[Chief Hedgehog]

4607 uses a driver and an operator. This allows for our driver to concentrate on what they can do best - and the operator make split second decisions that the driver may not be able to. We are not married to this - but it served us well this year as we played a lot of breach and shooting early on and then transitioned to defense later in the season.

We have tried to stress a drive team that is built up over events/years of experience. In previous seasons, as our team was young and did not have the personnel resources the first few years, we had to do with what was available.

However, now we are striving to keep at least two of the Drive team members in the arena from year to year. As the lead mentor/head coach I feel that having experience on the field come eliminations serves the team better than having just talent.

Case in point, our driver this year was a major part of the strategy and scouting of our 2014/15 campaigns and was the driver at 2014 MRI. Our coach this season was our operator in 2015, and our operator was the driver in 2015. Our human player this year was one of our lead build members this year as well.

Next year we will be returning our operator and our coach - but they may not serve in those roles. We like to have students move away from their roles from the previous seasons as it allows more peer to peer mentoring and allows for duplicity in all areas.

As for the drive team, we feel that having a blend of students with the backgrounds in strategy/scouting, build, programming, electrical, and wiring on the team serves us well.