TAMPA, Fla. — It’s been 30 years since the Lightning first dropped the puck in the Bay area.

And in those three decades, the team has become a beloved part of the community, on the ice and off.

Tonight, the Lightning organization is celebrating its milestone at the Tampa Theatre. The team is hosting “A Night with the Bolts: Celebrating 30 Years” tonight at 7:30 p.m., taking a look back from the inaugural game in 1992 to becoming 3x Stanley Cup Champions, and everything in between.

Another key aspect of the Lightning is the community outreach the team provides. One of the charities it supports is Quantum Leap Farm in Odessa.

And as the Bolts have grown in the community, so has the horse farm in Odessa. The farm provides equine therapy, using horseback rides to help people with autism.

Lily Grace rides once a week and has opened up more to the world around her.

"Being out here you can just tell she is just more talkative and more relaxed,” said caretaker Darriane Newberry. "In education you look for the light-bulb moments, but I’d say outside of it now you are looking for the smaller things that other kids already got. 

“You are just like, oh my goodness, now she helps me put the dishes away or now she makes her bed. It's just the smaller things like that. It's so exciting."

The farm may accommodate as many as 1,500 students at any given time. That number is up from around 500 about 10 years ago. That’s when the Lightning stepped in and started donating to the farm.

"Not only have we been able to serve more participants than we would have had we not had that funding, but we've also been able to start new programs and serve people that we might now have been able to accommodate before,” said Edie Dopking with Quantum Leap Farms.

That’s just one of the small victories the Lightning celebrate away from the lights and cameras of Amalie Arena.