High school students on St. Vrain Valley Schools’ Drone Performance Team flew 300 drones over Holyoke, Colorado, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, in a show built for Nathaniel “Bubba” Brown, an 11-year-old Make-A-Wish Colorado recipient. The students designed it around his love of lights and set it to his favorite music.
Bubba was born with SCN2A, a rare neurological condition, and lives with multiple forms of epilepsy. The show was the finale of his wish, a community celebration called Bubba’s Bright Lights Block Party, and it was planned for a Sunday evening. It flew on a Wednesday, after the student pilots had spent the morning in class at their own high schools.
Weather Pushed the Show From a Sunday to a School Day
Make-A-Wish Colorado asked the team at the end of September to fly the finale of Bubba’s block party, a 6 p.m. show on Sunday, Oct. 25. Bad weather scrubbed it. The party moved indoors to the Phillips County Event Center, and the show was rebooked for Wednesday, Oct. 28.
Team coordinator Danny Hernandez wrote on LinkedIn that the students had the airspace checks and show designs done by Saturday night for the drive about three hours east of Longmont. The Haxtun-Fleming Herald had listed the 6 p.m. slot in its preview, and The Holyoke Enterprise reported the move indoors and the new date, when the show joined First Baptist Church’s annual Harvest Party.
Hernandez wrote that on Oct. 28 the students were in first period at 7:45 a.m., left the district’s Innovation Center at 11:30 a.m., set up and flew by 6:30 p.m., and got home around 11:30 p.m. Every vehicle carried a hotspot so they could do homework and study for the next day’s tests on the road, and they were due back in class at 7:45 the next morning. “Not once did anyone ask, ‘Why are we doing this?’” Hernandez wrote.
St. Vrain’s Students Run Every Show From Client Meeting to Flight
St. Vrain Valley Schools bills its Drone Performance Team, based at the district’s Innovation Center in Longmont, as the world’s first high school student-led outdoor drone show team. Students meet the clients, design the aerial animations, compose original music for each show and fly the drones.
The team was rehearsing for its first public show in May 2024 and was booked for a 300-drone Fourth of July show in Longmont in 2025. Washington’s Peninsula School District has since built the same kind of team. When DroneXL covered Peninsula’s 300-drone debut in September 2025, that program was described as only the second of its kind in the country.
Joe McBreen, St. Vrain’s assistant superintendent of innovation, credited the OtterCares Foundation with making the Holyoke show possible. OtterCares gave the Innovation Center a $25,000 grant in May so that its more than 20 student project teams put part of their work into nonprofit partners starting this school year. The grant grew out of “Drones for Dreams,” Silver Creek High School junior Braeden Macchia’s program of free drone services for local nonprofits.
A Pilot Whose Sister Got a Wish Helped Fly Bubba’s Show
Longmont High School senior Reese Wieder worked the Holyoke show as both a project manager and a pilot. Her older sister received a Make-A-Wish trip to San Diego as a child while she was undergoing cancer treatment, CBS Colorado reported on Nov. 8.
CBS gave Bubba’s age as 9. McBreen and the Holyoke Enterprise both put it at 11.
Bubba’s mother, Alysha Brown, called the performance “mind blowing” in a statement McBreen posted. She said seeing all 300 drones take off to one of Bubba’s favorite songs had the family in tears again.
DroneXL’s Take
I’m more impressed by how these students handled the weather scrub than by the 300-drone animation. Flying a scrubbed show three days later and hauling 300 drones three hours east is the part of show work that professionals get paid for. These students did it on a school day, with tests the next morning. DroneXL’s Colorado drone coverage this year includes a talking-drone rescue in Summit County and a Colorado Springs police drone at a knife fight, and this story belongs on the same list of drones doing real work for people on the ground. A student team that can absorb a scrub without losing the date is already working like a professional crew.
Sources: CBS Colorado, The Holyoke Enterprise, The Haxtun-Fleming Herald, St. Vrain Valley Schools, Danny Hernandez and Joe McBreen on LinkedIn.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
