Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team

[wevets]

At the Cascade Regional, I was told that at least one drive team, maybe two, had adult coaches/mentors on them in the analyst position. Is this legal?

Legal or not, I think it's bad for a few reasons:

1. It imparts to the students that they don't have the ability to be analysts.
2. It deprives some student of a position on the drive team.
3. If, in fact, coaches/mentors have better judgement than students, it gives an unfair advantage to a team that has an adult on the drive team when other teams don't.
4. It just seems contrary to the FIRST principal that this is a competition of students, by students and for students.

And it begs the question, if an alliance won with a coach/mentor on thier drive team, wouldn't their win have a asterisk in the record books?

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by wevets

At the Cascade Regional, I was told that at least one drive team, maybe two, had adult coaches/mentors on them in the analyst position. Is this legal?

You should have been able to look this up yourself... From Section 1, Page 9:

HUMAN PLAYER – a pre-college student team member that fills one of the ALLIANCE roles of FEEDER or ANALYST. There is one HUMAN PLAYER per TEAM.

So we see that the ANALYST must be a pre-college student. The other alliance, if they knew the rules should have pointed this out to the referees.

That is assuming, of course, that this was factual and not hearsay...

Originally Posted by wevets

...
4. It just seems contrary to the FIRST principal that this is a competition of students, by students and for students.
...

In my 17 years of doing FIRST, I have never seen this written down or stated by anyone with FIRST. Stating this as a FIRST principal would appear to be in error...

You may want to concentrate more on facts in the future...

JMHO,

Mike

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by wevets

At the Cascade Regional, I was told that at least one drive team, maybe two, had adult coaches/mentors on them in the analyst position. Is this legal?

The analyst should not be confused with the Human player that is functioning as a 4th analyst. In some cases there just isn't a 4th student up to the task or just a 4th student period. One of the teams on Olympic started 3 seasons ago with 3 students and 1 mentor so everyone was on the drive team. Last year they were at that same level. This year they managed to expand their program to 5 students!!! They also managed to be 5th seed!!!

Originally Posted by Mike Betts

You should have been able to look this up yourself... From Section 1, Page 9:

So we see that the ANALYST must be a pre-college student. The other alliance, if they knew the rules should have pointed this out to the referees.

JMHO,

Mike

If the analyst we are talking about is the 3rd human player, ie not the feeder then yes the are supposed to be a pre-college age students. However if we are talking about the regular long standing analyst position then a college age student mentor or adult mentor is perfectly legal.

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by Mr V

The analyst should not be confused with the Human player that is functioning as a 4th analyst. In some cases there just isn't a 4th student up to the task or just a 4th student period. One of the teams on Olympic started 3 seasons ago with 3 students and 1 mentor so everyone was on the drive team. Last year they were at that same level. This year they managed to expand their program to 5 students!!! They also managed to be 5th seed!!!



If the analyst we are talking about is the 3rd human player, ie not the feeder then yes the are supposed to be a pre-college age students. However if we are talking about the regular long standing analyst position then a college age student mentor or adult mentor is perfectly legal.

Mr. V,

With all due respect, the word ANALYST has never before appeared in any FRC rules manual nor Team Update until this year (I have PDFs going back to 1998 inclusive).

The word ANALYST is capitalized as it has an exact definition for the 2011 rules.

ANALYST – a HUMAN PLAYER that assists the COACHES with strategy. There is one ANALYST per ALLIANCE.

HUMAN PLAYER – a pre-college student team member that fills one of the ALLIANCE roles of FEEDER or ANALYST. There is one HUMAN PLAYER per TEAM.

I believe that you are the one confusing ANALYST and COACH.

COACH – a student or adult mentor identified as the person wearing the designated "COACH" pin or button during a MATCH. There is one COACH per TEAM.

There is no "regular long standing position" for an ANALYST in FRC.

The ANALYST must be a pre-college student team member.

Regards,

Mike

[DonRotolo]

wevets, did we change your thinking about this topic at all?

Originally Posted by Ken Streeter

(Then again, our team has a history of not correctly discerning the intent of various rules, so it's fully within the intent of the GDC.)

WE all have to assume that the GDC is basically intelligent enough to write rules that reflect their intent. Being imperfect (as we all are) they provide the Q&A forum to clarify intent. If the GDC did NOT state that the COACH must remain next to the DRIVERs and that the ANALYST cannot stand by and speak with the DRIVERs, then we can say that the GDC did not intend to prohibit that action.

Originally Posted by Siri

but if the point is simply "depriving some student of a position", I'd like to address the trade-off between getting more students on the field and impacting a long-term drive team

Some adults strongly believe that ANY adult is de-facto depriving a student of a position. I just as strongly differ with this belief: An adult coach, if selected by the team, can offer the chance for the entire team to have a winning competition, or (by not coaching) deprive the entire team of the same. This deprivation includes inspiration., since a regional win can be arguably more inspiring than 37th place and no matches after qualification rounds.

[PiKman]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

wevets
Some adults strongly believe that ANY adult is de-facto depriving a student of a position. I just as strongly differ with this belief: An adult coach, if selected by the team, can offer the chance for the entire team to have a winning competition, or (by not coaching) deprive the entire team of the same. This deprivation includes inspiration., since a regional win can be arguably more inspiring than 37th place and no matches after qualification rounds.

I disagree with those who say it is "unfair" to have an adult coach or that such victories are tainted - FIRST makes this rule with full knowledge that different teams will take different approaches. If you're going to put an asterisk on victories with adult drive coaches, you may as well do the same for teams with large budgets or where adults build much of the robot. FIRST allows all of this, because there is no "one-size-fits-all" on how to structure a team. However, I agree with those who say an adult coach deprives a student of an amazing role and growth opportunity.

Mentors teach the students to solder, drill, tap, program, and design. Why can't mentors teach students to coach the drive team? We mentors set a higher standard for our mentoring when we seek to teach the students so thoroughly that they perform well enough to take jobs away from mentors. To me, saying an adult should be drive coach means the mentors are giving up on training a student to do the job.

It's good when a mentor helps coach the drive team to victory. As you point out, Don, it's less good if a poor student coach drags down team performance, and the overall team feeling with it. The best situation of all is when a mentor-trained student coach leads the team to great success. A team that achieves competition success in this way has accomplished more for its students than a team with an adult drive coach. It goes beyond a better FIRST experience for that student drive coach. It produces even higher inspiration for all - it gives every student on the team another role to strive for, another "maybe that can be me someday."

Tournament success is all the more sweet if you achieve it with greater student involvement - at the lathe, in the pits, in the drive team box. Mentors sell themselves short if they don't strive for that.

[wevets]

Don et al,

Yes, you have changed my thinking on this, but not much. I see where you're coming from and I acknowledge that others will see this differently than I do. Of course I can't argue with including an adult on the drive team when the whole team is 3 kids and an adult as was cited by Mr V in this thread. But that's the degenerate case and not common.

And it's quite clear that the rules allow for adult coaches on the drive team.

But I'll jump back to the sports analogy introduced by Donut: The coach may not be the quarterback even though the coach may call the plays from the side. The quarterback tells the team what the play is even though he may be green and scared. The coach will do his best to teach the quarterback before the game, but he won't go out on the field. Coaching is limited to what goes on between actual plays. The play is owned by the team.

I've read his post above this one a couple of times and I completely agree with PiKman. His "best situation" is, I think, truly best.

But I want to cite an experience I had with the senior coach of our team. I had been getting, shall we say, too involved with how we were programming autonomous. The coach and I discussed my behavior and he observed: "You are not willing to let the kids fail. I am." He was right. When the kids fully own the decisions, they fully own the victory. When the adults make many of the decisions and the team wins, the kids are on the winning team, but they don't fully own the victory. There's a difference. There's a lot of judgement here - kids can't be allowed to make harmful, dangerous or immoral decisions and they often need to be guided to pursue a decision to full closure or be made aware of alternatives. Providing and training judgement is one of our primary coaching responsibilities.

On the flip side, when the kids don't win, the common case, they should own that, too. Handling that with gracious professionalism, getting up and trying again, maybe realizing that they have a few things yet to learn and that their mentors are there to help them but not do it for them, is a very valuable experience. Helping the kids through this is a coaching job.

I've had this discussion with a few of our senior students. They don't like competing against adults on other teams. They think its unfair when they see adults on other drive teams and when, for instance, they see adults rushing in, even pushing students out of the way, to repair a robot damaged in competition.

I believe that we mentors should provide guidance and we should create an environment where the kids can learn to provide the leadership and ownership of the team and its results. They're capable if we let them.

[MentorOfSteel]

This is an interesting thread. As a FIRST newbie, I was surprised when I learned that it was legal to have a mentor in the coach position during competition. I was even more surprised when I started going to competitions and saw the number of teams that take advantage of this rule and the level to which some mentors get involved in the execution of the actual game. I was also surprised to read about the aggressive role that Amir Abo-Shaeer takes as described in The New Cool. My first year in FIRST and FRC has been full of surprises, but frankly, this is one of the less pleasant ones. I am against having adults in the coach position. This discussion so far has been excellent and has presented compelling arguments on both sides of the issue. I do not have much new insight to add, but I will try.

The arguments for having adults on the field that I am most sympathetic to are the ones about being there to help the students handle the stress, to protect the drivers from the ire of their fellow students, to intervene when competitive impulses start to erode sportsmanship. These are noble instincts, however I think a mentor can manage these issues without actually being in the coach position. I agree that it would be easier to manage them from on the field, but "easier for the mentor" does not necessarily equate to "better for the team".

The arguments for having adults on the field that I am least sympathetic to are the ones about making the team more successful and more competitive on the field. One of my guiding principles in making mentoring decisions is this: the drive to win should never come at the expense of taking opportunities for growth away from the students on the team. Of course having an experienced adult running the show during the match will improve the odds of winning, but it also deprives a student of a unique experience to compete and make snap decisions in a high pressure situation with thousands of people watching. For me, it is an easy call to make. Maybe this means that my team will never grow into a perennial winner, time will tell, but I can live with that. There are other ways to define success.

Finally, I think that some of the responders were a bit rough on the original poster and the assertion that having adults on the field goes against the principles of FIRST. It is true that there is nothing explicitly written in the canon to support this opinion, but it is still a reasonable opinion to hold. Everyone seems to agree that FIRST is about training and inspiring the technical leaders of tomorrow, it is not much of a stretch to conclude that putting a mentor into _the_ leadership position during match play is antithetical to this higher level objective. The best way to create leaders is to give them opportunities to lead.

-George

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by MentorOfSteel

Everyone seems to agree that FIRST is about training and inspiring the technical leaders of tomorrow,...

I do not agree.

The mission of FIRST is "to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders" -- the word "training" does not appear. While the mission statement includes the phrases "build skills" and "foster life capabilities", I believe those are not what FIRST is "about". Depending on the team, they can be a tool for accomplishing the mission, but they are often a secondary effect of how the programs are run.

The best way to create leaders is to give them opportunities to lead.

A great way to create effective leaders is to give them examples of effective leadership. You don't get good machinists just by giving people opportunities to use a mill; you get good machinists by having them watch and work with good machinists. If you have a good adult leader acting as the drive coach, you can inspire very good leadership from the students.

If you don't have an inspirational role model available, then there's probably no loss in having a student learn "on the job". But for those teams fortunate enough to have high-quality mentors, I don't see a reason not to take advantage of them.

[MentorOfSteel]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I do not agree.

The mission of FIRST is "to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders" -- the word "training" does not appear.

OK, that is fair, but I think my point is valid even if you remove the word "training" from it.

A great way to create effective leaders is to give them examples of effective leadership.

I agree with this 100%, and did not mean my original comment to exclude the need to provide examples of effective leadership. But the point I would like to make is that, throughout the year, there are thousands of opportunities for mentors to demonstrate leadership. I do not see the need to add one more at the expense of taking a unique and valuable experience from a student.

-George

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by MentorOfSteel

Of course having an experienced adult running the show during the match will improve the odds of winning, but it also deprives a student of a unique experience to compete and make snap decisions in a high pressure situation with thousands of people watching.

This is true. But, on the other hand, using a student as field coach deprives the other 3 students on the drive team another opportunity to learn and get inspired by working alongside an adult mentor.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by MentorOfSteel

... Everyone seems to agree that FIRST is about training and inspiring the technical leaders of tomorrow ...

-George

FIRST is about inspiring students for "tomorrow", yet it's an unfair assertion to imply that FIRST isn't about inspiring the adults that can bring about change "today".

My overall take on coaching:
Mentors put so much work into organizing, fund raising, mentoring, and such -- why leave them out of the fun of competition altogether? I get no internal satisfaction from the cliche "we're all winners" when I know that if I weren't on the sidelines I would have played a strategy would have worked to win us a particular match rather than lose it. The core model of FIRST is a competition; while overarching message isn't ever lost on me, for 2 minutes at a time it's nice to be able to play to that model (with integrity of course).

[MentorOfSteel]

Originally Posted by JesseK

FIRST is about inspiring students for "tomorrow", yet it's an unfair assertion to imply that FIRST isn't about inspiring the adults that can bring about change "today".

Hmm, I'm not sure I see your point. I did not assert, nor did I intend to imply, anything about the role of FIRST in inspiring mentors. In my experience, FIRST inspires everyone involved, that is part of what is so great about it. But what does inspiring mentors have to do with with the current conversation? Maybe some mentors are more inspired and put more energy into the team because of the pay-off of playing in the game? I guess I could buy that, I'm just not sure what you're saying. Could you please clarify?

-George

Ah -- I see that you amended your original response while I was drafting this post. That clarifies things, thanks. I won't try to disagree with you. But I would like to provide this perspective: it can be extremely rewarding to hand over the reins and guide someone as they grow into a role, even when you know you could do a better job in that role yourself. I would encourage you to consider that as a source of future inspiration instead of the more direct inspiration of winning the game.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

A great way to create effective leaders is to give them examples of effective leadership. You don't get good machinists just by giving people opportunities to use a mill; you get good machinists by having them watch and work with good machinists. If you have a good adult leader acting as the drive coach, you can inspire very good leadership from the students.

So I have a story to tell. I'm not claiming it should change the minds of the rather-not-have-adults-coaching thinkers (is that an appropriate hyphenation?), but it might be valuable insight. I'll preface it by saying that there are some great student coaches out there. However, they're rare, rarer than adults, and I think there's a reason for that. As always though, YMMV:

I was a student driver with an adult coach for 3 years. I valued it for a lot of reasons, but one of the more important was that I got to work alongside an adult in a high-pressure situation. He didn't always take it well (neither did we), but I learned a lot--no, a lot--from it, as did my fellow drivers. I sincerely believe I couldn't have learned that anywhere else. At the very least, I know we didn't have student that could have taught us that.

After 2 years, I started coaching some off-seasons myself. I'd done a few my first post-season, but I wasn't very useful. So I learned, and I practiced, and I beat myself up for stupid stuff, and I observed my own coach. I managed to really coach some senior year, alright according to my drivers. I firmly believe there is no way I could have gotten to that level in that time--as a coach or as a person--without an adult coach with me behind the glass.

This isn't to say that alumni must make the best coaches, or that this process is optimal. Rather, my point is that a very important aspect of driver (and personal) growth and coach training for me was actually being coached by an adult. This is primarily because I think it takes quite a while to make most really learn from-able drive coaches. I say that based on 5 years behind the glass, but feel free to object.

So if I can pick a coach that can teach drivers something about handling the irreplaceable experience in the box, or help them grow in any way (and there are a lot), or help train a new coach...well, that sounds good to me, even if they are an adult.

TL;DR: There are some things you just can't inspire and/or teach from the other side of the glass. Many of these things can only be taught by adults. (There may be a few very rare students, but not to the point that every team would be expected to have them.)

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by MentorOfSteel

This is an interesting thread. As a FIRST newbie, I was surprised when I learned that it was legal to have a mentor in the coach position during competition. I was even more surprised when I started going to competitions and saw the number of teams that take advantage of this rule and the level to which some mentors get involved in the execution of the actual game. I was also surprised to read about the aggressive role that Amir Abo-Shaeer takes as described in The New Cool. My first year in FIRST and FRC has been full of surprises, but frankly, this is one of the less pleasant ones. I am against having adults in the coach position. This discussion so far has been excellent and has presented compelling arguments on both sides of the issue. I do not have much new insight to add, but I will try.

I would just like to point out that Amir has created the most innovative FRC team structure I have ever seen; It truly is a blueprint of what effective FRC teams should be at the educational and institutional level. He routinely inspires a consistant and large group of students; His methods work.

One could argue that the fact that Amir, and the entire team for that matter, is so intense gets the students and team more excited, and more likely to learn how to do xyz to make component abc 2% better.

For students that are only on the team a single year, they do amazing things. I wouldn't argue with his methods one bit.