Student or Adult Coach

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by TylerS

If your goal is to win matches (it might not be) then pick the best person for the job.

This might be a student, mentor, support animal, whatever. The hard part isn't deciding between a mentor or student it's about identifying the individual on your team who will best fill the role of a coach and how to do that is a whole other discussion.

BRB, giving my dog all my 1923 shirts & freeing up weekends

Joking aside, this is pretty much it. Each team is gonna do what's right for them, and as long as the team itself is happy overall with the decision, then it's all gravy. I like to think our kids are happy with me as a coach, but if our student leadership ever approached me with a solution they thought might be better for our goals as a team, I'd be more than willing to give it a shot.

In my experience, a great deal of coaching success comes from striking a balance - between being confident and headstrong enough to make a call regarding the match, and being gracious & accommodating enough to be an agreeable and likeable partner for quals and elims alike.

That is a trait of maturity, which (for the most part) is achievable at any age.

[seg9585]

On a serious note to answer the question of "why", there are actually several reasons we have an adult coach but a few of the big ones:

When dealing with other teams in your alliance, things can get a little heated sometimes about which team feels their strategy for the round is optimal. I frequently see other teams with overzealous/bossy adult coaches who feel their strategy for the upcoming round is the only way, and the students get intimidated by it (and will frequently "cower" to the other adult coach when they don't have another adult to stand up for them). My goal is to help the alliance make more level-headed decisions regardless of whether the alliance partners have student or adult coaches.

Students have great decision-making abilities and are very smart, but in the end are still kids and can make mistakes (just like an adult could). What the adult has, though, is experience, and with that experience comes knowing their own history of "what has gone wrong" in the past and what to do to mitigate it. The coach is always the second set of eyes for the students to make sure the robot is configured to plan on the field, the joysticks are plugged into the correct ports, etc. There have been so many times the students forgot some of the important field config steps and it cost us rounds, and sometimes an adult with experience is the best person to double-check their work.

I feel the coach should be the best person on the team for the job, regardless of whether it's a student or adult mentor. A team shouldn't "force" itself to choose between picking an adult vs picking a student because of its team history or because "that's the way it should be".

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

We always had an adult coach. This year it's me. It has always been a team alumni or a college student. Never a teacher.
Having a student coach is nearly impossible for us, as a french speaking team, since most students have limited english skills.

[IronicDeadBird]

Sumtimes 1339 lets me be shot caller cuz I'm MLG pro strategy and gamer.
Real talk though I've seen a lot of great student drivers take losing to personally so by being out on the field and being the "shot caller" as long as they drive at 110% then we lose cause the shot caller is bad.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Whatever makes sense for your team based on the people within it.

[cadandcookies]

Honest answer for 2667 is we haven't decided yet. It's probably going to be one or the other, though

[the_godfaubel]

This is what I learned from my drive team experience: having an adult coach really keeps the drivers in check. They are kind of the rock back there to make sure you don't lose your cool. They protect you from saying something really stupid if you are having a bad match. They have also, most likely, been in these situations before whereas student coaches might just not know what to do in a panic situation.

[rich2202]

Our team has always had a Student Coach. It gets one more student onto the field. The Mentors watch from the Stands, sees what happens, and makes recommendations for the next match. There is not much a Mentor can do in the 2 minutes 30 seconds that a Student can't do. In that time, you are executing the plan. There is not enough time to change it. A student is just as capable of keeping the drivers on track. Too many cooks spoil the broth. You have to let the driver drive. If something wacky happens, they have to learn to deal with it. It is only one match. Better to learn during the Qualification Matches, so they will be ready to react themselves during Eliminations.

That said, I have been a volunteer on the Field for the past few years (ref, robot inspector, field reset, etc.). If they did have an issue, I would be a friendly face they would not feel intimidated asking a question.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by rich2202

Our team has always had a Student Coach. It gets one more student onto the field. The Mentors watch from the Stands, sees what happens, and makes recommendations for the next match. There is not much a Mentor can do in the 2 minutes 30 seconds that a Student can't do. In that time, you are executing the plan. There is not enough time to change it. A student is just as capable of keeping the drivers on track. Too many cooks spoil the broth. You have to let the driver drive. If something wacky happens, they have to learn to deal with it. It is only one match. Better to learn during the Qualification Matches, so they will be ready to react themselves during Eliminations.

I agree that a student could be just as competent of a coach as a mentor. I've met some incredible student coaches, and 1678 had student coaches through 2013.

Regardless of student/mentor coach, there actually is a lot you can do mid-match to ensure the victory. I've made some big calls over the past few years that saved us qual matches, or ensured an playoff victory, etc.

Does that mean you don't need to plan for each match? No, but sometimes things don't go as planned, and being able to make the right calls in these situations can help pull a win out of a bad situation.

Just saying, plans can change in a 2.5 minute match. Being able to change plans quickly when necessary can make or break a match.

Now, carry on with beating the dead horse of mentor/student coaches

-Mike

PS. You hear 254 has a student coach now? Crazy times.

[Richard.Varone]

We use an adult coach, the primary reason isn't the students being able to handle it or not, it's more because if something goes wrong/unplanned we want the adult to take any/all blame for how a match plays out. We feel this takes some of the pressure off the students and prevents any fingers pointing to them.

[snoman]

Let me start by saying I have seen some very bad adult coaches. They try to take over figuratively if not literally. They try make up for shortcomings they have experienced in the past.
That being said a student off of our Drive team asked for an adult mentor to coach.
The reasons they gave were they didn't feel another student would be comfortable correcting them if they did something wrong. Also to mitigate the intimidation Factor of another teams overzealous adult Drive coach

[abigailthefox]

We had an adult member decide by themselves that they would be our drive coach this year, after numerous years of student coaches. The adult mentor has only coached during a few matches at an offseason event last year (IRI).

I am not sure of the entire history of my team (did we have an adult coach 8-10 years ago? I don't know) but I can speak for the last several years, and we have been one of the more "student-run" focused teams, with student coaches in addition to student leadership.

Personally, I disagree with the choice for an adult mentor to coach this year, and also with the manner in which this decision was made. Last year, we had a student coach, and it was our most successful year (won our division at champs). This may well be correlation not causation, but it doesn't indicate any kind of ongoing problem, or that our current drive set up wasn't working well.

I believe that a student coach helps foster community within the drive team, because students interact with each other differently, and teenagers tend to understand each other better than they understand adults. A drive coach job is all about communication and understanding.

Some people say that adult coaches can be more intimidating when talking strategy, or calmer under pressure, but our drive team actually discusses strategy as a whole with other teams--it is not an exclusive job of the coach. Our two drivers embodied each of them--one driver was the most bad a** person you will ever meet, who exudes confidence and is assertive in conversation, and the other was incredibly calm under pressure, and very logic oriented. Our coach possessed these qualities as well, and they made a great team. They were respectful to adult coaches, but did not defer to them unless the adult coach could prove beyond a doubt that their strategy had merit.

With an adult coach, you lose a chance for a student to gain that valuable experience. This year, our team is way younger, and desperately needs experience. It probably won't be our most successful year, in terms of wins, and I think that means we need to put some focus on what we can do this year to increase the collective experience and FRC knowledge team members have. It's not the year to put an adult in for (the questionable logic of) win maximization.

Furthermore, I am honestly a bit irked by the fact that this decision was made exclusively by the mentor acquiring the position. While he is our lead mentor, he chose to make this decision on his own (team members did not know that this would be our plan this season), and effectively coerced our mechanical lead into agreement. He stated his intentions to her (she is wonderful, but she's also a very soft spoken sophomore who tends to avoid conflict), and there wasn't really any team deliberation or informing before the decision became final.

Our team captain is a student and all of our leads are students, and we pride ourselves on being student run. Do we win everything? No. Are we a super elite team with awesome sponsors? No. Do we learn a lot? Oh yes. Do we have fun? Almost always (build season is still maximum stress season). But this year I fear that our student leadership is fading, and the students themselves becoming little more than figureheads. I have hope for the future, but I'm less confident about it.

Tl;dr: You can do what works for you, but keep the "spirit of FIRST" as well as your own team ideas and goals in mind when choosing.

[Lij2015]

If you have a student qualified enough to do it, the experience is amazing. I've never driven with a mentor drive coach before so I don't know the difference from a drive prospective, but if you're team isn't a regional powerhouse type team I can imagine it would get them taken more seriously with an adult coach.

[GeeTwo]

Apart from two or three matches our rookie year, we've always had a student coach. If we found ourselves without a single student capable of the role, we would have had an adult there, but it's a bit of team culture that if there is a student who has shown him/herself capable of the job, the job goes to a student. Whenever feasible, the adults are mentors, advisors, and consultants rather than directors of team activities. It may not be best decision in terms of being competitive as a team, but this policy has helped us grow an awesome crop of upperclassmen and alumni. And that's what it's all about: inspiring and developing the next generation of (tech) leaders.

[3175leheh]

We've always had a student coach, because we've found that our drivers and operators (also students) relate and understand the student coaches better, and they believe that they're on the same level, instead of a teacher-student dynamic.