Drive Coach Training

FIRST General Forum
1

Hello all -

As we are getting two new drivers this year, and with a team largely populated by new players, I’ve decided to take the position of Drive Coach this year. While I see a lot of talk about drivers and the skills of driving, I do not see a lot of discussion on the skills of a drive coach.

I realize already from my twice reading of The New Cool that a drive-coach operates much like the Air-Traffic Controller of an airport - having to see all that the drivers do not see and direct them to accomplish big-picture strategy. What else should I consider as I pursue this venture?

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2

Slowly you will develop your own style, but here are a few things to keep in mind…

-You have to be the most prepared person on the field in order to garner respect from your fellow alliance members. You need to have scouting done beforehand and go into each match with a well thought out strategy. Don’t be afraid to be unique. Know the rules inside and out.

-Don’t yell at your drive team and especially don’t yell at others. I want to win as much as anyone but don’t ruin anyone else’s experience by taking it too far. Make sure they are having fun even when you’re losing.

-After each match, gather your drive team and discuss what went right, what went wrong, ETC. Don’t get so stuck in your ways that you can’t change. Remember that it’s ultimately up to your drivers to decide the outcome of a match

I could chime in more but I’ll leave it up to some of the more experienced coaches (Raul, Paul, ETC) to help you out further. Have fun with it.

-Justin

3

The drive coach must be able to easily communicate to the drivers. Use language they can understand. When talking to them, it’s not a one on one conversation. They are looking away from you, and you need to be able to project and tell them what to do. Saying “Over there” and pointing doesn’t work. You need to be precise. Instead of saying “get the tube”, say stuff like “get the red triangle between 973 and the left minibot pole”. Be specific. You must be able to watch not only the robot, but also the field, the other robots, the countdown clock, and pay attention to your drivers and your alliance teams. You are also the one in charge of collaborating with your alliances on the strategy of the match before it starts. From personal experience, I know that when a driver steps up to the controls, their mind goes blank. They act solely on what is happening at the current moment, and often forget about a game plan. Because of this, you must be the one to tell them step by step without micromanaging them what to do. It is of utmost importance that as drive coach, you realize that you are the brain of the team during those two and a half minutes. What you decide and what you tell the drivers to do will change the entire match. You cannot just make a game plan and tell your drivers every step that they do (I’ve made that mistake). You are an employee, and need to pitch your ideas to the bosses, aka the drivers. You need to be short, concise, explicit, and forceful to a point. When they are driving, they could, or could not do what you say.

You need to be able to make the right decisions and tell your drivers exactly what to do, and then let them do it.

Sorry if it’s a lot, but having been driver and coach, there are some specifics that always need to be passed on.

Hope this helps, and if you’re confused about anything, feel free to ask/PM me for more clarification.

Good luck this season! :smiley:

4

From what I’ve heard it gets REALLY LOUD in the driver’s station… So you have to talk REALLY LOUD if you want your drivers to hear you. :slight_smile:

5

I’ve been drive coach for awhile – about 14 years now.

This is what I’ve learned, in short form:

– trust your drivers.

– give them the big picture. My coaching often involves giving them simple information like “balls on the left.”

– be commanding; know everything there is to know about your partners and opponents so you can drive the alliance strategy. This isn’t tee-ball; we’re out there to win and that sometimes means you have to do things that aren’t glamorous.

– insulate the drive team from EVERYTHING else. After a match, everyone and their sister will have questions about performance, strategy and on-field play. Your job, above all else, is to insulate your drive team from all of that criticism and acclaim. Keep them level-headed and on task. Sometimes, this means taking blame for stupid decisions.

– Relax. You have to remain calm so they remain calm. Calm drivers are good drivers.

I am an alliance coach; I try very hard to make sure all three teams are aware of what is going on and know how to play to the strengths of one another. That means that I communicate a lot with our partners, telling them what we’re doing, what issues we’re having and what I’d like for them to do. I have a, um, forceful personality and so I’m often loud and assertive. Some folks don’t like that, but it is what it is.

6

I definitely agree with what everyone has already said, and I really can’t say much because I have only been a coach for one year. I can say that threads like this have helped me learn before my first competition as coach and have helped me improve and develop over the season.

One thing that I have learned is to meet with teams before the match to discuss strategy, but the most important part of this is to make sure every team involved has a clear idea. Know enough beforehand to start the meeting with a clear sense of direction and control. Take input from other teams, but don’t let it turn into an unclear heap of different suggestions. I have worked with some teams that clearly did not understand some key aspects of the game, teams that did not follow through with their role (and did not communicate why) and teams that did not realize the Drive Team button with the sticker on it was for the Coach, not the Driver. Essentially, make sure everyone in this meeting understands what will happen. In addition, make sure you respect the other teams as well. If you know they are flat-out lying about their robot’s capabilities, don’t be a jerk about it. Many people have also stated that the meeting between Drive Teams is sometimes the only interaction between teams, so make sure to maintain a positive image for your team. Some of the teams 1126 has worked with this past year weren’t all that pleasant and that left a big impression on me. On the other hand, some teams were great to work with, which leaves a huge positive impression (and is pretty helpful once the time comes to make a pick list).

During a match, keeping calm and keeping your drivers calm is probably the most important. I will admit that I have gotten frazzled a few times and then mistakes were made. This is easier if the three of you can already work well together and have each other’s respect. On our team, we try to act as the alliance captain of our alliances. As Madison said, try to keep the entire alliance informed of what is going on and of any changes that happen. If your robot breaks down, change the game plan and let your partners know. If a tube gets caught in you claw and you need to switch to defense because you can’t score, let your partners know. This past year, I had the opportunity to be the Alliance Captain of 2 alliances. Both of these experiences helped me grow and learn but I still am not to the point of orchestrating an entire alliance during a match.

After a match, make sure to **congratulate your partners despite the outcome of the match. Upon returning to the pits, our Drive Team debriefs with a mentor and Pit Leader in a quieter location and the information is presented to the pit crew so the Drive Team, isn’t bombarded by the whole team. The debriefing consists of what went well, what went wrong, any issues with the robot, any issues in the controls and other useful information. Here is where you have to take responsibility **for some of the actions in the match. At our first competition, we had a plan to deploy on the tower in front of us and the other team would deploy on the tower in front of them. I never saw them deploy, and I couldn’t see their minibot. The tower lights weren’t working so I had no idea they deployed. A quick field read suggested that their tower was easier to get to and so we did….and then our minibot met their minibot in a pile of smoke. Not one of my better moments, but something I stand by as my decision.

I hope that what I have learned has helped you a bit! Hopefully some seasoned pros have some better advice (especially because reading their posts has influenced me)! I apologize for the rather long post, so the things I found most helpful are bolded. Again, don’t take my word for everything. I really don’t have much experience and I try not to pretend I do.

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7

All good advice so far. There are some more insights on this thread.

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This is not a comprehensive list of things a coach should do, but more a couple of the more important skills.

Pre-competition:

  • If you have inexperienced drivers, then you will need to practice with them. A lot. This requires a significant time commitment to get to know them, the game, and your robot. Work with your drivers to learn how you want them to execute.

  • Learn what type of motivation your drive team needs. Do they need to be motivated or calmed down? Match how you coach to what they need.

**
Strategy:**

  • Understand the game. The best coaches really know the game and the best strategies. This mostly comes from seeing lots and lots of matches. See what teams of similar ability are doing and what is winning matches for them.

  • Be honest. Know your teams strengths and weaknesses. Don’t give inaccurate information about your team (ie; offensive or defensive abilities). Have scouting data available to backup your claims. If your team is limited, work with your partners to develop a strategy to put your alliance in the best position to win.

  • Know your partners strengths and weaknesses. Examine the scouting data on your partners so you can develop a winning strategy.

**
During a match**

  • Know the clock. The first couple matches will seem to be over before they start. 2:00 minutes goes pretty fast at first. Get used to the time it takes to complete typical game tasks. Eventually this will become second nature.

  • Communicate clearly with your drive team. Execute what you agreed to do.

  • Work as an alliance. Communicate clearly with the other coaches. Let them know if you need help or if something is not going to plan. Make sure they know if you aren’t going to be able to do what was agreed upon.

It seems everyone has a different style of coaching…and most of them can be successful. There is no…one perfect coaching style…well outside of mine. :wink:

Good Luck. To me, its the most enjoyable experience in FIRST.

9

A note to take everything mentioned here with a grain of salt. Who knows what GDC might throw at us as far as human players go? Last year, good analysts took the role of coordinating things among the three alliance partners, so the coaches were able to focus more on their robot alone (of course, when there wasn’t a good analyst, some coaches still took initiative and worked out alliance strategies etc.).

From experience, I’ve found that sometimes a student coach might work better than an adult coach, even if they had no prior experience behind the plexiglass. If there is a team member that your drivers are particularly comfortable with, don’t hesitate to let them try coaching simply because they’ve never done it before. If nothing else, at least on a psychological level, the entire drive team will be more calmed and ready for matches.

As mentioned in Dale’s thread, you can get pretty good practice watching match videos. If you’re not attending a Week 1 event, watch streams and/or recordings of Week 1 events, especially the elimination matches (or any matches with teams that consistently perform well) and put it on mute, and just have the prospective coaches keep up a commentary of what’s going on strategically.

10

These are probably the two most important things the Coach can do.

I’ve been a Driver where the Coach did not insulate any “feedback” from the rest of the team, that was not fun. As a Coach I’ve also had other team’s mentors try to corner my Drivers to express their displeasure with the alliances decided strategy.

On top of these its also important for the Coach to keep a positive attitude and keep the Drivers in a positive attitude. Nothing kills a teams spirit like seeing their Drivers and/or Coach looking upset or disappointed on the field.

Personally I like to see the Drivers run the strategy and match prep and act more as a back stop

Lastly its also important to meet with your Drivers after every competition and go over things gone wrong & things gone right, but mostly thank them for their hard work.

11

I can’t say I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching for an official competition, as much as I’d love to. I have coached a few off-season events, but nothing in the big time. I’m saying this because if you don’t want advice from someone with no first-hand knowledge, you may not want to put too much stock in this. I have taken part in the training of one of our recent coaches, as well as learning under two of our other coaches. I’ve picked up a few things, but that’s no substitute for experience.

First, the role of a coach is just as important as any other field team member. No more, no less. Being coach just involves a lot more coordination than the other positions. A coach needs to understand that they’re not holding the weight of the whole team on their shoulders, but also that they are just as important a piece as their driver or operator. The coach needs to be prepared to play his or her part for the team, without thinking too much of themselves for it. Arrogance is the downfall of great coaches. A great coach also needs to know his “place” on an alliance. No one is more privileged than anyone else in FIRST. That being said, there are moments when you are going to either need to step up in an alliance, or step back. If it’s your first time coaching, and you’re up in a match with one of the greatest teams in FIRST, you may be more inclined to let them run the show, as they will have more experience on how to effectively run a match. That’s when you watch, and you learn. On the other hand, you may be in a match with two rookie teams. That’s when you want to step up as a true leader, show the rookies what it’s all about, to the best of your abilities. It’s your choice when you do what, but a coach needs to make him/her self heard regardless of how they play through a pre-match strategy session.

A coach needs to have interest in his/her job. On paper, the coach position is pretty dull. It takes a special kind of person to appreciate being a drive coach. This includes effectively being able to communicate with others, and analyzing data. A good coach is able to talk with other coaches about their game. A great coach is able to discuss strategy, as well as quickly and accurately describe their robot’s form and functions. Also, depending on how your team does scouting, you may need to be able to analyze data (both numerical and otherwise) as part of your strategy. This may include points scored by other robots, or qualities of other robots that may dictate a change in strategy (i.e. is a robot is using mechanums, that may influence how you use/deal with them).

In match, a coach needs to be able to multitask. A coach needs to do the following, though these are certainly not the only things:

  1. Be aware of the robot’s environment (The Field, other nearby robots)
  2. Be aware of Game Pieces the robot may need to acquire (In Logomotion, you may have needed a triangle to complete a logo. Be aware of where you can get triangles)
  3. Give instructions to his/her drivers
  4. Be aware of what the opponents are doing
  5. Be aware of what your own partners are doing
  6. Make judgment calls, if necesary, on on-the-fly changes to strategy

This is a lot for one person to do in a single match. Your other coaches will be doing that same, so don’t be afraid to make quick calls with them in-match if it’s absolutely necessary. Two things are very important. One, keep calm. Everyone tells a coach this, it CANNOT be overstated. A coach needs to keep his/her head on their shoulders so they can most effectively coordinate their alliance. Secondly, be clear and concise with your instructions. I know I had a great deal of trouble with this my first time coaching (then again, that was 09’. It could get difficult to coordinate in 2009). Avoid terms like “over there”, “that robot”, “pick that up”, and other generic phrases that could be misconstrued by your drivers. Some coaches like to point at the field in matches to provide their drivers with a little more coordination. I never got into the swing of that, but then… I’m 6’7", 350lbs. My arm takes up a lot of viewing space.

Post match, a coach needs to be gracious, win or lose. This goes for everyone, not just the coach, though. Go over to your partners and congratulate them on a strong win, or thank them for all their great work, even in a hard loss. Shake hands, smile. Whatever works for you. It’s a little less common, but if you can, make your way over to your opponents. Shake their hands, congratulate them for a great match. Let them know even in success or loss, they did an amazing job, and you look forward to working with them in the future. Which, hopefully, you do.

A coach should also be a communicator between field and pits. If your pit crew could see the match, meet with them and convey to them any problems you had with the robot during the match. No matter how small, make sure the pit crew knows about it.

It’s late, so I’m having trouble coming up with much more. I think I covered some of the most basic foundation points. The last thing I can say is that, if you do continue being a coach, work towards developing your own style. Find things that work best for you, and stick with it.

I hope this helps!
Feel free to ask if you need anything else.

-Leeland

12

(emphasis mine) I’d revise this slightly. The team member–student or adult, experienced or not–whom the drivers are most calm and prepared with during the match may well be your best coach. This is because calm drivers is one of your biggest assets overall, and isn’t necessarily even related to who the drivers work well with in other situations. No matter how comfortable you are together, if the drivers don’t trust your coaching judgement they’ll never feel totally calm or prepared for matches. I’ve been in this situation as a student driver.

Let your drive team help pick and train each other. Drivers often understand intuitively (of figure out right quick) what they want in a coach, and can be good at finding and/or communicating it.

A lot of people have done a great job with advice. I don’t have much to add except to remember your job can be viewed as ensuring your drivers do their job as well as possible. That covers everything from to practicing productively together*, ensuring they have an optimized control scheme, preparing the alliance before each match, keeping them calm and motivated in-game, staying adaptable and communicative as the match plays out, and protecting them afterwards. Ask your drivers and even your alliance for constructive feedback on your performance.

*I would recommend practicing with as match-like conditions as you can manage at least of the sometime. Watching matches (live if at all possible) and discussing strategic options is also helpful. Attending and watching other events on your off-weekends is great.

13

A ton of great advice has been mentioned above, but I think this point has been very undervalued.

  • Train your drivers

In my humble opinion, training so that your drivers drive the robot as perfectly as it can be driven is the most valuable thing a coach can do. This is not easy and requires knowing exactly what to say to each driver and what drills to run. In my experience these skills come from knowing your drivers and the robot inside out and backwards.

Knowing your drivers and robot this well will also help you on the field. You will know exactly what your robot can and can’t do, how it can fit in with the alliance, and most importantly what you want to happen can most quickly be communicated to the drivers and they can do it.

I don’t mean to undermine any of the above advice by not repeating it; I just don’t want to be redundant. Good luck and if there’s any other way I can help feel free to ask.

14

There really isn’t one particular style that works best. Finding the right strategy for your team is necessary, and not universal for all teams. Some teams like having a drive coach tell them lots of information but, ours didn’t. We would get stressed and overloaded if he told us what other teams were doing or if he gave us a lot of information all at once. I suggest trying out different methods of communication or hand signals, and talking with your drive team once they get selected about what they like and dislike. A good drive coach/driver relationship is based on equal trust, respect and good open communication.

15

*Pre-match planning *is my number one priority. Be sure to get drivers and other teams that you are with that match on the same page. Have a general plan and flow pattern set up before you step up to the sticks.

Practice before the competition is a big thing, also. The more hands on practice you can squeeze in the better. As a high school driver, I found that the operator, coach and I had a fairly calm, semi-silent way of doing things. We developed an intuition with each other so that we could think like each other and know what we should do. This also happens when you create a “play book” of sorts. Have common general goals from match to match.

I agree with what Adam said about being a time keeper and motivator. No matter how stacked the odds are against you, as soon as the match starts, it’s a level playing field, things happen, robots may not move etc. NEVER go into a match with a negative attitude. Any match can be won by any alliance on any day. Sometimes the drivers don’t look at the game clock, I would suggest developing a system where you tell them common times (1 minute, 30 sec, 15 sec and then count down from 5). Even though there may be field sounds to tell you such info, sometimes the drivers don’t hear them.

Just remember to stay calm, “loud talking” may be needed at times, stay positive, and never place blame for an outcome on one person, this is a team effort.