Drive Team Chemistry

[pmangels17]

As far as selecting members of the drive team, we usually use members of the build team (not necessarily of any particular subteam) to drive, operate (we call the co-pilot the operator), and a mentor to coach. Sometimes if we have particular code/electronics/connection issues, we put a programmer at operator for a couple matches just to make sure everything is going well.

We've more or less had one coach for the past few years, and honestly that is what clicks our drive team together. Our coach is loud and communicative, and we have one rule behind the glass. Whatever the coach says, goes. As a driver or operator, do what the coach says, always. The coach can see the big picture better than the driver. I've made the mistake of not listening to the coach before to do something I thought was better, and in all of those cases I was wrong. Also, if you do what the coach says, and something goes wrong, the responsibility doesn't fall on the driver, which can be a big stress on high schoolers sometimes.

Between the driver and operator, it is important to have them practice together, and work out a good system to communicate between each other. Your drive team performance is proportional to the amount of practice time they have together. When I was a driver (in 2011), my operator and I came up with command words for every task, and standardized what we called each function. If we wanted to pick up a tube, it was always a conversation like this: "Go to pickup position," "Ready," "Pickup tube," "Done." I never said "get ready to get the tube," or "ok now you should grab it." This way we always knew exactly what was happening. After 2011 I only drove sparingly, as a backup and during offseason competitions. This meant a new set of challenges, especially when at offseason events we try to get as many people as possible behind the glass. However, even so, the same strategy applied. Clear communication.

Finally, the glue that I believe holds the drive team together, is the human player. I acted as the primary human player for our team from 2012-2014, and in addition to my normal job during the game, I made sure to yell out the time left in the match in fifteen second intervals. Everyone on our alliance always knew how much time was left, and not a single coach or driver had to look up to check. That meant they could spend more time focusing on the match, and match flow when this happens is markedly better.

If you encourage these things with your current drive team, you should see improvement in performance. If you don't like what you see still, now that it is the offseason it isn't going to be detrimental to try switching things up behind the glass