ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
T-Mobile is giving schools a chance for some money to help their schools, and Southwestern Heights High School is among those that could be getting some.
Southwestern Heights High School is among the schools entered in the T-Mobile 5G Friday Night Lights contest and as SWH Principal Ryan Kisner tells it, the contest is very exciting.
“This is a nationwide contest designed to fuel school pride, performance and possibility and this year, 450 schools will win $5,000 on $5K Fridays. Later on, 25 finalists will each score $25,000 to upgrade their programs and then Oct. 30, one school will be crowned the grand prize winner,” Kisner said. “Our superintendent, Dan Frisby, was the one who signed us up for this contest, and T-Mobile gave us some ideas of what we could do to spread the word about all of this. The goal of the contest is to encourage community support for athletic programs. What we're aiming for is using their hashtags on social media and interview some of our seniors who will share their favorite moments from being involved in their particular programs, and we'll also be encouraging people in the area to share our posts and hashtags and share some of their favorite memories. We have a lot of great things going on, and we would love to see as much community support as possible. And since this is a sweepstakes, it's great because we've been wanting to do some things like this for a while, and it's a fun way to do all of that.”
Kisner said part of the inspiration behind entering the contest was a desire to do more for the school’s programs.
“The application period started at the end of July, and Mr. Frisby had signed Southwestern Heights up for the contest after seeing a post from T-Mobile. We always look for ways to get help with our programs since things have gotten way more expensive in recent times, and it can be very tough for a school district to support all of the things that need it, so this is a great way to get some financial support and in a fun way that also encourages community support,” Kisner said. “The biggest thing I'm excited about is we're going to do a video series of our some of our students talking about some of the fun activities they've been involved in throughout the years on our social media pages. That's going to be a big key for our administrative team this year anyway, so this is just another piece to that puzzle. I'm also excited to see all the community support and involvement that will happen through this. People can support us on our social media pages – our X handle is @SWHMustangs_HS and our Facebook page is @Southwestern Heights. People can support us by using the tags #FN5GL #Sweepstakes @TMobile, and each post gets us an extra entry into that sweepstakes, so we want to see as many posts and tags as possible.”
Kisner said the prospect for receiving some of the money is exciting for the school.
“Getting $5,000 would help with uniforms and/or equipment or other necessities for that particular program. Then, with the $25,000, that could go into some bigger projects we want to take on that we've been working toward like facility upgrades and work like that,” Kisner said. “Then, if we ended up as the grand prize winner, we would put a team together to make sure that money is spent responsibly, but that will also help with some bigger projects we want to take on, like replacing the track. If we ended up as the grand prize winner, we would all be beyond ecstatic, that would be amazing. We're excited to be able to engage with the community in such a fun way, and this would also be a great help to some of our programs. We have coaches and teams that work their tails off, and we'd love to be able to help them out however we can.”
Kisner added the school staff will certainly not be silent about this contest.
“We'd already done some outreach before things started – we had each building share a video of the new people we have for this year and some of the fun things going on in the classroom. And along with this sweepstakes, we're going to be interviewing students from all the different athletic programs and share them on social media to help engage the community even more, and that will include our football, volleyball, cross country and cheer teams, among many others, and we're excited to see how that goes,” Kisner said. “We will definitely not be silent about this on our social media, because we want to see as much support as possible. T-Mobile will start announcing the $5,000 winners in the weeks after that Sept. 12 deadline, and we anticipate hearing all of that shortly not too long after that deadline.”
Overall, Kisner said, he is looking forward to seeing how the contest turns out.
“We've already seen a bunch of community support so far, and I hope to see that support keep growing,” Kisner said. “It's been great hearing from the community, and I know we all love our Mustangs.”
