Brian Young looked back on his time – which is not yet over – mentoring the Destrehan High School robotics team.
“Sometimes, it’s tough love … you’re tough on them because you want to prepare them, not just for college, but for real life,” said Young. “I’m tough on them, but I love them and would do anything for them. And I think they know that.”
It seems they do, and they have a lot of love for their coach as well – one reason why Young recently earned a very prestigious honor.
Young received the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award at the FIRST Regional Robotics Competition, honoring an individual who has done an outstanding job of motivation through communication while also challenging students to be clear and succinct in their communications. The award was founded in 1996 to recognize adult mentors within the FIRST Robotics Competition and named for FIRST co-creator Dr. Woodie Flowers.
At each FRC competition, a Woodie Flowers Finalist Award is presented to one nominee. It also qualifies the recipient for the Championship Woodie Flowers Award, in which one winner is chosen globally.
But perhaps carrying the most weight for Young is that the award is student-chosen. Each year students may submit an essay nominating one mentor from their team for consideration.
“It means a lot,” Young said. “That they know, OK, Coach Young is going to kind of vent and correct us, but it’s because he wants us to be really, really good. I want to prepare them not just for college but also for the real world and for life … (the Flowers award) is a testament to my team, first and foremost.”
Almost 20 years ago, ITT of St. Rose approached Young with the idea of establishing a robotics team at his alma mater, Destrehan High School.
Highly competitive, Young wanted to do more than just get the program off the ground – he wanted to establish a winner.
By any measure, he and his students have absolutely done that over the years. Wildcat Robotics has reached the World Championship competition multiple times and has captured three regional championships. At one point, Destrehan reached the World Championship competition three consecutive years – and was the only team in the state to do so in that timeframe.
“It’s not easy to win those regionals,” Young said. “You’ve got people from Florida, from Mexico, Alabama, Mississippi, Minnesota, Arkansas … they’re from all over the place. When you win a regional, it’s not a state championship, because you’re facing off with some of the very best from all over.”
Young admits that early on, his competitiveness led him to be “a little selfish.”
“At one point, I kind of wanted to win and see what it felt like for me,” Young said. “But when you think back to all that work and time we put in after school, it’s just so unbelievable to watch those kids achieve success. And it makes me very emotional. You see how the kids react and you just are overcome because you see what it does for them.
“Every time we won, I lost it in the stands. Because it meant so much.”
Young noted that the award’s namesake – Flowers, a native of Jena, Louisiana – was renowned for his desire to help others.
“He was willing to help anybody,” Young said. “And in competition, if somebody needs help … you might be going against them in the next round, but you still help them. During the game, OK, then we’ll be enemies. But you’ve got to be gracious in winning and also in losing. And we are.
“I tell the kids, if you’re gonna win like a champion, you’ve got to know how to lose like a champion.”
The program has created a number of champions in life. Young said that one of the best feelings he’s been able to experience is when a former student comes back and lets him know how robotics helped them succeed.
“Many of those students tell me all the things we stressed – minimizing mistakes and attention to detail, thinking about your approach before you do things, and how to troubleshoot problems and solve them so they don’t happen again – and they say they’re much better engineers because of it,” said Young. “And that just means the world to me.”
