[FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches

[sanddrag]

I think there can be a lot of benefit to having an adult coach. With the exception of one match in Atlanta in 2007, 696 never has had an adult coach. I've wanted to for years, but the students still won't let me, and I doubt it will change next year. Could I just say I'm the coach, since I'm the lead mentor of the team? Sure. Will I coach drivers who don't want me as their coach? No way. So, I do the best I can off the field, to make sure they're prepared on the field. And sometimes I enjoy not having the responsibility of it.

I think FIRST did the right thing here leaving it up to the teams.

[rachelholladay]

If a team wants to have an adult drive coach and feels that benefits the team the most, then they will. If a team wants to have an student drive coach and feels that benefits the team the most, then they will. I wouldn't try to tell them how to pick their drive team anymore than I would tell them how to build there robot.

Team 1912 just finished its 8th year and has always had student drive coaches. I have served as the drive coach for 2012 and 2013. Typically (with a few exceptions) our drive team has been composed of our build captains, with the controls captain as the drive coach, and the chassis captain, CAD captain and challenge captain as driver, operator and human player. Our captains are the students who have invested the most time, who understand the robot the best and who are the most dedicated. Our controls captain has been the drive captain for several reasons. We have always thought that someone one the drive team should know about the electronics and software. Also the control captain always must keep the big picture in mind, understanding all the components in order to integrate them in software. Its also coincided that many of our controls captains have been very, very dedicated.

Before our matches, typically our drive coach and strategist (both are students) talk to and generally touch base with our alliance partners to figure some general strategy. Pre-match we typically have all four members of the drive team involved in discussions to have everyone clued in. During a match, as drive coach I'm generally trying to do several things at once: communicate with the coaches of our alliance partners, help keep track of time, communicate with the human player and guide the general strategy of our robot. Our driver will admit, he has complete tunnel vision and looks at nothing but our robot. Therefore it is my responsibility to keep track of all six robots; for example this year telling him which path would be most efficient from feeder station to goal. There has only been one instance where I told our operator exactly what to do. (This year during our first couple of matches our operator had the habit of firing too rapidly and not letting the discs reload. To help him establish a rhythm I would say "Fire....Fire.....Fire.....Fire". After a few matches though, he got the hang of it and that was no longer necessary).

As drive coach, I also often had a rather odd role post-match. We have had the instance (which I'm sure almost everyone has had) where the drive team gets back the pit after a not-so-great match and everyone not on the drive team wants to say what they thought could have been done differently. I don't really blame them, but situations are seen differently from behind the glass then up in the stands. On the occasions where our mentors have wanted to admonish at the drive team, I have had them tell me (as drive coach) rather than then hassle the drivers directly. Then I process the information and try to give the advice to the drivers in a more calm and applied way. Call me maternal, but I like to protect my drive team from being yelled at.

As a student drive coach, there has been several occasions where I have felt disrespected or looked down upon my adult drive coaches. I do my best to keep a calm face and not get too frustrated. I don't like it and while I try not to keep any grudges, it does leave a temporarily sour taste in my mouth. I also remember being treated with nothing but respect by many fellow drive coaches, student or adults.

Personally I will always lean towards student drive coaches. I think its important for a student to assume that responsibility and that it helps students grow as leaders. Weird thing about the mentors of 1912: they refused to be the drive coach. They are of the firm opinion that a student should be drive coach and the majority of our lead technical mentors have been very passionate about that. Thinking back, our mentors almost never ever drive the robot, even at the build space or on demos. They simply see that as something we kids do.

[Tetraman]

"What works for your team may not work for my team. What works for my team may not work for your team."

[Kimmeh]

Originally Posted by Holtzman

It's important to try and separate yelling at someone because they are angry, and yelling so that someone hears you.

Originally Posted by BrendanB

As Tyler mentioned you often times have to yell to get your point across as a coach.

I'm quite aware. I've been on both the drive team and a drive coach as well.

This happened in 2011 so the details are a bit fuzzy now. There might have been profanity, which I know would set me off. Again, I don't remember what was said, just that it was what was said, not the volume that it was said at. And I know that both the students on my team as well as the other team were were very upset.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by rachelholladay

As drive coach, I also often had a rather odd role post-match. We have had the instance (which I'm sure almost everyone has had) where the drive team gets back the pit after a not-so-great match and everyone not on the drive team wants to say what they thought could have been done differently. I don't really blame them, but situations are seen differently from behind the glass then up in the stands. On the occasions where our mentors have wanted to admonish at the drive team, I have had them tell me (as drive coach) rather than then hassle the drivers directly. Then I process the information and try to give the advice to the drivers in a more calm and applied way. Call me maternal, but I like to protect my drive team from being yelled at.

This actually isn't that odd of a role. It is very important for the Drive Coach to be able to diffuse frustration toward the drive team (it happens) and redirect it to become constructive feedback which will help the team perform better. Emotions run high at competition, and that is exactly why it is important for the Drive Coach to remain level headed and respectful as much as possible throughout competition. At times, it is even best for the Drive Coach to sort of "take one for the team" and take the blame for a decision on the field whether or not it was the best decision with the available information at the time and whether or not it was actually their mistake. This serves to keep unnecessary pressure off the drivers, and the Drive Coach should be someone who can take that kind of heat and roll with it. Sometimes the team just wants someone to blame and the drive team happens to be very visible.

Being on the drive team is all fun and games, until someone on one's own team takes it upon themselves to yell at the drivers.*

*It's actually not always fun and games; lot's of mind-numbingly repetitive practice.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

This actually isn't that odd of a role. It is very important for the Drive Coach to be able to diffuse frustration toward the drive team (it happens) and redirect it to become constructive feedback which will help the team perform better...

Yes. Gosh, I hope it's not odd! Most coaches I know take this responsibility very seriously. I'd argue it's the most important role any of us plays--and there are a lot of things vying for that top spot. It also relates to almost everything in the Top 10 on this list of coaching attributes, which was a cornerstone of my coaching foundation (still is of course, albeit personalized and internalized). Pretty reputable guy, too.

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

A good drive team coach does these things:
1. Takes full responsibility for all negative happenings on the field
2. Gives full credit to driver, operator, and hp for all positive happenings on the field
3. Shields the drive team from distractions
4. Never argues with the drive team in public
5. Evaluates the drive team and robot after each match, and allows the drive team to evaluate them, as harsh as they wish
6. Keeps the drive team calm and loose
7. Says as few words as possible
8. Thinks fast
9. Speaks clearly
10. Listens to drive team, pit crew, scouting crew
11. Listens to alliance partners and knows when to take their leadership
12. Knows when to tell alliance partner to hush and do what they are told
13. Knows more about their competition than the competition knows about them
14. Knows their alliance partner's strengths and weaknesses
15. Can handle the pressure of an entire team (and 2 partner teams), while keeping this pressure off of the driver, operator, and hp.
16. Knows the #1 person on the other teams who makes the strategy, scouting, and alliance picking decisions... and has their ear.
17. Encourages the rest of the team to be honest with the ability of the robot and current repair status.
18. Is a role model
19. Contributes to the decision regarding who is driving, operating, and hp'ing
20. Knows all of the game rules, and even the Q&A nuances
21. Knows how to talk to the head ref, and teaches that to the drive team
22. Always keeps GP in mind
23. Competes as hard as they can on the field, but offers help to other teams off of the field
24. Prepares a 16-team pick sheet, even though they are not in the top 8 teams.
25. Is responsible for the drive team to be on time for each match
26. Delegates responsibility to drive team to check robot readiness (after depending on the pit crew for preparing it)
27. Visits other team pits to see how they are doing and to do pre-match strategy and scouting
28. Watches matches with drive team, asking them what they would do in certain positions
29. Prepares "scripts" for each match, depending on alliance partners and opponents.
30. Makes sure that all alliance teams know what the "plan" is during the match.
31. DOES NOT change this "plan" 1 minute before the match starts.
32. DOES NOT dictate to alliance partners
33. Knows the score (approximate) and time of the match at all times.. and communicates this, as needed to the drive team
34. Alerts the drive team if a penalty is about to happen.
35. During the finals... if their team is the alliance captain, tells the other team that they are the lead team, but will listen to all input (or, they delegate this leadership role to a picked alliance partner)
36. During the finals... NEVER demands to be in control of the alliance if they are a picked team
37. During the finals... checks to see if the pit crew has prepared all tools and parts needed for their run to be Champions.
38. Keeps very open communication to fellow alliance coaches.
39. Asks permission from another coach if he/she can give direction to the alliance's drive team member (a coach on one team giving direction to a driver on another team).
40. Keeps alliance partner coaches off the backs of your drive team members (no other coach should be yelling at your driver)

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

They don't give a response count for the number of responses in each age group. I'm wondering if the 16+ group is just sampling error. There aren't that many teams that have been doing this for 16 years.

The 10-15 group was trending towards supporting adult coaches, and has an awful lot of teams (I want to say 1200s somewhere would be the highest number included, though.)


16 years... that would be back in 1997 or so. Back in the days of 2 coaches on the field!

Now, I don't know much of anything about that timeframe in terms of coaches, but it seems to my hazy recall of descriptions that if a team used 2 coaches, one had to be a student. This would have given teams around at that time a really good chance to figure out whether a mentor or a student was better, and go with that when the number of coaches was cut to 1.

[DampRobot]

The standard end to this kind of "student built/coached/whatever vs. mentor built" argument is that people agree that not all things may work for all teams. They also agree to continue to allow each team to go about things in their own way. While this is a fine solution, I hope that people understand that it doesn't solve the problem in a way that everyone benefits from.

In this case, the gist of the disagreement seems to be this. Some teams (including slightly more young teams) would like only students to be allowed to coach. Other teams (including a high percentage of teams with over 16 years of experience, teams like the one I am on) would like both students and mentors to be able to act as drive coaches. No one, I believe, is arguing that only mentors should be allowed to be coaches.

While allowing both students and mentors to coach is a solution, it doesn't satisfy those on the other side of the issue. The people who don't want mentors to be able to coach seem to have had bad experiences with a few teams who have mentors as coaches. They have a real (and I believe, legitimate) argument that it's not in the best interest of FRC to allow any mentors to continue coaching. The end that these people desire isn't to allow students to coach, but to keep mentors from coaching on any team.

Please don't read into this that I support one side or another. I'm perfectly fine with having mentors coach, but I wouldn't argue if Manchester decided to stop the practice next year. I personally coached my team this year on the field, and can't say I had a particularly good or bad experience with mentor coaches. I simply believe that the agreement people seem to have reached doesn't satisfy everyone, and we shouldn't suppose that it does.

[connor.worley]

I'd like to go back to the disrespect issue, since I spent my time at competition this year working on scouting and preparing match strategies. While this is not universally true, many teams with extensive scouting programs also have adult drive coaches. When my team looks at an upcoming match, we look at the capabilities of every robot on the field and decide what actions the robots on our alliance should take to most easily win the match. We put a LOT of thinking into these strategies, so by the time we're talking to alliance partners, we're confident that they're the best way to play the match. Sometimes teams don't agree with our strategies, and we ultimately will never force a team to do something they don't want to, but we'll present our strategies and argue for them because we're confident that they'll lead us to victory. I hope that doesn't come off as arrogant of disrespectful.