Shadow Ridge has a new and upcoming sport that will be purely theirs: Drone Soccer. Most students haven’t even heard of it or know that there will be an opportunity to play it! Students will fly drones around and through the court with a control similar to a video game controller.
Drone soccer has five positions; the keeper, sweeper, center, forward, and the striker. The striker and forward are offensive drones designated with special flags. The remaining three are defensive drones. Only the striker is able to score by flying through the opponents goal. The remaining players must help their striker or prevent the opponents striker from scoring by protecting their goal.
Dr. Padgett will be a captain for one of the teams for this sport and Mr. Silva is the other. For now, only AP students in math, statistics, calculus and those who are in JROTC are able to join but soon other students interested will be able to sign up.
“Drone soccer is intriguing and exciting… making Shadow Ridge the first school to have drone soccer is fun and compelling,” junior, Evelyn Aguilar expresses.
This is a great opportunity for students who want to join the Air Force or military, because the time they are flying the drones can be used for flying time. Collecting “drone pilot hours” will enhance their academic profile as applicants. Students can get up to 50 hours of flying time and experience before they even get into the Air Force or military.
A major focus of the project is to make SRHS students even more competitive for military academy appointments.
Dr. Padgett is a lifetime member of the Military Officers’ Association of America (MOAA), which is how he found out about this possibility. One of the leading equipment vendors for drone soccer is a retired Air Force Colonel himself, and he was seeking a contact, with military experience, within a local high school.
Dr. Padgett will be referred to as a captain. “But I won’t be using that term, out of respect for the coaches who have been leading our SRHS sports for so long,” Dr. Padgett explains.
Most students, or pilots, as Dr. Padgett likes to call them, are going by call-signs as well. They have taken much inspiration from the Top Gun: Maverick movie.
Dr. Padgett is preparing for this role by learning the game and all its strategies. He mostly watches videos online, but he has gone to a show/convention for drone soccer. When adopted by SRHS, the first major hurdle for Dr. Padgett will be “how to practice.”
Shadow Ridge will be the only school to have this sport here as an option to play, so there is a question about who Shadow will play against. Dr. Padgett has a plan but he’s keeping quiet about it for now. Dr. Padgett wants to focus on working hard and honing skills so when other schools adopt this sport, Shadow will ‘be ready to kick their atmospheres.’
When Dr. Padgett and Mr. Silva got news of this sport, they went straight to the administration for the benefit of the AP Mathematics courses.
“It is also important that such a “super-cool” opportunity would quickly be available to any student,” stated Dr. Padgett. He makes it a point to make sure that any student who is interested in drone soccer is able to sign up once the program is up and running.
