My team (948) had a student coach this year, me. The last three years, our founding advisor was our mentor coach. This year he left, and I since I had been in charge of the team for the past four years, and also the head of robot design and build, I was the captain. As a general rule, leadership or driver positions on our team are decided by meritocracy. If you do more work, dedicate more of yourself to the team, and = you get the desired role.

We did not have a mentor coach this year, because, it was realized that a student could probably interface with the drivers better. Although I am heavily (probably the most) involved in the actual designing and building of the robot, I am very hands off in the driver station. I give over-arching suggestions, but all decisions are of course made by the driver. Since I (purposely) have no driver experience, there is no way I can criticize driver decisions.