Student or Adult Coach

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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".