Off season drivers: HELP

[Phyrxes]

Last year at our off season, and I presume this year as well, we rotated students through during qualifiers and and then substituted our "main driver and operator" in the elimination.

Given that we found our current "main driver" at an off season when he was a Freshman driving the our Lunacy bot, I doubt we will change our approach.

The other thing we did was our usual coach stepped back from the qualification rounds so we had students filling all four roles, which has made for some interesting matches.

Originally Posted by BeltSanderRocks

EDIT:

oops.

/EDIT




My team is diong this: Our route is stating "If you come to driver practice on this day, and get some stick time, you will be able to drive during the qualifiers as long as the robot isnt broken". However, we have less prospective drivers than you.


What I would suggest for you is to have 3 or 4 teams.

This way:

Two drive teams will drive in the eliminations: the main set of drivers (who are not allowed to drive during Qualifiers) and the best set of drivers out of the remaining 2 or 3.

Those other 2 or 3 drive teams will compete in the Qualifying Matches, for the match and for a chance to drive in the eliminations. It also becomes a small friendly competition at this point, and hopefully that will bring out the best in your drivers.

I am assuming that since you are the only returning driver, you will be on the best drive team, and thus will be able to tell the others on your drive team that they are not driving in Qualifiers. Just in case you aren't, it may be best to only tell your mentor this plan, and keep it a secret from the other drivers so they don't purposefully try to suck during practice, and suddenly do really well during Cal Games.

See you in a week!

Thanks beltsander! What we're trying out is very similar to what you said. I am on the drive team, getting the fastest run, but I also want the other drivers to get enough practice. Too many drive teams, and each drive team will get less participation time. 1 drive team doesn't let the others show what they can do. Depending on our opponent (or ally), we may not have just the other drive teams drive if they don't think they can take on the opponent *cough cough 254 cough cough*

[Siri]

I won't tell you the right way to do this, but do consider that off-seasons aren't just about winning, and they're also not just about practice. Sometimes, they're about tryouts and familiarization.

On the one hand, I may have a great at-meeting driver, only to find out s/he can't or doesn't want to handle the stress of an actual competition. (If they can't do this at off-seasons, just wait for Worlds.) This is worth finding out early, but not at an official event or high-caliber off-season (read: IRI).

On the other hand, you may find that someone originally uninterested in driving gets completely addicted to it after a few matches, and becomes part of your future Einstein ticket.

On another hand (foot?), you might have two excellent at-meeting drivers, only to find out that, while neither buckles under pressue, one utterly excels under it.


As a three-year driver and three-year-and-counting coach, these are all far from unheard of circumstances. Each can help with inspiring students (FIRST), in addition to helping your team win. Just a thought from someone who's been around that block for a little while.

[Chexposito]

As number of drivers increases; confusion, stress, complication, etc increases. I think it's better to stick with one drive team, but it's up to your team. It kinda depends on how competitive your team wants to be at the competition... just some thoughts

[Brandon Holley]

The experience is probably different on the east coast, especially for me coming from the New England/Mid-Atlantic region. There are tons and tons of offseasons here, so theres not as much of a 'build up' to them as there may be in other areas of the country that have fewer events.

For us, we put out our regulars at IRI and went for it. At BattleCry we mixed it up a bit through the qualifications, but settled on 1 constant (usually experienced) drive team for elims. For other events such as our own Beantown Blitz, River Rage, Where is Wolcott, Bash at the Beach or Mayhem in Merrimack, we let as many people drive through qualifiers as possible. We then will pick a drive team for elims and let them have at it.

We've found this to be a happy balance of getting new people experience, and still "going for it" come eliminations time.

-Brando

[Thad House]

How we do our offseason is we take out competition robot and our practice bot to the events. We have a main drive team on the competition bot, and we have have our practice bot switch between drivers and see who all is competition ready.

[Cuog]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I'm truly sorry if I'm coming off as selfish, arrogant, or a person who only wants to win. I just want my team to be able to get started off on the right track. If any of you read The New Cool, you should know what I'm talking about.

I know you want to help out your team, but I think you should all look at the situation as a whole and decide what it is you want to get out of off season competitions. No one on CD can answer this for you, but we can give you some ideas of how we handle it. I can tell you from my time with 422 off-season competitions have always been team building exercises for us. It's when we get the newbies out and excited about robots, and when we start getting the veterans to think about transitioning to a more mentor like roll. One thing we've found that really helps this is to get a veteran to be the coach with brand new students "at the wheel." We also get them working in the pits alongside the veterans providing a great crash course in how FIRST robots work. Obviously we're not very competitive this way, but I've seen more than a few kids that wandered in confused to what all the fuss was about and after driving the bot for a match are now excited and ready to go 110% in January. My question to you would be, is a win at an off season as important as creating that spark of excitement? To me its not, to you and your team, that's the important question here.

In reference to your quote above, I would encourage you to consider your own motives in your stance, are you really out for making your team the best it can be, or are you trying to secure your own position on the drive team.

Also I like being cryptic so I'll leave you a quote I think about in situations like this from Lucky Number Slevin:

The Rabbi: My father used to say: "The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose, the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk but the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it's time to go shopping for a saddle."

[holygrail]

I've been debating this question myself and I pretty much came to the same conclusion as the original poster. Let everyone drive for fun when it isn't a competition, but for competition, you've got to use the best people.

For our team, I decided to make the main driver for last year the second driver for our offseason competition. He will assist two new lead drivers (1st and 2nd string), that are underclassmen.

During build season, the goal is to have a drive-off to assess the lead and alternate drivers for the official FRC Regionals.

[Marc S.]

Here's how 973 does it.

This is the second offseason where we have competed with 3 robots; our comp bot, practice bot, and a prototype robot(whether it be from season or something new).
The comp bot is driven by set drive consisting of season drivers and new drivers that show great skill.
The practice bot drivers are rotated all through the competition with the kids who put the most time in in line first, and then the students get to decide if to continue rotating or have a set team for elims.
The prototype robot (depending on complexity) will either also have rotating drivers or set drivers.

The whole idea is that everyone gets a chance to drive(giving us a good idea on who has skill and who doesn't) yet we still have a competitive robot that lets us end the season well.

We have also started implementing "Sunday Fundays". A day every week where everyone who wants to can just rotate driving the robot all day. This helps for finding the best drivers for both the offseason and season compbot.