Adults as Coaches on the field

[camtunkpa]

The adult/student coach debate will go on forever. I can tell you I've been on all sides. I was a student coach in 1998, a driver in 1999 coached by a student coach, a driver in 2000 coached by an adult and now I'm an adult coach out on the floor.

I can tell you that coaching as a student and driving coached by a student were some stressful times. In neither case did I feel fully prepared to go out onto the field and compete. It seemed like in both cases things would be very quick to turn into arguments and plans fell apart quickly.

Well in 2000 222 decided to give adult coaches a try. I learned many things from the 2000 season. My adult coach sat back during strategy sessions and still let us students do the talking. The only times he would interject is if strategies were getting too farfetched, unorganized or of course if we asked him to. Our coach during the match play also took a different role. He allowed the drivers to do the thinking for the most part and was there to tell us how much time was in the match, and to talk to the other alliance and make sure everything was going ok for them. We had our first real successful year as a team in 2000. There was little bickering going on after the matches, the coach acted as a shield of sorts when other excited adult mentors didn't agree with how the match went. We went through the next couple years bouncing around different adult coaches who had very different coaching styles. Some were aggressive and dominant coaches and others were too laid back.

In 2004 I began coaching the drivers. I worked hard to find my place on the field. The way I started was I was a spokesman for our team and the drivers would sit back and interject. We did extremely well at our 1st regional going undefeated during the qualifiers and finished the competition as a finalist. We moved onto our second regional where I ran into a stubborn mentor. We were the first pick of our alliance. Our alliance made it all the way to the finals. We lost the first match of the finals and used our timeout after the match because the alliance captain had a mechanical problem. Well the coach was being extremely stubborn and wanted to put a non functional robot out on the field and have us sit out with a completely ready to go robot. After many minutes of going back and fourth i convinced the coach to let us go out and they could continue working on their machine to be ready for the next match. We won the match forcing the finals to 3 matches. 2004 was a huge learning year for me as an adult coach.

After the 2004 season I changed my coaching style for two reasons: #1 was because I wanted my students to be more involved & it seemed like when strategizing with all student drive teams they were somewhat intimidated. I dediced to have the students talk strategy and would interject now and again with ideas. I began using my coaching role as less of an individual coach and more of an alliance coordinator of sorts.

2009 was our most successful year as a team on and off the field. The students did a good job working out strategies. They did such a good job that I was really not much more then a spotter of sorts calling out time and telling the guys what to look out for. I spent the majority of my time making sure everything else was going smoothly with our partners and relaying to my drivers what needed to change. I believe this method of coaching was the best of both worlds and also what allowed us to do so well this year.

I hope this rambling post has given some insite to all sides of the student/adult coach debate.

Remember success in FIRST isn't measured by the trophies. It's measured by the inspiration.