Pressure on Drive Team

[Rich Kressly]

Excellent question. Let me frame my answer by saying I ws an athletic coach for ten years and for the past four years I have helped shape and manage Team 103's scouting and strategy operations which are designed to support the efforts of the field coach, human player, and drive team.

Pressure:
It exists no matter how a team approaches things. A drive team is in front of thousands of people representing their school, community, and sponsors. TV cameras are often rolling. You can never remove it and you ceretainly don't want them to feel overwhelmed on one side or "beaten down" on the other. A balanced approach seems best, but each driver has his/her own personality and that too is a consideration. In order to alleviate that pressure, more than 20 of our team members have some role in scouting/strategy in order to ensure we have an extremely well prepared and informed drive team so their focus can stay just on "the next match".

Mistakes:
This depends on how you define "mistake". Drivers making mistakes because of inexperience or human error is what I call a true mistake and can easily be understood and forgiven. Drivers need unique thinking, athletic, and interpersonal abilities to be successful and should be chosen carefully. Many of these mistakes over a prolonged period of time MAY indicate a need for a change.

Then there is a whole other category that may look the same to an observer, but in reality is not a mistake. This would be a driver who makes decisions on their own and ignores or discounts communication from field coaches and partners. Each person has a job to do out there and, in order to be consistently successful, complete trust and respect is paramount. A driver who displays this type of behavior may need to be replaced (for the good of the team) a lot more quickly.

Thankfully, in my four years, we have never had the need to replace a driver because of our careful selection process and diligent efforts to support the drive team with the best information possible. This is not to say we haven't made mistakes that we have learned from. We sure have! In the end, it's an important job that needs to be taken seriously, yet it needs to be enjoyed because so few FIRST participants get to experience the thrill of the player's station.