Student or Adult Coach

[blaze8902]

Originally Posted by seg9585

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.

The above quote is one of the main reasons I like having an adult coach.

A few years ago a student from my team, who was the scouting/strategy lead, got in to an argument with a much older team's coach about strategy.

Now, my student kept a cool head, but the other team's mentor - who was at least in their 40s - continued to escalate the situation.

Eventually I decided I needed to step in and deescalate, but my attempts at calming the other man down and reaching a compromise only made him more angry. He had the mindset that younger teams should just shut up and obey more experienced teams.
Things got so bad that eventually the other team's coach actually yelled curses at me.

Eventually, though, I managed to clam him down, but I was forced to cave in in terms of strategy.

The thing that really bothered me is the fact that I'm a very young mentor, and I had no identification. As far as he was concerned I could have been a student.

And while I'm glad that I managed to deescalate the situation eventually, let me just say that I'm not as confident that I would have been able to keep cool had a 40 year old man cursed out one of my students.

As a side note, my student was right and the older team single-handedly lost us the match. Afterwards two of the students from the other team came to our pit and apologized to my Scout Lead and myself. I told them they had nothing to apologize for, because it was solely their mentor who acted well outside the bounds of GP, however I did express to them that I thought it was very mature of them to apologize on his behalf.

TL;DR: Got cursed at by a much older mentor during a strategy meeting.

Anyway, that whole story is my way of pointing out that sometimes FRC competitions can be really stressful. While I know most of my students can maintain a level head, it makes me feel more secure knowing that our Lead Mentor is right there by the students in case situations similar to my experience arise.

[Koko Ed]

We prefer to use a student coach. It gives the kids a sense of ownership.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by BordomBeThyName

Interestingly we've been toying around with the opposite idea. Start a lead driver as a freshman or sophomore and let them drive until Junior year. Once they become a Senior, put them in as a coach to train up the next driver. 254 probably knows better than us, but we'll see where this plan leads us in a few years.

We've been doing the same as you actually. It seems to be working out for us for the moment but we'll see.

[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.

[abigailthefox]

We had an adult member decide by themselves that they would be our drive coach this year, after numerous years of student coaches. The adult mentor has only coached during a few matches at an offseason event last year (IRI).

I am not sure of the entire history of my team (did we have an adult coach 8-10 years ago? I don't know) but I can speak for the last several years, and we have been one of the more "student-run" focused teams, with student coaches in addition to student leadership.

Personally, I disagree with the choice for an adult mentor to coach this year, and also with the manner in which this decision was made. Last year, we had a student coach, and it was our most successful year (won our division at champs). This may well be correlation not causation, but it doesn't indicate any kind of ongoing problem, or that our current drive set up wasn't working well.

I believe that a student coach helps foster community within the drive team, because students interact with each other differently, and teenagers tend to understand each other better than they understand adults. A drive coach job is all about communication and understanding.

Some people say that adult coaches can be more intimidating when talking strategy, or calmer under pressure, but our drive team actually discusses strategy as a whole with other teams--it is not an exclusive job of the coach. Our two drivers embodied each of them--one driver was the most bad a** person you will ever meet, who exudes confidence and is assertive in conversation, and the other was incredibly calm under pressure, and very logic oriented. Our coach possessed these qualities as well, and they made a great team. They were respectful to adult coaches, but did not defer to them unless the adult coach could prove beyond a doubt that their strategy had merit.

With an adult coach, you lose a chance for a student to gain that valuable experience. This year, our team is way younger, and desperately needs experience. It probably won't be our most successful year, in terms of wins, and I think that means we need to put some focus on what we can do this year to increase the collective experience and FRC knowledge team members have. It's not the year to put an adult in for (the questionable logic of) win maximization.

Furthermore, I am honestly a bit irked by the fact that this decision was made exclusively by the mentor acquiring the position. While he is our lead mentor, he chose to make this decision on his own (team members did not know that this would be our plan this season), and effectively coerced our mechanical lead into agreement. He stated his intentions to her (she is wonderful, but she's also a very soft spoken sophomore who tends to avoid conflict), and there wasn't really any team deliberation or informing before the decision became final.

Our team captain is a student and all of our leads are students, and we pride ourselves on being student run. Do we win everything? No. Are we a super elite team with awesome sponsors? No. Do we learn a lot? Oh yes. Do we have fun? Almost always (build season is still maximum stress season). But this year I fear that our student leadership is fading, and the students themselves becoming little more than figureheads. I have hope for the future, but I'm less confident about it.

Tl;dr: You can do what works for you, but keep the "spirit of FIRST" as well as your own team ideas and goals in mind when choosing.

[mentos54]

My original team had a mentor coach, as he was an amazing guy at first, could carry knowledge through generations, and was well known enough that other teams would acknowledge his knowledge as a coach. It worked extremely well, and there were very few problems which came up.

My current team uses a student drive coach. She is amazing at her job, we're lucky to have her this year. While historically students have worked well, I have heard of several years where the drive team did not work well with the coach.

I like the idea of student drive coaches. However, they can go badly when the drive team refuses to work with the coach due to a lack of respect for his skills. Also, we had one year several years ago where a drive team lost a match, and the student coach let it be widely known that it was the drivers fault for not listening to him. It causes a lot of bad blood, and is a reason I like mentor coaches.

TL; DR Student coaches are in many ways better, mentor coaches are safer.

[philso]

There have been many examples of great Student Coaches and great Mentor Coaches. There have also been many examples of terrible Student Coaches and terrible Mentor Coaches. It seems that the only reasonable thing to do is to choose "the best person on the team for the job, regardless of whether it's a student or adult mentor".

It is interesting that fairly large numbers of people responded to the current and past polls (362 and 423) and the results are very close to 50%-50%. Assuming that they all based their choices on their experiences, the individual stories of particularly great or terrible Student or Mentor Coaches can not be the basis for compelling arguments for one or the other. For each story supporting one choice, one can find another story that supports the opposite choice.

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

I mean if this boils down to what is best for the students then just ask them what they want.

Sometimes, what they WANT is not what the NEED.

[Dibit1010]

We use a student coach- many times student know each other better, and there can be a less totalitarian attitude about what the drive coach says. Now if anything even starts to go awry off the field a mentor immediately steps in

[AJOHNSON]

5099 coach here, I'm a student. In my opinion it's very frustrating to work with adult coaches because they tend to dominate the alliance. Remember it's an event for high school students keep them on the drive team.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by philso

Sometimes, what they WANT is not what the NEED.

I've never been able to fully tell what a student will need and how to present what they need in the format of something they want, and until I can I'm just more comfortable working with an advising role over a guiding role.
If that makes any sense...
I assume they hear everything I say what they listen to is up to them.

[DonRotolo]

tl;dr.

[Anupam Goli]

I actually have an interesting story to share with our experience this past weekend.

We usually run a student coach, since the mentors most involved with match strategy are college students, and as such our availability to attend competition can be questionable. However, we find it helpful to have a strategy mentor be there to direct the drive team and coach on how the upcoming matches will flow. Our drive coach was coaching his first official event (not counting off-season events), and was getting his feet wet with the strategy and coordination involved in stronghold. The first few matches were... rough, to say the least. The drive team was frustrated, and wanted our match strategy mentor to coach for a match or two, and have the student coach observe and learn. However, we kept our student coach in, but kept giving feedback on how he can improve his coaching skill and match timing. We reviewed match footage with him and the drivers to fix any bad decision making that was occuring.

By the time eliminations rolled around, our student coach was doing very well and was able to communicate with alliance partners and the human player. His coaching was crucial for our low cycle times and drivers' success.

I stand by the saying that teams need to do what's best for them and their mission, but if you want to run a student coach, consider having a mentor for the drive team and coaching, and look at ways to help your student coach grow and get better.

[evanperryg]

We have an adult drive coach. He's a former FRC driver himself, with 4 years of experience on a very successful Florida team. He's got a cool head, communicates effectively with other teams, and his experience means he really understands what it's like to be behind the controls. These traits aren't just hard to find in a student, they're hard to find in anybody. If a student is the most qualified to coach, it should be a student coach. If a mentor is the most qualified to coach, it should be the mentor.

[aovozza3]

I have been fortunate to be a drive coach both as a student team member and now as a mentor. From my experience, whether your drive coach should be a student or mentor depends on the specific dynamics of your team.

For example, if you have a small team and an individual student who has a solid understanding of the game/rules, then a student drive coach may be best for your team. However, if your team is larger and more students are interested in being on the drive team, I feel an adult mentor would be better suited to handle the pressure of both working with other teams and within the drive team.

One thing I make sure to emphasize with my students is that student or adult drive coaches do not have inherent advantages or disadvantages. If a team has a student drive coach, that does not mean they will inherently have weaker strategy abilities. Additionally, an adult drive coach does not automatically mean that students are not involved with their team's design/strategy. Each team has different student dynamics, thus we should maintain respect for other drive teams regardless of the age of their drive coach.