When Marty Wetherall, a founder of a free-to-play drone racing game called HydraFPV, ran into a local high school science teacher at the Hub Hobby Center just south of Minneapolis in January, he had an a-ha moment. Why not create Minnesota’s first ever drone racing tournament? he thought.
Physics teacher Christopher Lee, who runs the Apple Valley (Minn.) High School fabrication lab and STEM program, had his students building drones in class. Wetherall also knew of another Minneapolis-area school that was incorporating drones into its curriculum: St. Louis Park. The latter is within the same school district where Wetherall’s second- and sixth-grade daughters study.