[Jon Stratis]

Is your team captain guaranteed a drive team position each year?
- Nope. There is nothing prohibiting a captain (we usually have 2-3 co-captains) from being on the drive team, but likewise they aren't guaranteed a spot on it.

What are the responsibilities of your team's team captain?
- The captains are responsible for planing the meeting agenda's, leading the meetings (where appropriate, sections of meetings are delegated), and often serve as influential leaders in the subteams they are a part of.

How do you form your drive team each year?
- Mandatory driving "tryout" for all members during the off season, expressed interest (and if we see some real talent a little prodding from mentors), and if needed extended tryouts later in the season to narrow it down to 4 members. School year is also a factor - we are trying not to have the entire drive team all graduate at the same time. Some continuity is important.

What role(s) does your team captain preform on your team?
- Our current 3 captains, in addition to captain duties listed above do the following:
Head up the mechanical subteam
Head up the programming subteam and serve as drive coach
head up website development (in conjunction with PR) and work with the programming subteam on the robot


I think you need to ask yourself - what qualities should a captain have, and what should their responsibilities be at different points in the season (during build, at competition, off season)? For us, the captain's have shown a willingness to do what the team needs, when it's needed, and an outstanding ability to jump out in front of the judges and pit visitors at competition and explain both how the robot works and how the team functions. While others are also in the pit answering questions (and proving their ability to be future captains), the captains essentially form the "public face" of the team.

Our captains are responsible for the overall health and organization of the team. If we required them to fill a specific roll (like being part of the drive team), they would have a very narrow focus and find it difficult to relate to other areas of the team and understand what was needed in those other areas.


On the flip side of that, we require our drive team to be very dedicated to one thing: driving. They spend most of the build season in a different room driving the practice robot. We've tried having them involved with both driving and other areas (mechanical, programming, etc)... but often the driving suffers. As a result, the drive team now is almost completely dedicated and spends very little time working as part of other sub teams, and we've seen noted improvement in our performance because of it.

So, for our team, the concept of captain (broad knowledge, involved in everything) and drive team (narrow focus, only concerned about operating the robot) don't mesh together very well.