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Originally Posted by sanddrag
We have always believed in having a student coach and we have always had a pretty good student coach. When we get paired up into alliances, often teams will over-sell themselves and leave us with inferior performance on the field. Many times we get screwed over for follwing their strategy instead of our own. Sometimes, we folllow their strategy because they have an adult coach, and our student coach is in no position to argue with an adult coach. I think FIRST should make a rule one way or the other and not allow either one. I speculate that there is some unfairness that comes about from having adult coaches as opposed to student coaches. I know every team has the right to an adult coach but every team has a different philosophy on what and how their students should learn.
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I completely disagree with you here. To say that a student coach is in no position to argue with an adult coach is to: 1) Minimize the minds and/or abilities that the students have and 2) feed into the mentality that adults know everything - something that we all know is a major fallacy.
It took me 4 years to start voicing my opinion to a professor who's mentored the same teams the same amount of time I have. Before I simply took his word because he was a professor and knew more than I did. Now I want an explanation or I'm going to say that I'm going to go in the direction I want.
As for my first point, in 2001 we had a student who was great at strategy. He took whiteboards with him to the strategy meetings with the other teams and the adults were listening to him. It's simply a question of how prepared are the students to make their points. IMNSHO, the adults that do not listen to the students are simply there to win. I would like to believe that the adults that are there not simply to win treat the competition like they do the build season - listen to the students opinions and guide them if it's required. Perhaps some of the adult coaches (per Sanddrag's original definition) can tell how they operate during the strategy meetings with their alliance partners.
I better get back to work,
indieFan