Pressure on Drive Team

[Ian W.]

Ideally, the drive team has no pressure.

Realistically, there's pressure from everyone.

But you know what, after three years, I've learned to simply tune it out. As the lead driver on my team, even with an almost completely untested robot that didn't work nearly up to par (we'll be fixing that tomorrow, don't you worry ;-)), I was under a lot of pressure to make everything work as it should. Well, obviously, things broke, things failed, and I didn't drive as I should have, had everything been in mint condition.

So, I went out, and I drove, and I had fun, and you know something, we were regional finalists. No one expected that, and from the moment I stepped on the field in elims, it was all fun. Pressure was gone, if I didn't win, well, we made it to the elims with 1/4 of a robot, we won in the game as far as I was concerned.

So, long story short, drive teams, don't pressure them more than you need to. Veteren drivers will be able to do most of the stuff by themselves, and be pretty relaxed. New drivers, the opposite applies. Just remember, FIRST isn't about the robot, just have fun, meet new people, and try to learn something new. Killing yourself with inhumane amounts of pressure just isn't fun for anyone.

I'm surprised no one made any pneumatics jokes yet... :-p