Palm Avenue Middle School wins regional drone title in San Diego STEM showcase

Palm Avenue Middle School did more than win a trophy in San Diego. It used a regional drone championship to show how a middle-school program can produce pilots who can code, troubleshoot and hold up under pressure, then brought home the top prize after a weekend of the exact skills drone racing is built on.

The Palm Avenue roster of Byron Fuentes, Jayden Limon, Esmerelda Rosales, Kloehe Alvarez, Aden Ibarra Monroy, Sara Carillo and Elijah Salazar guided the school through the West Aerial Drone Championships at Balboa Park, where nearly 100 student teams and about 400 students gathered for the first San Diego-hosted event. Teams came from Nevada, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, American Samoa and other parts of the Western region, making the title run a true cross-regional test rather than a local exhibition.

The competition sat inside the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation’s Aerial Drone Competition, a program that leans on piloting, programming, documentation, communication, teamwork and problem-solving. Students had to handle four mission types, teamwork, autonomous flight, piloting and communications, and Palm Avenue’s success reflected yearlong work that began at the start of the school year. Juan Rodriguez, who led the program, said the team worked through the entire season on its project, including drone repairs, coding and flight prep.

That full workflow mattered. The victory was not just about who could fly fastest on the day of the event. It also measured who could keep a drone ready, adapt code when something failed and keep the group synchronized from mission to mission. In a sport that blends the timing of racing with the discipline of engineering, Palm Avenue treated every part of the process as competition.

Fuentes said his interest in drones started with wanting to understand how they work and fly, and he connected the experience to a possible engineering career. Limon, a seventh-grader, said summer school drew him into the class and that the STEM work helped him build friendships while learning technical skills. That combination of curiosity and execution is exactly what drone racing programs are supposed to produce, especially at the middle-school level where the pipeline to robotics and engineering often begins.

Rodriguez said the recognition could matter beyond the title because the program’s funding may shift next year from district support to a club-based fundraising model. Palm Avenue’s trophy gave the school more than bragging rights. It offered a concrete argument for keeping a program alive that is already preparing students to become league-ready pilots, technicians and engineers.