[mentos54]

My original team had a mentor coach, as he was an amazing guy at first, could carry knowledge through generations, and was well known enough that other teams would acknowledge his knowledge as a coach. It worked extremely well, and there were very few problems which came up.

My current team uses a student drive coach. She is amazing at her job, we're lucky to have her this year. While historically students have worked well, I have heard of several years where the drive team did not work well with the coach.

I like the idea of student drive coaches. However, they can go badly when the drive team refuses to work with the coach due to a lack of respect for his skills. Also, we had one year several years ago where a drive team lost a match, and the student coach let it be widely known that it was the drivers fault for not listening to him. It causes a lot of bad blood, and is a reason I like mentor coaches.

TL; DR Student coaches are in many ways better, mentor coaches are safer.