Student or Adult Coach

[PayneTrain]

We let mentors drive the robot since they built it.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

We let mentors drive the robot since they built it.

You monster frisbee!!

[marshall]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

We let mentors drive the robot since they built it.

Us too! It's awesome! The best part is the students cheering us on from the stands!

I'll be here all week folks, good night! *drops the mic*

[CalTran]

I believe the party line goes something like "We utilize a student coach, because we are a student lead, student built team. The mentors are only here to supervise and make sure we don't injure ourselves." As well, it means that one more student gets to be on the drive team, the position most teams consider one of the most coveted.

That being said, I believe that a mentor serving as a coach is more beneficial than a student coach. Having a mentor be the drive coach means that they will generally be more level headed during stressful situations, they are able to retain the subtle nuances of matches from year to year, and the are able to consistently train the next generation. A mentor coach means that they're more likely able to bring their knowledge year in and year out. Most teams have their drive team as a one-and-done affair.

[indieFan]

Originally Posted by CalTran

That being said, I believe that a mentor serving as a coach is more beneficial than a student coach. Having a mentor be the drive coach means that they will generally be more level headed during stressful situations, they are able to retain the subtle nuances of matches from year to year, and the are able to consistently train the next generation. A mentor coach means that they're more likely able to bring their knowledge year in and year out. Most teams have their drive team as a one-and-done affair.

I completely disagree that a mentor will be more beneficial than a student coach. Team 599 didn't just have a student as the coach, but the student was the person dealing with strategy in the rookie year. He did a much better job than most adults. It was something we continued year after year.

[TylerS]

Having had first hand experience being on a drive team with a mentor coach and being the coach of a drive team as a student I think I can draw a firm conclusion.

IT DOESN'T MATTER.

If your goal is to win matches (it might not be) then pick the best person for the job. This might be a student, mentor, support animal, whatever. The hard part isn't deciding between a mentor or student it's about identifying the individual on your team who will best fill the role of a coach and how to do that is a whole other discussion.

[BordomBeThyName]

I'm the drive team mentor for 2102 this year, but my involvement with the drive team doesn't extend past the cueing line. Sure, having an adult behind the plexi would get us better odds of winning, but so would having an adult build and drive the thing.

That's not the point of FIRST though, is it? I guess this question rolls up into the larger (and very old) discussion of how much involvement mentors should have on a team. We've always come down hard on the "stand back and advise" side of that, but that's just us. If I wanted to see a competition of professionally built robots, I wouldn't be volunteering at a high school program.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by TylerS

If your goal is to win matches (it might not be) then pick the best person for the job.

This might be a student, mentor, support animal, whatever. The hard part isn't deciding between a mentor or student it's about identifying the individual on your team who will best fill the role of a coach and how to do that is a whole other discussion.

BRB, giving my dog all my 1923 shirts & freeing up weekends

Joking aside, this is pretty much it. Each team is gonna do what's right for them, and as long as the team itself is happy overall with the decision, then it's all gravy. I like to think our kids are happy with me as a coach, but if our student leadership ever approached me with a solution they thought might be better for our goals as a team, I'd be more than willing to give it a shot.

In my experience, a great deal of coaching success comes from striking a balance - between being confident and headstrong enough to make a call regarding the match, and being gracious & accommodating enough to be an agreeable and likeable partner for quals and elims alike.

That is a trait of maturity, which (for the most part) is achievable at any age.

[seg9585]

On a serious note to answer the question of "why", there are actually several reasons we have an adult coach but a few of the big ones:

When dealing with other teams in your alliance, things can get a little heated sometimes about which team feels their strategy for the round is optimal. I frequently see other teams with overzealous/bossy adult coaches who feel their strategy for the upcoming round is the only way, and the students get intimidated by it (and will frequently "cower" to the other adult coach when they don't have another adult to stand up for them). My goal is to help the alliance make more level-headed decisions regardless of whether the alliance partners have student or adult coaches.

Students have great decision-making abilities and are very smart, but in the end are still kids and can make mistakes (just like an adult could). What the adult has, though, is experience, and with that experience comes knowing their own history of "what has gone wrong" in the past and what to do to mitigate it. The coach is always the second set of eyes for the students to make sure the robot is configured to plan on the field, the joysticks are plugged into the correct ports, etc. There have been so many times the students forgot some of the important field config steps and it cost us rounds, and sometimes an adult with experience is the best person to double-check their work.

I feel the coach should be the best person on the team for the job, regardless of whether it's a student or adult mentor. A team shouldn't "force" itself to choose between picking an adult vs picking a student because of its team history or because "that's the way it should be".

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

We always had an adult coach. This year it's me. It has always been a team alumni or a college student. Never a teacher.
Having a student coach is nearly impossible for us, as a french speaking team, since most students have limited english skills.

[IronicDeadBird]

Sumtimes 1339 lets me be shot caller cuz I'm MLG pro strategy and gamer.
Real talk though I've seen a lot of great student drivers take losing to personally so by being out on the field and being the "shot caller" as long as they drive at 110% then we lose cause the shot caller is bad.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Whatever makes sense for your team based on the people within it.

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

Whatever makes sense for your team based on the people within it.

'nuff said... move on folks

[Chris is me]

For all the stories of "I worked with a mentor coach and he was mean / controlling / aggressive"... you don't have a problem with mentor coaches, you have a problem with jerks. I agree teams should never let jerks coach, it's just toxic for an alliance (yet 228 lets me coach... weird!) No matter who the coach is, they should treat alliance partners with respect, listen to them in strategy meetings, and work to pick the best strategy that allows all of the members of the alliance to contribute in a meaningful way.

I really believe that the best drive teams are run by someone who can be a mentor and advisor to the rest of the drive team. They need experience, quick judgment, and a strategic mind in the box, and they need someone the drivers can trust or listen to.

This does not necessarily mean an adult mentor! That common phrase "your second year on the team is your first year as a mentor" applies here. An experienced, older student can be a very effective coach if they have the respect and trust of the rest of the drive team. There's nothing inherently worse about a student being the coach, but they have to be the most qualified person for the job.

More often than not though, I've found that mentors can make great coaches. In all of FRC, it's the partnership between mentors and students that makes the teams special, and that partnership should extend to the drive team. I've been fortunate to develop great partnerships with drive teams both in my time as an off-field strategist and an on-field drive coach, and I would hate to have my team judged unfavorably because of this. Too often adult coaching is seen as taking an opportunity from one student, when it is really giving a greater opportunity for learning and development to the other 3 students.

Yeah, sabermetrics tells us training up and coming freshman drivers by starting them as coaches gets us 2 more match wins over the lifetime of the team.

I know you have a student coach this year, but I honestly can't tell if you're joking with this rationale. If you haven't run student coaches before, how can you have this metric figured out? How do you have a big enough sample size to know this? I suspect part of the reason this works for 254 is because the drivers are so well trained and practiced that the need for a super experienced coach is lessened.

[cadandcookies]

Honest answer for 2667 is we haven't decided yet. It's probably going to be one or the other, though