Rec Sports
Meet Long Beach’s newest sports powerhouse: SATO’s Drone Soccer program
What began as California’s first drone soccer team has made breakthroughs in the sport to become the gold standard of academic and competitive success in Long Beach within just three years of its founding.
The SATO Academy of Mathematics and Science Drone soccer team represented the United States during the 2025 Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) World Drone Soccer Championships in China from Nov. 15-18, where the team placed fourth in the 40 centimeter section and fifth in 20 centimeter matches.
“It’s honestly mindblowing because I didn’t think we were gonna get that far,” said Kira Black, president of the SATO Drone Soccer Club and the team’s goalie.
SATO Drone Soccer head coach Albert Gallo founded the program after he heard about the U.S. Drone Soccer League and subsequently pitched the idea to the principal, who “absolutely loved it,” he said. Gallo then began pitching the program to kids he taught in his engineering class during the 2022 school year, and it has grown ever since.
Drone soccer is a five-on-five sport where the aim of the game is to score as many goals as you can by driving a “striker drone” completely through the opponents goal. Two members of each team are designated as the “striker” and “goalie” as the match is broken up into three, three-minute sets. The team who scores the most goals wins each set, and whoever wins two sets wins the match.
The SATO Drone Soccer program is broken up into two senior-led official teams they send to tournaments, “Mushu” and “Dragon Fire.” The two separate groups of seniors have been on the team since its inception at SATO. The school also has a separate club for students to join recreationally.
“I told them [the professional players from Mushu and Dragon Fire] from the beginning that, ‘you guys are the pioneers of this sport,’ we’re rewriting playbooks [and] we’re writing strategies.”
– SATO drone soccer coach and team founder Albert Gallo
SATO’s drone soccer team has been dominating the U.S. drone soccer sphere since its inception.
Since starting the program in 2022, they’ve placed first in the U.S. Drone Soccer Championships in 2023 and 2025, and earned a second-place finish in 2024. Multiple members of the program have received recognition from the United States Drone Soccer Association.
Most recently, team Mushu won the U.S. Drone Soccer Championship on May 3, 2025 and had the opportunity to represent the U.S. National Team in China.
“I’m extremely proud of our students and our pilots, I couldn’t have done it [without] my wife helping me, the principal of the school helping, the district helping us finance the equipment. Seeing all that growth is very satisfying,” Gallo said.
Drone Soccer originated in South Korea in 2016 from the research team in CAMTIC Institute of Technology, but the first tournament in the U.S. started in April 2021 in Colorado, with the United States Drone Soccer Association formally launching near the end of 2021.
SATO’s Drone Soccer program has helped students apply the skills they learn in STEM classes as well as build their communication and teamwork skills.
“I’ve made a bunch of new friends just by being in the club, I’ve been more social, I’ve been a better communicator,” Black said.
As their success has catapulted them into a Long Beach sports powerhouse, the team’s goals have shifted from just having fun to placing first in every single tournament they enter.
SATO’s program has also helped influence other schools across the United States. According to the U.S. Drone Soccer Association, U.S. Drone Soccer has reached 300+ schools and organizations, serving 5,000+ students in 38 states.
The team has also been instrumental in getting other drone soccer teams in Long Beach started, allowing the Millikan High School drone soccer team to practice at SATO and loaning them drones to use.
Albert and his wife, Andrea Gallo, are co-founders of California Drone Sports, which holds camps, coaching clinics and helps fundraise for schools with the goal of continuing to expand, promote and support drone soccer programs throughout California.
Even with all of the success as one of the pioneers of drone soccer in California, the team faces challenges on the horizon.
Twelve seniors from the official teams will soon be graduating from SATO, which means more than half the program is leaving. Gallo’s main goal is restructuring the team while maintaining their competitiveness, he said.
“I’m gonna miss these kids the most because there’s 12 of them,” Gallo said. “[To] see them go on to do great things is gratifying, but it’s also the knowledge base that is leaving.”
The other challenge is finding money to get students to international tournaments. During the tournament in China, donations from the Long Beach Airport and Supervisor Janice Hahn were divided between hotel rooms and equipment, while the students’ parents paid for the flights to China.
“I heard there’s a tournament coming up in April in France and I would love to take a team, but where do we find the money? You could probably find money for hotels and food but who’s gonna pay for the flights?” Gallo said.
Gallo said they’re hoping to have an invitational on Jan. 31 and host a regional competition on March 21.
“I would love to fill the stands with more fans and more people wanting to come,” he said. “[The March 21 event] would be great just for people to come out and watch and see what drone soccer is about.”
For more information about their program and events, follow SATO’s Drone Soccer Club on Instagram.
Samuel Chacko
Photojournalist
Samuel Chacko is an award-winning photojournalist from Long Beach, California. Samuel currently works as a freelance journalist for multiple publications and he is a class of 2025 Cal State Long Beach graduate. Samuel loves watching sports (the Ravens and the Yankees) and taking photos.
Check out more of Samuel’s work here: https://samuelchacko.com/
