High Schoolers Race Drones and Build Careers in Ohio Competition

In a gymnasium in Canfield, Ohio, the next generation of pilots is already putting in the work. Some of them already have their commercial licenses.

Foam Balls, Scoring Zones, and Real Skills

The Mahoning County Career and Technical Center hosted a regional UAV competition Saturday that drew high school teams from Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton alongside local squads, as Vindy reports.

The event is part of the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation Aerial Drone Program, one of the fastest-growing competitive circuits in American high schools.

The game format is deceptively simple and technically demanding. Pilots maneuver their drones to pick up small foam balls and place them in scoring zones, clear drop zones of foam balls already there, and land precisely on designated spots on the playing field within a time limit.

Every task requires spatial awareness, throttle control, and the ability to read a dynamic field while flying under pressure.

MCCTC’s team consisted of Caleb Knipp, a senior from Jackson-Milton High School, and juniors Vance Kinnick and Andrew Morris, also from Jackson-Milton.

Coaches Walter Baber and Rachel Naylor led the squad. The team finished second in alliance matches and placed in the middle of the pack for skills scores before advancing to the regional competition at Kettering University in Michigan, which draws teams from 10 states and three Canadian provinces.

It is worth knowing that the first year this team competed at regionals, they took second place. They are not new to performing well under pressure.

The Student Who Already Has a Commercial License

Caleb Knipp started in VEX Robotics before moving to aerial Uavs. He also holds a Part 107 commercial drone license, which means the FAA has certified him to fly drones professionally. He is a high school senior.

Vance Kinnick has been on the team for all four years MCCTC has had a drone program. He sees the trajectory clearly. Four years ago, aerial drone competitions barely existed at the high school level. Robotics has been a fixture in American schools for 25 to 30 years.

Drone competition is compressing that adoption curve rapidly. More schools are adding drone classes every year, and the technology students are learning on is dramatically more capable than what was available even half a decade ago.

“Drones can be fun and also provide an opportunity for them to be used to make money,” Kinnick said. That is a 16-year-old speaking from experience, not ambition.

The Student Who Started It All

Emma Repula graduated from Austintown and was on the MCCTC drone team in its first year. Saturday she came back as a referee for the local event. She was also the person who pushed to create the program in the first place.

She got the school interested in launching it. She competed in year one. Now she is running the scoring table and watching the students she inspired do what she did.

Repula’s perspective on why drone education matters goes beyond the competition floor. Learning to fly a drone touches engineering, surveying, programming, and spatial problem-solving simultaneously. Those skills transfer into fields as different as construction, agriculture, public safety, filmmaking, and military service. The drone is the hook. The education underneath it is the point.

Coach Baber confirmed the competitive infrastructure is still catching up to the enthusiasm. When MCCTC launched its robotics program 15 years ago, competitions were three to four hours away.

They eventually built a local circuit. Now he is doing the same thing for drones. Saturday’s event at MCCTC is part of that effort, bringing the competition to the students instead of making families drive across the state to participate.

DroneXL’s Take

Stories like this one remind me why I got into drones in the first place.

A high school senior with a commercial drone license. A junior who has been competing for four years and can articulate a career path from this gym to professional drone operations. A former student who built the program from scratch and came back on her day off to run the referee table. That is not a school club. That is a pipeline.

The comparison Baber draws to robotics is the right frame. Robotics competitions like FIRST and VEX created an entire generation of engineers who went directly from high school gyms into aerospace, automotive, and software companies. The companies knew it and started sponsoring the programs.

The same thing is beginning to happen with drones, and it is happening faster because the professional drone industry is younger, hungrier, and more desperate for trained operators than any of those other fields were when robotics was at this stage.

Here is what I find genuinely encouraging. Caleb Knipp did not just join a club. He got his Part 107 license. He is not waiting to graduate to start building a professional credential. He already has one.

That is the mentality the drone industry needs more of at every level. And it is being built right now in a gymnasium in Canfield, Ohio, one foam ball at a time.

Photo credit: MCCTC Facebook