While many people believe that drones are expensive and uncommon, Westford Academy has a drone for its very own. varsity football manager senior Phil Manzi recently began to film games with a professional drone that comes with an aerial view, rather than using a standard camera on a tripod which doesn’t have that advantage.

According to Manzi, the point of the drone was to get better shots of football games from an aerial point of view.

“Well, you look at professional football and you see that they have the highway cameras on zip lines that hang above the players which gives the aerial advantage, just like if you’ve ever seen Madden, you get the perspective of Madden.” said Manzi.

Manzi wanted to find the cheapest way to get the aerial view, and through research, he found the DGI Fandom 3 Advanced which was $1,000. The money was raised by fundraisers started by the football team.

Manzi has been approached by companies, such as ASA Photographics, to film and promote their business. He has also been asked by the school to use it to film other activities. For example, administration asked him to film ALICE so they could watch how the school evacuation was handled.

Manzi also mentioned that at the moment, he is the only one who handles the drone, but he can trust other people to take over and would want it to be used after he leaves the school.

Besides his use of the drone, Manzi is well known throughout Westford Academy, not only for being the football team’s manager, but also as the basketball team manager and assistant manager for the varsity wrestling team. He is also a playwright, and is currently producing an original play with two of his close friends.

The drone has greatly influenced  Manzi’s major decisions about what to do after high school; he is looking to involve himself in the electronics field. If not that, he wants to got into the business management field and create business programs, but he’s really leaning towards working with electronics because it keeps him on his feet.

“People need this stuff and they don’t get this. Like people don’t know how to work these things, people don’t get these opportunities. So finding a job that would let people that hire me or to look for people to do these kind of things would be really cool,” said Manzi.