Having nearly completed my 4th year of FIRST, I was wondering if there are any other 4 year drivers out there? I was the lead driver for 1569 my freshman and sophomore year and lead driver of 3456 my junior and senior year. I’ve gotta say, winning the Seattle Regional and driving at the Championship both as a freshman was an experience I’ll never forget.
Anyone else had the awesome opportunity to obtain 4 years of driving experience?
This is the fourth year for our field coach (Rachel), drive train operator (Devon), and device operator (Nick). We suspect we may have the most experienced drive team in FIRST right now.
Scott Bahl the driver for Team 971 is in his senior year. He was the stick man on our 2009 Championship run. Since then he has been the driver for 2010, 2011, 2012 robots. He’s got some sic moves and he is driving our best robot yet.
2010 Newton Match 87 was legendary
this is my fourth year driving for team 2512, the Duluth East Daredevils
I’m planning on driving 3 years (9-11 grade), so that during Senior year I can help train the new driver, so the team has a reliable driver by the time I leave.
Though at the end of each year we have a mentor competition, where the mentors compete, so I may get the chance to do that come my mentoring years…
I’m a 7 year driver and 9 years in FIRST
I’m going to take just a second to geek out here.
For years, I’ve watched your robot move with absolute grace. In some cases, in more grace than championship robots of that year. Sometimes, I catch myself wondering exactly how they manage such a mellifluous DT. Of course, a part of is props to the build team, but the driver is the man behind the controls.
I find myself thinking this, and then I catch glimpses of your driver behind the controls, and how he’s using a steering wheel to control those amazing machines. I’m pretty good with a set of joysticks, but behind a wheel, I wouldn’t be able to keep myself straight.
I just have to say, props. Both to your team and your driver.
Good luck,
I drove for 4 years. Walking out into the dome as a senior was just as cool and chilling as it was as a freshman.
-Nick
We have a 4 year driver, 3 year manipulator/shooter, 1 year human player, and a 5 year drive coach.
I drove the chassis for Team RUSH’s 2007-2009 robots, and I controlled the kicker and hanger for 2010 when we had a freshman driving the chassis.
I definitely think there’s something to be said for having someone with a lot of experience behind the controls, or at least having one member with competition experience so that the other operator/driver can learn from them.
Above all else though, practice makes perfect. Even if you just throw together a chassis and have your operator visualize what they would do in any give position (I remember a pretty cool story from team 51 regarding practice through visualization from last year), it will be enormously beneficial.
I didn’t drive for 4 years, but I was on the drive team and did a bit of everything. As a freshman i was the human player throwing inner tubes on the field, my sophomore year i was coach and robocoach at seperate competitions, my junior year i was throwing moon rocks in Boston and then took over as Driver at Davis and drove at both the competitions my senior year. Even if you aren’t the driver of the robot, just being down on the field is an incredible experience and i wouldn’t trade that for anything.
Our drive team is all juniors and they’ve been on the field all three years in one form or another. Best part, still got another year with them.
I know some teams have a strategy of picking two drivers their sophomore year and having them drive for 3 years together. I think the dynamic of the two drivers working together as a team for so long makes a strong robot even stronger. You can anticipate the others moves before they even happen.
In some ways though I think this is unfair because you would have to fall in the “lucky” year to be able to have a chance to drive. When I was in high school we had new driver tryouts every year.
I drove for 1 year. It was…interesting 
We do tryouts with the winner picking the rest of the drive team. Incumbent drivers stay on the drive team. The only time we really hold tryouts is if the current drivers want them, or if they’re both graduating.
Which puts me in the position of being a 1st year driver my senior year. It would be nice for some multi-year continuity, but hey, at least I get to drive.
We try to get four-year guys at every job. It wasn’t quite intended to work out this way, but the way it ended up is that we get a freshman driver every leap year. Depending on what happens with the current drive crew (human player or second driver evolving to coach, etc.) we may end up with a freshman field coach every non-leap even year.