A growth-oriented excursion overseas turned into the growth experience of a lifetime for 18 seniors from the The Heights School when war with Iran broke out.
By Austin Ruse
Crisis Magazine
March 14, 2026
They lived for a week under threat of death, and man, did they have fun. You could say they were on the best field trip ever.
This was the experience of 18 Catholic high school boys and two heroic teachers from The Heights School in Potomac, Maryland, who had the great fortune to connect through Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates pretty much at the same time President Trump unleashed unholy hell on the Mullahs in Iran.
The UAE is a hop, skip, and a jump across the Strait of Hormuz-yes, that one, the one that may or may not be closed to ship traffic and very well could be mined-from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The boys were on their way to Thailand on what their Opus Dei school calls Crescite Week. Crescite means "grow." It is a growth experience. The boys choose where they want to go, and they go all over the place. A few years ago, some of the boys chose to spend it in the woods and only speak Latin. Some boys this year were in the Arctic. Some were in, yawn, Rome. That yawn is only in comparison to being under falling missiles and all that went with it.
Here is what happened. They landed in Abu Dhabi on the 28th. Why Abu Dhabi ? Because they were flying Etihad Airways, which is based in the UAE and is awfully nice. So, they landed in Abu Dhabi, which is right on the Strait of Hormuz, and proceeded to wait for their connection. All of a sudden, their phones blew up with warnings of an impending missile attack because, at that moment, American missiles began pummeling Iran, a mere 200 miles away as the crow flies.
It was clear that the Heights boys were not going to make their connection to Thailand. And thus began their six-day excellent adventure.
They were holed up in the airport for 10 hours watching the missiles fly. The boys actually put some of this up on private chat groups. At one point, the airport was struck by drone debris. Sadly, this caused many injuries, not among the boys, and one fatality.
The boys were putting the images up on social media until their teachers told them to cut it out, though some kept posting. I know this because my daughter was on a chat with some of the boys. But that stopped eventually, too.
This part of Northern Virginia was abuzz with what was happening. We are part of what I call the Great Northern Virginia Catholic Clan, so these boys were if not kin, at least kith. But they were kin to many parents we know. These parents were concerned, to say the least.
So, it took them 10 hours at the airport to find a hotel that could accommodate all of them. Ten hours in what can only be considered a military target. They prayed the Rosary a fair amount. One boy told me that on his decade they saw an incoming missile attack met by a counterattack from the UAE that got six of eight missiles. He said airport staff yelled at them to get inside.
Someone from the U.S. Embassy came by and told them they were safe in Abu Dhabi, safer than the threat of a knife attack in London. I guess that is comfort enough.
They eventually checked into a hotel near the airport and waited. They hung out in the hotel. They worked out in the gym. They worried about their parents worrying. Their parents worried plenty. Not much news was coming out.
They spent one day on the beach. They spent an afternoon at the home of a very wealthy American security contractor riding camels, wearing Arabian garb, real Lawrence of Arabia stuff.
One of the pressing issues of the week was keeping their presence unknown. This is why conversations about them, even back in Virginia, were squashed. It was because the Americans had bombed a town called Minab, where a girls' school is located, and the fear was retribution if the Iranians knew 18 American high school boys were only a few hundred miles away in Abu Dhabi, particularly if the Mullahs knew the boys were from the school attended by J.D. Vance's son.
No one knew when they were getting out. Thursday morning, they were told to pack; they were leaving in two hours. The teachers told them to tell their parents, "You love them," and then "give me your phones." There was great concern about flying out of that airspace. A glance at the app Flightradar24 showed sparse flights in and around that immediate area.
And then their flight was cancelled, and the next one, and the next one. Talk about nerve-wracking. Finally, a United flight flew them out, and they arrived back for a hero's welcome at Dulles Airport, just outside Washington, D.C., where they have been doing a ton of media.
The consensus among all the boys who went all over different parts of the world this year is that the inadvertent Abu Dhabi trip was the best Crescite ever.
In all the huzzah about how great this trip was and how much fun the guys had, they are very aware of how serious this has been. Young men not much older than them have been wounded and even killed. It wasn't even remotely fun and games for everyone. These young men know that. These boys were lucky.
Senior Bryson Begg said the boys were never scared, and he chalks that up to the two teachers who went with them. He said, "Over the years, I have come to realize I can trust them with my life." Begg said Abu Dhabi is an incredible city; neat, clean, not a lot of traffic, and very beautiful, and eventually he wants to go back. But he realizes it might not be as much fun without missiles.
This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.
Austin Ruse is a contributing editor to Crisis Magazine. He is president of the Center for Family and Human Rights in New York and Washington DC. He is the author of several books including, Under Siege: No Finer Time to be a Faithful Catholic (Crisis Publications). He can be reached at email protected.