It's a bird, it's a plane — no, it's South Elgin's drone

It was a sunny August afternoon in 2006, and then-South Elgin football coach Dale Schabert was giving this reporter a tour of the new high school.

We walked from the athletics office through the locker rooms and out to the new football field.

As we stood at the 50-yard line conducting an interview about Schabert's team for the season preview edition, a cast of five hawks began circling above.

Smiling, I gestured to the sky and said, “Careful, Dale. Those aren't really hawks. Those are drones Bartlett sent over here to film everything you guys are doing.”

It was only a joke, of course. We both chuckled at the absurdity of the idea. Drones were extremely rare eight years ago. The thought of one flying overhead ... with a camera shooting video no less? A bit too futuristic to be taken seriously.

Well, welcome to the future.

Eight years later a drone flies over South Elgin's football field filming every home game. The innovative program has become the area leader in the technology, among the first in Illinois to shoot game films via a Phantom drone.

To see the unique footage for yourself, check out staff photographer Brian Hill's video, which accompanies this column at football.dailyherald.com.

South Elgin coach Pat Pistorio adopted the idea in July when he watched a report about drones on ESPN's “Outside the Lines”. The episode detailed UCLA's use of drone cameras to film football practices. The report showed a high school in Texas doing the same.

Pistorio said he loved the footage and knew he wanted a drone immediately. Besides, South Elgin was in the market for a new end zone tower camera, which typically runs between $3-5,000. The drone South Elgin eventually purchased cost approximately $1,500.

Pistorio first ran the idea by South Elgin athletic director Jason Ward. He thought the idea “sounded pretty cool” but wanted to look into it before giving approval.

The Federal Aviation Administration has yet to make a specific ruling on the use of domestic drones, but one recent verdict came down in favor of drone use. According to the ESPN report that sparked Pistorio's interest, drone advocates were buoyed by a ruling last spring by “a federal administrative law judge who tossed out a $10,000 fine the FAA had levied against a commercial drone operator in Virginia who had shot footage of a college campus, saying the FAA had no authority over small unmanned aircraft.”

Still, South Elgin placed a call to the IHSA offices in Bloomington to be sure filming games with a drone would be allowed.

“We wanted to be careful because the rules are not concrete,” Pistorio said. “As long as it's not for commercial use and you're not violating someone's privacy, it should be fine.”

IHSA assistant executive director Craig Anderson, who is in charge of football, agreed. He gave South Elgin the go-ahead in an email Pistorio keeps with him in case an opponent asks for verification.

Asked about that approval this week, Anderson said “there is nothing in the (National Federation of High Schools) football rules book that would indicate the use of a drone camera is illegal. The 2013 NFHS football rules changes increased the use of technology for teams.”

Ward said Anderson told him the IHSA would monitor the situation because drone use is a new issue.

“They said that as the season goes, they'll look into it and see if everything is going smoothly,” Ward said.

Once he had the IHSA's blessing, Ward gave Pistorio the OK to purchase the Phantom drone, which when whirring above the field hums like a bug zapper in the distance.

The South Elgin coach's next move was to contact student manager Eric Salerno, a junior.

“(Pistorio) texted me one night in July at midnight with a video saying, ‘We're going to get a drone.' And it all started from there,” said Salerno, who aspires to someday work in sports management for a pro or college team. “I immediately got up and did some research on it because I knew I was going to have to be the one who was going to have to take charge of this program.”

Sure enough, Salerno has become South Elgin's official drone pilot for games and practices in addition to his duties of setting up equipment before practice and tearing it down afterward.

The Phantom can be controlled either with the remote control it comes with or with a synced iPhone or iPod that connects to the drone's Wi-Fi range extender.

“That allows you to send signals back and forth to the drone so you can see the picture on your phone and record and take pictures with it,” Salerno said.

The drone pilot must constantly monitor how much juice is left. Salerno said the Phantom burns through its custom-made batteries in 15-20 minutes of flying/recording time. The football program purchased seven such batteries and keeps a small generator on the sideline, which Salerno uses to recharge two batteries during the course of the game for a total of nine.

Ward asks Pistorio to clear the use of the drone with opposing teams when the Storm play on the road. Not every opponent is comfortable with a small, unmanned aerial camera hovering near a high-school football field. Though Crystal Lake South and West Aurora allowed the use of South Elgin's drone at their venues, St. Charles East did not allow the Storm to fly the drone at Norris Stadium in the season opener.

“If they're not OK with it because there's really no ruling on anything, we're OK with that,” Ward said. “We value and respect our relationships with these other schools.”

The end result has been everything Pistorio hoped it would be.

“It's one of the best teaching tools we have,” he said of drone film. “Because it just hovers right behind the play, it allows you to see angles and spacing much better than you can from our end zone camera or the press box angle. It has really helped our quarterback and wide receivers with their spacing. It allows the quarterback to throw to the cushion better because he can identify the cushion much better with this film. It's also one of the best things we've experienced for kickoffs and kickoff returns.

“It's a different perspective a lot of us aren't used to. It's very NFL-like. It opens up your eyes to a lot of things you've never seen.”

South Elgin might be the first high school football program in the area to use a drone, but it won't be the last.

Especially if someone develops a drone that looks like a hawk.

jfitzpatrick@dailyherald.com