Do you have an adult coach or a student coach? Me, College student, Adult.
Why?
Well, i got shoved into the coach role in 2005 because our our teams adviser thought that our drive team needed someone with a louder voice to tell them what was going on. In 2006, I was swapping in and out with one of our students, when the drive team called a quick meeting and decided that i would be better coaching all the time since the student coach was giving too much information, and the student coaching thought it was too stressful. Since i was the wire guy on our team, and worked close with programming, i knew what would need to get fixed before we even got back to the pit.
Do you feel it increases your ranking, winning, and success in matches?
Honestly, No. While I'm the on field "Coach", in reality, i act as a 4th set of eyes and communication method between driver and HP. The drivers like it when i was telling them the least amount of information, stuff like "Offence, Defense, 20 seconds, Block XXX they are going to shoot, push balls in" And help the HP get balls. I came up with very little of our actual strategy, our drive team was much better at it than i was.
Do you feel it enhances your team as a whole?
I don't think it makes much of a difference personally.
Do you feel it enhances the accuracy, precision, and speed in driving and operation?
I don't think this matters if your an adult or a student, as long as your doing what your drivers and HP wants and trying to help them rather than push them around.
What downsides are there?
Personally, i would rather a student out there since the only reason i mentor is for the students and to build sweet robots. I would much rather see a student get the experience of being on the field and hearing your team cheering!
And if you have a student coach, please answer the additional question:
Do you feel intimidated or persuaded by adult coaches on your alliance?
Ill go ahead and answer anyway, even i as an adult i feel persuaded or intimidated by other pushy coaches. One case at Buckeye stands out in my mind: we were allied with a team who essentially demanded to be backbot, and there reasoning was "Well your robot cant pickup off the ground" We tried to tell them that if we were backbot we could get at least 7 of 10 balls in even if we got pushed around a bit, but they still wanted to be backbot. That match was the first shutout at buckeye
