Student Coaches

[Kit Gerhart]

All three teams I've been with have had adult coaches. When I was with TechnoKats, it was usually Andy Baker, with various people including myself as the second coach when there were two coaches on the field (before 2002). Andy Bradley is our coach with The Pink Team.

What both Andys, and all good FIRST coaches have in common is good knowledge of the rules, good game strategy skills, and maybe most importantly, good communication and negotiating skills. It shouldn't be that way, but when the teams within an alliance are discussing how to play a match, adult coaches are going to get more respect than student coaches. In the eliminations rounds, the alliance captain team will presumably call the plays, but in the Q matches, a well respected adult coach is going to be more likely to "get his/her way" in calling the plays than a student coach, even a very good one.

[Jon236]

We use student coaches. They always do better than the mentor coaches. And this is a mentor speaking. Students can focus and deal with all the game-play possibilities a lot more quickly than adults, who tend to look at the 'global' issues.

Jon Mittelman
Mentor
Team 236

[Alaina]

team 814 has had student coaches at least since 2003. I don't know what we did our "rookie" year...But I know team 232 (they're long gone now) used mentor coaches most of the time.

[Alex Cormier]

1126 proudly goes with students as the coach.

[Atasuke768]

My teams has 2 student coaches but we're trying to see who the best for the
championship. Hopefully.

[Lil' Lavery]

We vote each year if we want to keep it student-only or open it to mentors. We keep it student only. Even if its open to mentors, they still would have to try out with all the students who wanted to do it, and a student might win.

[Kit Gerhart]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

We vote each year if we want to keep it student-only or open it to mentors. We keep it student only. Even if its open to mentors, they still would have to try out with all the students who wanted to do it, and a student might win.

What kind of tryouts do you have for coach?

[cire]

We never even thought about having a student as coach Our first 2 years the coach sorta got mad at the students which is horrible, but this year we have another mentor coach and we told him all he has to do is stand there and look for anything that we dont notice in the field, it worked out quite well because he was cool and didnt bother us except with compliments with our driving

Next year we will probably have a student coach though, if we have a student up for the challange.

Our team has everything done by students.... We only let our mentor be a coach during one practice round.

[slickguy2007]

We are also gonna hold try outs for coach next year. We are planning on blindfolding the driver and the coach has to give directions while the driver is totally relying on the coach. We want to keep students on the field. We don't wanna win because we have 5 engineers trying to figure out strategy. We wanna win because the kids have worked hard and made an all out attempt for the gold. We want students involved as much as possible and we want everyone leaving the competition saying that was a blast! By having adults take over these spots we are reducing the amount of ways that students could get involved. Knowing this, our engineers and mentors understand that and support our decision in having only students on the field.

GO 1403!!!

[StephLee]

Originally Posted by slickguy2007

We want students involved as much as possible and we want everyone leaving the competition saying that was a blast!

That's why we decided on a student coach. We didn't have tryouts or anything; one day at driving practice I started acting like a coach, and the mentors were impressed, so they told me to just take the job and do the same thing at competition.

[dmurdz]

1027 has a mentor driving coach

See everyone in Atlanta!

[Kit Gerhart]

One thing that is mostly missing from this discussion is that, since mentors are not allowed to be drivers or human players, the only position where adults can be "where the action is," is as a coach. There are mentors who contribute more "blood, sweat, and tears" to their team than most of the students, and who want to be where the action is. In the early part of my FIRST career, I was definitely one of those people. Now that I have had my chance, including being a coach when we won the the championship in 1998, I have less desire to be out on the field. Still, if I had never had that opportunity, I'm not sure I'd still be so active in FIRST. If a team has no mentors who have the desire, and skills to be a good coach, it makes sense in every way to use a student coach. If there are adults who contribute a lot to the team and have the skills to be a good coach, IMHO, they should have that opportunity.

The bottom line is that the purpose of FIRST is to inspire students. I suspect that the students of Team 71 have been inspired as they have won their 4 Championships with Brian Beatty as coach. I could use any number of other examples, but I feel that teams using adult coaches can inspire students as well as teams with student coaches, and that is what FIRST is all about.

[Ian Curtis]

We have a student coach. The mentors don't have anything to do with our drivers or operators or coaches. They stay out of it on their own accord.

[Jverdon]

We (Team Fusion) use a Studetn Coach, are drivers are very confident in him and he is good at what he does this is his 2nd yr as the student coach, he is a senior and will be missed greatly next year.