[OScubed]

First I am a relatively new mentor on our team, and don't know all the ins and outs. I speak for myself - not for the other mentors or team members. My reaction to this thread is:

Wow. I guess that makes 1511's all student drive team somewhat of an anomaly. IMHO building a great drive TEAM is the mentor's responsibility - the on-field coach is part of that team. That's just my opinion - but in 1511 we had an awesome team of drivers and coaches, and a backup team in case someone fell ill or was injured. Every member of the drive team must pass - with a 100% score - a test on the rules - and the coach was definitely the best at that knowledge. This was in addition to the other requirements they had to meet. They have to apply with a resume and defend their qualifications to the mentors.

But the whole idea of FIRST (imho again) is to mold our future leaders, scientists and technologists. Yes it's a competition - but not one that should sacrifice the win for allowing a student to feel the achievement of leading that win.

Part of being a leader is learning auto-didactically - on your own, under pressure by making mistakes and learning from them. How can a student do that if they have a mentor being on the on-field team? It becomes a mentor lead team, rather than a student lead team. We want to build great LEADERS. Our current coach has been involved for 3 years and is just a junior and he will be senior next year. It's his job to coach and build his replacement from the freshmen, sophmores and juniors on the team, and to bring them up to speed (with the mentors help) to transition the drive team to a new coach next year.

I guess if you had a small enough, or new enough team that you just haven't yet developed the depth to have a fully student drive team - I could see a mentor stepping in, as they trained up a new coach for the next year for one, maybe 2 years. But I stlll think the kids will learn faster and better under exactly the pressure described above. They will make mistakes - but that's what the process is about.

This organization isn't just about winning a competition - it's about building kids self confidence, leadership skills, team skills and engineering capabilities. How can they do that if an adult does it for them?