Mentors on drive team

[Sunshine]

We have always had an adult coach and I believe we always will. We have one for the same reason that you have adult coaches on all sports teams. Students do a great job but sometimes their emotions get the best of them.

We always have the students enter into an open dialogue with alliance partners. There have been times when the adult mentor needed to decipher fact from fiction when it came to capabilities for both us and others. This does not mean that the adult took over these conversations but spoke to our students and had them be ambassadors for the team.

The two drivers generally end up with tunnel vision because they concentrate on the robot. A key responsibility of the adult coach is to be aware of what is happening on the entire field and watch the clock.

The coach also gathers the drivers and human players after each match to critique what happened. This dialogue makes us better by nationals.

We also make sure that there is a great relationship with coach and drivers prior to any competition. It starts at driver tryouts, continues with driver training and goes on for life