Look in the Sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a….drone?
Yes coming to a high school football field near you! Three football programs in the Chandler have gone to their district as well as the AIA for the permission to fly drones on above or below the friday night lights. Perry, Chandler and Casteel high schools will take flight with the technology this season.
“The beauty of the drone is we can kind of control the perspective,” Perry Freshman head football coach and drone flyer Jeremy Lenon told Sports360AZ.”Where as we have a system like the high-pod which gives us one view, one angle the whole time. With the drone we can go up, down, can view from the side, we can do anything that we want so it gives us better control.”
While this is still in the experimental phase, there have been some rules that have been laid out for the schools if they are to fly them during games.
“The rules are still up in the air,” explained Lenon. “A lot of districts have their own set of rules and they are not consistent yet. One of the AIA rules that we have now is that we cannot have it on the playing surface. So we have to film it from behind the playing surface and what we’re doing to be safe is staying off the grass and onto the track.”
For a head coach, this provides a new, innovative and also fun technology to try and further the information provided for their coaching staff and players.
“I think it is going to be huge for practice,” stated Perry head football coach Preston Jones. “Now we don’t have to have scaffolding, we can move our filming around. I think it is going to have a bigger impact on practicing.”
“Someone can sit over from a shade tree with a lawn chair,” Jones joked. “It’s pretty neat and I sure like playing with it when I get an opportunity too.”
It is clear Perry as well as Chandler and Casteel are looking to drone out the competition in 2016.
