Does your team normally have an adult coach in the drivers’ station during competitions, or are all positions usually taken by students?
If you care to do so, please enlighten us as to the thought process behind your choice.
edit: This is by no means meant as a thread to discourage one method or another; just a forum in which different styles and the reasoning behind them may be discussed. Thank you for keeping this in mind.
What’s the difference between Adults at least 50% of the time and Students at least 50% of the time? Aren’t those two ways of expressing the same thing?</probable curiosity>
We have had both student and adult coaches in the past, but as a note, our adult coaches never have been over the age of 20-something, not by design, just by how it happened.
For instance, our amazing coach this year (Marc in this picture) was an adult, but just to years previous he was our driver.
It seems like people who have been drivers and operators previously are the best coaches… but a college student that can make it to all the events are REALLY hard to find. :ahh:
-q
If you use adults exactly 50% of the time and students the other 50%, then the two choices are equal. But if it’s 51/49 or any other ratio, then only one choice applies.
1902 has always had a college coach. Our coaches both have had experience out on the competition field.
In previous years we went with a pre-college student coach. This year we started using an adult mentor coach.
We will probably stay with the mentor coach next year, but we’ve had good student coaches in the past, so it could go either way.
330 uses an adult coach. They’ve done that for so long it’s hard not to…
1135 uses a student coach. It’s a student-run team, pretty much.
We have several guidelines for our coach, in order of importance:
If we don’t have a student who’s interested in coaching that at least meets #1 and #2, then we put an adult in to coach. Our rookie year we had a student coach, and in the last 2 years we’ve had an adult coach. Driving is usually secondary to speaking and interacting with teams for us, so in our 3 years of existence it has been build team members/mentors who are drivers & coaches.
It really varies for us in the past we have had all the above; from 2000 to 2003 we had adult coaches, 2004 to 2006 I don’t remember a nonpre-college coach being on the field, in 2007 we had a pre-college coach at our regional and an adult at the Championships. In 2008 I (a college student) stepped into the coach role.
If we send a pre-college student if there is one that displays a very good knowledge base of the game and strategy, but it also depends on our drivers (for instance this year we ran a very “green” group of drivers so we decided to have a mentor with on field experience serve as coach.
We have always had student coaches, however, I think that it really depends on the kids experience and what the ( the mentors and students) decide. Our mentors’ reasoning for them not being a drive coach is that the students will develop quick thinking and strategy skills.
We try to use students as much as we can, but if none are interested in the position for a given match, we don’t mind rewarding our engineers, who volunteer their time and experience, with some on-field excitement.
We have always used adult coaches, I have been the field coach for the last four years.
I wouldn’t say being a part of the competition team is a “reward” for a particular person. You should have people in those spots that give the highest chance of rewarding the entire team with success in the competition. Remember, there are many sub teams and disciplines that students concentrate on while participating on a team. The competition is more than likely the only thing they share as a unit.
While our team used a student coach this year, my stance on the issue is the field coach should be a very mature, well spoken, and intelligent individual who can handle immense amounts of stress. 99% of the time this will be a mentor, but there are always students who can fit the bill. Pushing a student or adult who does not show these qualities into the field coach position (or any other competition team position for that matter) is like putting a square peg in a round hole and will most likely bring up issues as the season goes along.
On our team, we have 2 rules:
Seriously, though I have been the on field coach since 2000 and don’t really see that changing in the near future.
As a shout out in favor of adult coaches - how many regional and championship Woodie Flowers Award winners are/have been drive team coaches?
Let me start the list…feel free to add to it
Ken Patton
Dave Verbrugge - ?? Someone help me out here - I swear that was Dave coaching 67 in that 1999 Philly video I watched on 121’s website. That was before my time.
Andy Baker
Paul Copioli
Karthik Kanag…asa…ba…zzzz…
Derek Bessette
JVN
Chris Fultz
These are but a few.
Apparently effective communicators make good coaches too. Who knew? 
Also, the opposite it true - I think coaching can help develop communication and other skills that help adults improve as mentors.
All 4 teams I’ve been involved with have used Adult mentors (3 used teachers) as the coach.
I am the coach on my team.
Personally, I think i did a pretty good job, and that every team has at least one student capable of doing a good job as a coach. I believe these students should be given the cance to do that. However, things are pretty different in the Israel regional (where i haven’t seen even one adult coach).
First I am a relatively new mentor on our team, and don’t know all the ins and outs. I speak for myself - not for the other mentors or team members. My reaction to this thread is:
Wow. I guess that makes 1511’s all student drive team somewhat of an anomaly. IMHO building a great drive TEAM is the mentor’s responsibility - the on-field coach is part of that team. That’s just my opinion - but in 1511 we had an awesome team of drivers and coaches, and a backup team in case someone fell ill or was injured. Every member of the drive team must pass - with a 100% score - a test on the rules - and the coach was definitely the best at that knowledge. This was in addition to the other requirements they had to meet. They have to apply with a resume and defend their qualifications to the mentors.
But the whole idea of FIRST (imho again) is to mold our future leaders, scientists and technologists. Yes it’s a competition - but not one that should sacrifice the win for allowing a student to feel the achievement of leading that win.
Part of being a leader is learning auto-didactically - on your own, under pressure by making mistakes and learning from them. How can a student do that if they have a mentor being on the on-field team? It becomes a mentor lead team, rather than a student lead team. We want to build great LEADERS. Our current coach has been involved for 3 years and is just a junior and he will be senior next year. It’s his job to coach and build his replacement from the freshmen, sophmores and juniors on the team, and to bring them up to speed (with the mentors help) to transition the drive team to a new coach next year.
I guess if you had a small enough, or new enough team that you just haven’t yet developed the depth to have a fully student drive team - I could see a mentor stepping in, as they trained up a new coach for the next year for one, maybe 2 years. But I stlll think the kids will learn faster and better under exactly the pressure described above. They will make mistakes - but that’s what the process is about.
This organization isn’t just about winning a competition - it’s about building kids self confidence, leadership skills, team skills and engineering capabilities. How can they do that if an adult does it for them?
I don’t think having a mentor drive coach is having an “adult do it for them”.
Part of building good leaders comes from the background. The majority of people are not just going to lead. In order to lead well, you have to fail at least once, and learn from it. Mentors help here. Truly, you can mentor on the field just as much as in the pit.
The teams I work with are pretty small. 330 typically has around 10 students, of whom 3 are on drive and the rest are scouting. Mentors also scout during breaks.
1135 is simply carrying over from FTC. They choose to have a student on the field as coach. While a relatively small team, they are pretty much all student-run. So having a student coach is a logical continuation.
I’m with SL8. Having an adult coach is not having an adult do it for you. On a good drive team, it’s having an adult do it with you.
other than a few off-season events, 234 has always had an adult mentor as field coach. it is always an experienced mentor.
one of the keys, in my view, is consistency. except in a rare circumstance, we do not switch anyone on the drive team once the season starts. it is important that the four people learn to communicate and anticipate each other. we talk strategy, other robots, review what we did in a match, etc. on the way to and from the field. we try to find a group of 4 that know the game, the strategy, the robot, and can also work together as a team.
in past years, the coach and some other positions were ‘rotated’ or used as rewards. it was a mess, because of small mistakes that were made with a new coach or new human player that the experienced team had already worked out. someone just stepping in is more likely to make the small mistakes that lead to penalties. changing coaches was also tough on the driver / operator because they get used to a certain person and level of communication during tha match, and if it suddenly changes it can throw them off. by “rewarding” someone, we actually hurt our team and our alliance from an inconsistent level of play.