Student Field Coaches?

[Ashley Weed]

I found out this year though that once you have a strategy, you should stay consistent. We used the same strateg throughout the year, and the only thing the coach had to do was kept the score in his head, and watch the field from a larger perspective so we didn't miss anything that was going on. Oh, and he had to make sure I remembered to deploy Moose and drive it home!

[Chris Nowak]

Our coaches have always been adults, because our leaders are experienced and we lack students who would want to fill that position.

In the past for team 74 there has been very little competition for the positions of driver(controls movement) and operator(controls the arms + claws,etc). However, this year, with many people trying for the positions it was very different. Our leaders narrowed it down to 6 ppl (4 for operator + driver, 2 for HP). However, this is as far as it went, so we ended up with a "static" drive team. I really dont feel it worked well at all, not because the drivers did bad or anything but because the one driver who eventually did drive could probably have been better with more practice time(even if not, it still would be a good idea) while time was given to the other candidates to try for driver.

My reccomendation is to decide early about who is to be your team's driver and operator and stick with it.

[ChrisH]

We recommend having at least 2 drivers who are reasonably familiar with the machine. This is based on our experience last year of having our lead driver get sick Friday morning at San Jose. It certainly had an adverse effect on our seeding.

BTW it certainly wasn't nerves, this was Nick's fifth year driving and his nickname is "the Iceman", with good reason.

ChrisH

[Jeff Waegelin]

Our team has, with just a couple of exceptions, always used student coaches. A few times last year, we had one student and one adult, but that didn't work too well. Our adult coach got a little too jumpy when things weren't going well, and hit one of the other team's stop buttons. He learned his lesson, but we've stuck with student coaches since then, since adults don't do that much better, and we want this to be about the students, not the adults. Our student coaches (including myself) have done a good job, and we like it that way.

[Ian W.]

also, one thing that you probably shouldn't do is have a current driver be a mentor (if your team has more than one driver). they might be a little too inclined to grab the controls to make the robot do something, and as we all know, that's a bad thing. in fact, any mentor should be told before each match, make even one move for the controls, and we'll toss you, cause no one wants to be DQ'ed for a stupid thing like that.

i think one match, we got very lucky (when taking all things into account). we were up against RAGE (great team, btw), and our chains just fell off on one side. so, we were effectivly dead, cause spinning around the field doesn't help much. so, i managed to get the robot back into the hoem zone (i was driver), and then i tried testing the individual sides, to see if i could pinpoint the problem. after i figure out the entire right side is dead, i turn and tell our mentor (i won't say any names), and tell him the robot is useless, and that someone did something to knock off the chains. now, i don't remember this exactly, but i'm 99.9% sure that he didn't believe me, and then reached out, and grabbed the right joystick, to 'make sure' i was right. now, up to this point, this was our worst match, but if our mentor did indeed touch the joystick, we got incredibly lucky, because we were not DQ'ed.

also, next year, the mentor badges should be much easier to spot. they should be a different color entirely, or just have a big 'MENTOR' printed on them, cause a little sticker, while it works, isn't the best solution. and, with the amount of pins FIRST gets, i doubt that adding another word to one, or printing it on different paper would cost that much more.

[Wetzel]

Originally posted by Team522 Captain


We do not allow the students on our team to be field coaches b/c we don't need something unplanned to happen during a match.

How often does everything go as planned?

Students minds are not equipped to make quick decisions when something goes wrong during a match. At least not my team anyway. Our Team Captain Richard Xuereb is our field coach

I disagree with the idea that "students minds are not equipped to make quick decisions when something goes wrong during a match" Other then to say I saw plenty of good student coaches our there. I also saw some good adult coaches. I also saw poor student and adult coaches. It seems to me that making such a blanket statement is demeaning to all students. Telling a student you can't do that because you arn't as smart. Maybe its me, but I think I can do anything. (Silly teenage optimisim) Change the world I can, and will. One way or teh other....
Anywho, I was just speaking up for my student coach. Who isn't slow thinking.


Wetzel

~~~~~~~~~~~
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
I am invincible
I am teenaged!

[mtaman02]

In reply to Wetzels message.....

I was talking more in general about my team. The kids from my school and they will admit this are not the sharpest tools in the shed. There have been maybe 1 or 2 students in my school on my robotics team that were smart and pretty quick at coming up with a fallback plan during a match when the coaches couldn't. Those 2 students were our drivers for ALL major competitions just for the simple fact that they communicate well, drive well, they don't take anything for granted. Your right there are alot of good student coaches and i know a few of them myself. I guess i shouldve been a little bit more precise on what i was saying. I was just stating why my team only has adult coaches and not student coaches. I was not really talking about other teams. Some teams work well with student coaches some work well with both student and adult coaches and others work well with adults. Our team works well with the adult coach.


I do apologize if I have offended any of the teams who use the student coaches @ a competition.

[mtaman02]

By the way Congradulations RAGE (Team 173) on becoming the 2002 National Champs.







Team 522 - RoboWizards
Mike - Team Captain

[E. The Kidd]

After the drama of this year everything on the floor has now been voted to be student run from now on. This year I was coaching our team as a Jr. in high school, I will be doing the same next year (look for me). I agree with Jeff on the point that students are fully capable coaching robotics teams effectively. This year we won a 2 on 1 match, our partner didn’t work, we didn't have a working ball handling thingy, or goal grabbers but thanks to me an our driver we beat a 2 goal grabber and a 1 goal grabber. To think we had nothing but a drive train and a lot of yelling.

p.s. WE BEAT THE BRISTISH...AGAIN....in that match that is

[purplehaze357]

the only student coach i knew was of team 272...Megan

[Gui Cavalcanti]

We had a generally lax approach about 2 of the spots on our drive team. Thomas Fortuna and I were always the mentor and primary driver, respectively, this year. Since we only had two buttons on our secondary controller (heh... one disabled the other, the other was a rocker switch for our goal grabber...), the secondary driver only had to be able to listen and follow directions. The human player rotated between 3 tall guys that never really impacted our games much more than one or two points.

Unfortunately, our secondary drivers sometimes didn't want to follow instructions, and instead had different ideas as to how the game should be played. That didn't work out too well, but we eventually 'persuaded' them to our arguments...

Thomas was a sophomore last year, as was I. He had a great mind for strategy and knew the game in and out, and was able to work extremely fluidly with any other coaches. We'd always be at someone's pit 15 minutes before queing(sp), or more depending on the strength of our opponents.

Our mentors have never really expressed an interest in the spotlight or playing the game. One of our mechanical mentors, Reggie, said "I just build the thing. You can drive it any way you want. Just realize that I built that robot tough for a reason, and don't go pansying it around". I get the feeling that if we let him in the driver's area we'd be deaf by the end of the match by all the competitive screams of his.

I think that the key to the whole driver issue is to really run through who is actually qualified in the week before shipping. If there are two really good drivers and a really good coach, rotate the drivers and keep the coach. If there is just one really good driver, let him or her drive, but train someone else. Make sure to train a second driver that can fill in if the first person is sick or mysteriously absent (CODEX meeting, maybe?

We've always had a mentor as our coach until IRI. She was transferred to Texas so one of our students stepped up. She really knew her stuff and did a great job helping out our rookie driver. I hope she will be our coach for the next season.