Drone Club is “flying” its way back into WEGO this mid-February after last years original team members leaving as well as the departure of its former sponsor. But under the leadership of new club president, Lukas Hernandez, and with the support of its new sponsor, Tyler Huber, the club is ready to start up once again.
Drone Club was first started in the 22-23 school year at WEGO by alumni Micah Weber, as well as Physics teacher and past sponsor, Adam Singer. The main focus of the club is drone racing; which includes flying drone’s in a first person view with a controller, learning how drones work, and lap racing through obstacle courses that are made by the students themselves. Saturday mornings were the meet days where occasionally team members would either travel to other schools or other schools coming here to compete competitively in the field house.
“The drone races is basically just how many laps you can get in three minutes. The more laps you get the more points you get you know? We actually did it competitively last year and actually did win,” Hernandez, a senior, said.
But last year, a majority of the team members happened to be seniors at WEGO therefore graduating and having to leave the club behind. So, Hernandez decided to put actions into his own hands; to keep the club standing amongst the rest of the clubs. And first thing he decided, was to find a new sponsor. After searching, Hernandez met Science chemistry teacher, Tyler Huber, who so happened to be a new faculty member at WEGO who was interested in STEM and technology such as drones, even so, flying some in his past and having experience in that area. Huber found that racing drones would be interesting and decided to take a chance to be the new sponsor, but missed the opportunity to take over earlier during the first semester. But nevertheless, he has high hopes for next year as at the eighth grade open house earlier this semester,
“We had about twelve people at least put their name down for interest. So going into next year, we should have a lot more, at least younger incoming freshmen that are interested in joining,” Huber said.
Huber hopes for this team to grow and continue and states how he’s willing to accommodate to the members in the club if needed, such as for example, meeting an extra few days if ever necessary rather than once every other week.
“Any club should be adaptable to whatever the members want. Kind of keeping our mission open for you know, if we ever want to do more drone education stuff, drone flying, or if we want to try to get into some bigger drones and that stuff,” Huber said. “Any direction is one that we can do and explore and look into, and if we want to focus primarily on flying and racing, awesome, just anything to keep our members interested.”
But lastly, just like any other sport or club, Hernandez wants others to be reminded that Drone Club is not only a place to compete against other schools and use advanced technology to fly devices, but is also a spot that can connect new students together; therefore creating a personal bond in the community which he really respects. Hernandez recalls a story about when he first started his junior year and how he had no idea who any of the people on the team were, but by the end of the season, he was already hanging out with them even out of school.
“I hope this continues after I graduate because I had a bunch of fun last year, and I really want that experience to not be lost just because the seniors all left,” Hernandez said.
