Hello, I was the head Engineer and half of the design team working on the 2023 game season, and our robot, PATHOS, made it to the competition. Since I was a first-year FRC team member, the entire competition was new to me, and so were the robot design and the entire game.
Fresno hosted the Central Valley Regional, and we were both lucky and unlucky to be on the same team as Madera’s 1323 Madtown Robotics, the world champions the same year. In this match, Qual 47, our robot had fallen victim to a bug in the code that caused the drivetrain motors to become unbound, which caused the robot to become immobile, blocking Madtown’s absolute monster of a robot from scoring on the charge station. This unfortunately was the only match that 1323 Madtown lost of the entire season, and we were the cause of it.
Now, of course, we felt bad, but we were even more disappointed when during the match, 1323’s Mentor left his drivers and began yelling at both our drivers and his own. And I understand that trying to keep a clean streak is hard, especially when you’re World Champions twice (or three times) in a row, but it shocked me that there was a large display of rudeness during the matches.
And it wasn’t just during the matches either, I heard a lot of profanity and general insults aimed around the pits, which disheartened me. Now, I hope it was just that season that was causing these kinds of things to happen, but I hope that during the next season, we can display more kindness and teamwork during the competition.
I’m sorry to hear you had a rough time in that match and following. I had a similar encounter in the pits at worlds this year, and it sucks. Hopefully you can see that your team is not the only ones that had mobility issues this year, many MANY teams broke down on the field in 2023. That doesn’t excuse the behaviour of the coach, they should know better. Your team is awesome in their own right and hopefully I get to see more matches from 6918 in 2024
Similar things happened at the Lake Superior Regional. Many people were being excluded from pre-match strategy meetings, specifically the drive team from an all-girls team. Due to this, some Minnesota teams, 2177 and 1816, here have started the SWIFT Initiative, Support Welcoming Initiatives for FIRST Teams, to build and enhance an inclusive community at FRC events. This will be done by sharing bracelets with other teams to spark conversions about the core values of the teams and FIRST in general.
I forget if it was Woodie or Dean, but back in the day, they constantly reminded folks that FIRST wanted to copy the best parts of sport culture: the pageantry, intensity, and cultural impact; and to leave the not so good parts behind: trash talking, intimidation, and isolation. Every year it seems the not so nice parts of sports are seeping into FIRST. I feel it’s accelerated since COVID. I’m not sure how to handle it as a whole, but you can do some small things on your own: be a good representative of your team and FIRST. Don’t just participate in GP theater. What was the line that was used? oh,yes,“what would your grandmother think if she saw what you were doing?” For me, it depends on which grandmother, but I think you get the idea.
I would say overall that is a exceedingly rare circumstance. Although unfortunately it does happen and it has happened to my teams to some degree as well.
A little heads up communication could have solved the problem and it’s not just all on you guys.
Armchair quarterback is easy. But seeing that you had a problem as a drive coach, I would have approached your team and asked if we could either push you up onto the platform or push you away. Granted this would have taken a cycle or so away from us scoring but probably would have been worth it.
Here’s a positive for an example.
8878 Auto jammed the charge station, our auto used to it tipping down tipped our robot over when it did not tip down.
Instead of yelling at them, the two drive coaches got together to figure out if we could tip our robot back up. And the crowd went wild! Watch this reel
See, sometimes we’re just having a bad day. And I guess that unless you don’t want to have a good time, there isn’t a point in being in the FRC community, since we are all a team. A lot of pressure is placed on our backs to win or be a good teammate, and sometimes this way down a lot. The good thing is that there are more good people in this world than bad ones, and kindness always outways malice.
This is sadly not unique to this situation … Never should there be an adult yelling at the students. Sadly even with my years of experience this is a continual issue. Theres so many threads of it on this forum. If you see something that makes you uncomfortable students and surrounding folks should say something.
This is why I think there should be a rule that Adults are not allowed to be Drive Coaches. I understand that they feel like they need an adult in case of an emergency, but FRC is high schoolers, they should know the robot well enough to handle themselves. An adult is there to push the other students around and be big and loud. There are/were several coaches in FIM that were known for this. I used to drive coach and I caught myself injecting where I should’ve kept my mouth closed and let them handle it. So I stopped and low and behold no major disasters and they are better off for it.
They communicate better, are more confident instead of looking at me for the answer on strategy meetings. It’s just all around better.
So since my dream isn’t gonna happen what else can you do? If the team and Adult are consistently displaying this behavior Judges will notice it an see it. It doesn’t do anything to prevent them winning matches, but it does worsen their odds of winning other awards. Being a bully on the field is visible to everyone. If it’s a serious issue I would visit pit admin (especially about the profanity, or other inappropriate behavior in the pits), speak to a volunteer at the event or in some cases go to the question box and speak to the referees. A. An adult is not allowed in the question box and B. Even though this isn’t really the Refs responsibility they may be able to speak to the other drive coach about it during the event and watch out for it.
Sorry that happened to you and I hope you don’t have that happen again
Heaven knows I support the cause of getting adults to stop yelling at children, but I don’t think this point is true. Judges have a very tight schedule and aren’t watching matches much, and if they do they aren’t watching what drive coaches are doing.
I’d also like to begin a conversation around differentiating between cussing at someone and cussing in their presence. These are very different things, and an FRC competition is one of the many spaces in life where the changing language standards of society are going to collide with others’ standards and beliefs. I have no idea if RC did or would cuss at a student but if he or anyone else said a cuss word offhandedly at an event and I heard it, reporting them wouldn’t cross my mind.
Sorry didn’t mean that judges will see it nessecarily, I mean people in general, refs, volunteers, people in the stands and word gets around to the judges and they “Note it” maybe instead of “Notice it”. If you asked teams in SE Michigan I think they could pull up a couple of teams names pretty quickly. It’s a known behavior that we watch out for because of the reputation it creates.
I guess. Also, RC did say a cuss word, (yelled) to us, but not directly. And I guess we do have to cut some slack since this day and age cussing is kind of less taken seriously, and more prominent. Still, to the outside world and parents, you don’t really want to hear this.
Full disclosure, I’m a teacher and my official (approved by the school principal) grading policy is posted below. I probably cuss more than any Baptist you know.
RC is a unique guy and certainly from a different culture than me.
He truly is a great guy though, and has done a lot for their local community. Working and interacting with numerous students/alumni from their program makes this immediately clear.
He’s intense, for sure. He cusses enough to make me uncomfortable, but I also cuss enough to make other people uncomfortable sometimes… Before we picked them in 2019 I warned the parents on our team their students would likely learn some new words the following day.
I’m not really sure what point I’m making overall here, other than him cussing doesn’t necessarily make him a bad dude.
I think there is a big distinction to keep in mind as this discussion moves forward around the buzzword of “coaches yelling”.
I think it’s incredibly reasonable for an adult coach to yell “SLIDE” at a child playing baseball as he runs to home plate. And a coach who doesn’t communicate themselves clearly in a LOUD high stakes situation is arguably a bad coach.
I do not think it’s ok for that coach to yell at the kid after he gets out for doing a bad job.
I think the two often referred to interchangeably in conversation like this but are INCREDIBLY different things.
Just as a reality check - even in work settings, people curse. Not going to comment on your interactions, but the reality of life is that most people don’t really care if you curse around them, especially at sporting events. I had three coworkers today I recall cursing during work meetings, two of whom are math PhD’s and the other is a brilliant statistician. If it makes you uncomfortable I’m unsure what else to say really. You can let people know if it does, most people will be respectful and try not to around you, but many may not.
Here’s my 2¢. Note that this is from my (limited) experience as a student and drive coach in FRC, and this reflects my own opinions and not necessarily those of my team.
It is very easy for interactions with intense and passionate mentors (drive coaches or strategy mentors) to be stressful and overwhelming to students. This can especially be the case for mentors on high-performing teams, as there can be a lot of pressure on other teams to perform well and look good so they have a better chance of getting picked by the better team. A lot is going on at competition, and a lot of energy & emotions are tied up during those few days. Hence, it’s easy to be intimidated by intense speech and for that emotion to be taken negatively.
About what JJ said above, those ways of communication vary between teams, so it can be jarring to have another drive coach yell “CLIMB” at you when that’s not how you’re used to those types of interactions going.
I think part of the solution here is for everyone (especially mentor drive coaches) to think about how they are communicating and how a possibly nervous (and somewhat overwhelmed) student will interpret it.
They are definitely distinct things. However, it is extremely easy for a coach from 1 team to fully intend to do # 1, and be interpreted as doing # 2 by members of another team not familiar with the coach’s communication style. This can especially be the case if the other team does not typically communicate in this manner themselves, and any kind of shouting/cursing/frustration venting even under pressure would be fairly unprecedented for their own team’s leadership.
I think ultimately, the onus is on the coach to be mindful to communicate with strangers in a manner which cannot be interpreted as overt hostility, not on the students under pressure to take a nuanced reading of a stranger shouting instructions in the heat of the moment.
These kinds of conversations often veer dangerously closely into the territory of shaming/gaslighting inexperienced teams/students for experiencing what they felt was a negative interaction with a person or team more part of the FRC in-group and telling them that they were wrong to feel that way, and I don’t want to see that happen again.
Watch this reel