I know that 846 used to use an adult mentor as the coach but transitioned to a full student drive team and has stayed that way for the last few years. Only this year did I see an actual effective coach, and that was mostly because I was good friends with him, and because he has a very unabashed, outgoing personality. As the co-driver/Robocoach, I would also come over to help coach. I felt that rotating drivers within the team helped because we could see the other's mistakes and help coach. Our mentors do make sure to critique our driving off the field. The majority of the time I was driving, I was running off pure instinct, with only the important info relayed to me by our coach. I think for our team specifically, we operate better with a fully student drive team. On the other hand there are teams that have great adult coaches, bad adult drive coaches, great student coaches, and bad student coaches. It mostly depends on the makeup of your team.
Also, I just wanted to say I was really really pleased to be part of a very well coached drive team during qualifying matches in Hawaii. At the end of autonomous, all three of our robots (25, 359, 846) were caught up on the opponents finish line. The refs took some time to figure out which robots had fully crossed and which didn't. During that time, all of our coaches and drivers were communicating with directions for what to do once teleop started. As soon as the bell rang, we all did what we had to do and went on to put up some big points. It was great to see and hear these "big-time" coaches working with our student-only team. While it is exciting to work with these famous mentors, not every adult mentor can coach the same.
Edit: And to address other issues: 2 years of being a driver. 5 events driven. I've never gone home Saturday night (sometimes even by Friday night) without losing my voice. It gets ridiculously loud down there. And about never seeing student coaches yell....obviously you've never seen my drive team. We do this cool thing where we yell at each other, yell directions to the other drive teams on our alliance, and somehow still manage to operate fluidly...somewhat...most of the time.
Also, I've never had a problem dealing with pushy adult coaches. I usually do a good job getting a compromise worked out that benefits my team. It helps that I'm a little bit demanding sometimes....
