Pressure on Drive Team

[abeD]

A driver feels all the same pressure a star athelete would on a football team before their homecoming game..and this pressure is felt every match.

[Zorkinian]

As a fellow driver, I can tell you how it works on our team.

The drivers and the robot are the real "avatars" for teams, as the robot is what several people have labored over for several weeks and the drivers are the ones who best qualify to operate it.

The drive team is responsible for getting at least 8 hours of sleep every night, and we spend a lot of our free time concentrating on the game, thinking about possible strategies, and going over future matches in our heads.

The team itself gives the drive team fairly free reign - as long as the drivers act responsibly on (and off) the field, no blame is given, and the drivers appreciate that. Mistakes can be made on the field, but as long as they are learned from, it's okay.

Pressure imposed on the drive team from external forces (team memebers, mentors) is, in my opinion, unjustified and possibly harmful. A good driver is under pressure already - as an avatar of the team, it is his/her goal to present the team is the best possible manner (once again, on and off the field), and this pressure to perform to one's best in every way is more than enough pressure for any individual. Outside pressure can only distract a committed driver from his goals.

For the most part, it's up to other members of the drive team and the team itself to recognize when a drive team member is pressuring himself/herself too much, and try and loosen them up a bit. Sure, matches get lost, bad things happen, you make a terrible mistake that costs your alliance the game - but don't focus so hard on your failures that you are unable to succeed.

I'd say these are distilled words of wisdom from our drive coach, Andy.

[AmyPrib]

Well, being a new coach, I think there is a very fine balance of "pressure" or rather teamwork that needs to be applied within the driveteam. I do not feel that a driver or operator should be the ones making all the strategy decisions. In this game especially, there are so many things going on, that there is no way the driver can see what the best move is all the time. That's why you have a coach, operator, and human player as extra sets of eyes.

Now depending on the experience level of the operators, they can make their own decisions at any given moment to the best of their ability. Veteran operators have a hand up in the decision making capability. Rookie operators would probably need more coaching. Rookies may also feel more "pressure" simply because they don't have the experience at operating or strategy choices, and they are always trying to do their best.

I do feel that the driver and operator need to have a very good line of calm communication, because they literally have to work together in operating that robot. As far as the coach is concerned, I think one of their main roles is to guide the strategy, while taking as much input from the student operators as possible. I think that some level of strategy should be thought out before you get to the field because that also eliminates confusion on the field. I think if all 4 drive team members have good communication, trust, and teamwork, the confusion factor will be minimized, if not eliminated.

As far as one of the original questions, I don't think that so much pressure should be put on the student operators that they get flustered and pressurized on the field, or they may wind up making unnecessary mistakes. Nor should they be "fired" if they make a couple critical mistakes. It's a learning process for everyone in many aspects. Each team needs to figure out what the right balance of seriousness/pressure and fun is for them, because we are to have fun, as well as go far in the competition.

This year we had driveteam try-outs. We had several candidates for each position, gave them all chances at our first regional, and by Friday morning, felt comfortable to narrow it down to one person per position based on various aspects of their performance.
Regardless, the drive team needs to know how to work calmly under pressure. You may have other team members critiquing your performance each match, but it's typically constructive criticism to help you improve and tell you things you may have missed.
There's always times where students/adults will freak out during matches, but in my opinion, as long as it's not 100% of the time (or even 51%), you're probably doing ok.

Everything's not always about winning (even though it's great to win!). Mistakes happen, everybody makes them, learn from it and go on. And the amount of sleep... depends on the person, but 7-8hrs should do.....

and by the way, I don't think any member of the drive team should feel they need to take full responsibility for losses, mistakes, etc. And nobody else should make you feel that way. If the drive team is being "blamed" for everything that goes wrong, then it would seem there's something wrong with the level of team support. If you put the blame on yourself, buck up and remember that you didn't (and shouldn't) make every single decision that led to any result. Same goes for winning. Chances are, there's a large number of people involved in the team's results, not just the driveteam.

I think that's how we do it....

[Steve Shade]

I've been coaching for a number of years and I find that each year I have to change my approach to match the characteristics of the students on and off the field. My general process doesn't change. Once our drivers are selected they work as a team along with the students off the field to set up all the matches and get the robot working. I try to alleviate the pressure from my drive team, placed by other members of the team and natural environment of the competition, and make it a fun loving atmosphere where the students have confidence in executing their plan so they can attempt to enjoy the fastest 2 minutes of their life. It is a team effort and my goal is to involve the greatest number of people who will be productive towards the team. Removing pressure from the entire team is a tricky thing to do, especially when other team leaders continue to place pressure onto the team. All anyone can do is to take the competition one match at a time, and attempt to relax though all of the emotions that develop through the course of the event.

Steve

[Rich Kressly]

Excellent question. Let me frame my answer by saying I ws an athletic coach for ten years and for the past four years I have helped shape and manage Team 103's scouting and strategy operations which are designed to support the efforts of the field coach, human player, and drive team.

Pressure:
It exists no matter how a team approaches things. A drive team is in front of thousands of people representing their school, community, and sponsors. TV cameras are often rolling. You can never remove it and you ceretainly don't want them to feel overwhelmed on one side or "beaten down" on the other. A balanced approach seems best, but each driver has his/her own personality and that too is a consideration. In order to alleviate that pressure, more than 20 of our team members have some role in scouting/strategy in order to ensure we have an extremely well prepared and informed drive team so their focus can stay just on "the next match".

Mistakes:
This depends on how you define "mistake". Drivers making mistakes because of inexperience or human error is what I call a true mistake and can easily be understood and forgiven. Drivers need unique thinking, athletic, and interpersonal abilities to be successful and should be chosen carefully. Many of these mistakes over a prolonged period of time MAY indicate a need for a change.

Then there is a whole other category that may look the same to an observer, but in reality is not a mistake. This would be a driver who makes decisions on their own and ignores or discounts communication from field coaches and partners. Each person has a job to do out there and, in order to be consistently successful, complete trust and respect is paramount. A driver who displays this type of behavior may need to be replaced (for the good of the team) a lot more quickly.

Thankfully, in my four years, we have never had the need to replace a driver because of our careful selection process and diligent efforts to support the drive team with the best information possible. This is not to say we haven't made mistakes that we have learned from. We sure have! In the end, it's an important job that needs to be taken seriously, yet it needs to be enjoyed because so few FIRST participants get to experience the thrill of the player's station.

[Ian W.]

Ideally, the drive team has no pressure.

Realistically, there's pressure from everyone.

But you know what, after three years, I've learned to simply tune it out. As the lead driver on my team, even with an almost completely untested robot that didn't work nearly up to par (we'll be fixing that tomorrow, don't you worry ;-)), I was under a lot of pressure to make everything work as it should. Well, obviously, things broke, things failed, and I didn't drive as I should have, had everything been in mint condition.

So, I went out, and I drove, and I had fun, and you know something, we were regional finalists. No one expected that, and from the moment I stepped on the field in elims, it was all fun. Pressure was gone, if I didn't win, well, we made it to the elims with 1/4 of a robot, we won in the game as far as I was concerned.

So, long story short, drive teams, don't pressure them more than you need to. Veteren drivers will be able to do most of the stuff by themselves, and be pretty relaxed. New drivers, the opposite applies. Just remember, FIRST isn't about the robot, just have fun, meet new people, and try to learn something new. Killing yourself with inhumane amounts of pressure just isn't fun for anyone.

I'm surprised no one made any pneumatics jokes yet... :-p

[edomus]

its all about having fun! I am on the drive team and we get a max of 4 hours of sleep a night during competitions.