Inola High School Rallies For Final Votes In $2 Million T-Mobile Competition

Inola High School is one the top contenders in a nationwide competition to win a $2 million prize from T-Mobile.

VOTE HERE

The voting ends Tuesday night in the T-Mobile Friday Night 5G Lights competition and students and teachers are hitting the road in a school bus, asking for votes. The Oklahoma State Department of Education is even spreading the news.

Inola students and teachers say when they entered this competition, they had no clue if they had a chance.

They are competing against massive schools across the country, but thanks to social media and help from celebrities, Inola is catching up to the number one spot.

Teachers and students loaded up on a bus and headed to Tulsa Monday for one final campaign for votes to win a $2 million prize from T-Mobile.

"We are going around and campaigning to businesses and hopefully putting our posters up that people can scan as they pass by,” said Graycie Eagleton, a student at Inola High School.

Inola was named one of 16 finalists back in October to win the prize that will upgrade the school's athletics facilities.

"The money will redo our entire football stadium, it will renew our scoreboard, it will also completely renew our weight room. Gronk (Rob Gronkowski) is going to come redo the weight room. Then we get $100,000 that goes straight to the school system,” said Deleea Meeker, an Inola teacher.

Meeker has helped lead this campaign. She says the football stadium needs a lot of work, the turf is torn up, the sound system is broken, the scoreboard is old and the multi-use weight room has equipment from the 1980s.

Some Inola students made a TikTok video reenacting a T-Mobile commercial, and the video blew up and helped Inola gain traction in the competition.

"It's not just been a student effort; it's been an entire community effort. It's been people from Inola alumni from 50 or 60 years ago are joining Instagram so they can vote,” said Meeker.

The competition is simple, the school that gets the most likes on Instagram by tomorrow night wins.

"To be able to vote you go to the IHS Proud Instagram page and like the pinned video and that's it. That's all you have to do,” said Meeker.

Teachers and students say winning would mean so much to the small town.

"This would just really benefit our community and our school as a whole. We are from a little rural town Oklahoma so we don't have a ton of money so this would greatly benefit us,” said Eagleton.

Students also went to the Jenks Outlet Mall and Gathering place today and are headed to the OKC Thunder game Monday night to try to get some final votes.

---

The winning school receives $2 million in facility upgrades. Votes are gathered by receiving "likes" on this Instagram post.

The competition ends on Nov. 12 at 10:59 p.m.