership is fading, and the students themselves becoming little more than figureheads. I have hope for the future, but I'm less confident about it.

Tl;dr: You can do what works for you, but keep the "spirit of FIRST" as well as your own team ideas and goals in mind when choosing.