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Originally Posted by Stephen Kowski
don't get too wrapped up in seniority....yeah it is a compliment and all, but if you make your drivers only seniors then the next year you have no driving experience what-so-ever....
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That is the way my high school team did driver picking. I tend to agree with your concern somewhat. The argument can be looked at from both sides with the issue of senior driving privledge. It is more fair if your teams goal is to let the job go around more but still be competitive year to year because you have one driver but never switch in the same season. You also have off-seasons to train new drivers the next year. The way we chose to run things in 03 on team 263 was but the two potential drivers each driving a robot in Bash 02' and see how they do and to let them get some competition experiance. The method ended up working out but it only works if you have talented seniors, which you don't always end up with.
In favor of a tenured younger driver, you only have to completely retrain a new one every few years, and then thier 2nd or 3rd driving season has potential to be much better than the previous. Up here on 229 we do not pick drivers based on seniority, the decission is purely on skill. Our 4 drive team members are 3 juniors and 1 freshman. 2 of the juniors had been on the drive team in 2003 as well. In all, I would suggest to pick talent over seniority, just as with your robot you would pick function over form when designing. Each team needs to make the decission for themselves on how they want to select thier drivers.