[Kate00]

I was the driver of my high school's FRC team for two years. We used a student coach.

At GTR in 2006, I had the chance to work with Ken Patton (65), and have had the chance to work with Derek Bessette (1114) and Shawn Lim (188) quite a few times. All of these mentors have won WFA's.

At the Canada's Wonderland offseason event in 2006, the current coach, operator, and myself (we were switching out human players as ours had graduated) decided to ask Karthik to coach for us in a few matches. Those were two of the best matches I've ever played as a driver. The other matches that I also played well in came as a direct result of the lessons I learned from his coaching. Our student coach became our human player, so that she could learn from Karthik.

One of the biggest differences for me in working with adult coach was how much better the communication was. I'm not trying to put down students (especially not my student coach) in any way, but adults simply have more experience at effective communication. Coaches who have coached for many years know what they have to do to get their point across to the drivers in a match. They have more confidence in directing people.

Adult coaches seem to be more comfortable with communication with other alliances as well. In every single one of the 84 matches I have driven in, the only coaches who I remember communicating with us in the box were adults. This contributed greatly to the cohesiveness of our alliances.

It was incredibly inspiring to have worked with Ken, Derek, Shawn, Karthik, et. al. Seeing adults handle themselves in high-pressure situations, learning for the experience those people have in pressured situations, how they react to things and how they keep their drivers calm. These people are truly the rock stars of FIRST - they're out there for all to see and admire. They are the people who other teams become familiar with, who are the most approachable for help in the pits, who help us work under pressure, and who help to mentor us at the events. As a driver, they inspired me.

One of my clearest memories of being a driver is after one of the matches in which Karthik coached us, having my drive team (including the student coach) talking together, about how much better of a learning experience it was working with him, having him work with us to improve our strategies and our match execution, as opposed to having to try and muddle through on our own. In my opinion, that is what makes FIRST great - students working alongside mentors to solve problems.

As a student driver, I feel like I was deprived in that I only had a small taste of it was like to work with an adult coach. The operator on my team felt the same way, as did the student coach.