Lennox School District selected as a top-40 school in the T-Mobile Friday Night 5G Lights contest

LENNOX — Among thousands of schools who’ve entered, Lennox is just one of 40 schools left in the T-Mobile Friday Night 5G Lights contest.

In the third year of the T-Mobile sweepstakes, Lennox is the first school from South Dakota to earn a spot in the division finals. Lennox was also one of five SD schools to earn $5,000 during the beginning of the “$5K Fridays” portion of the contest, along with Hoven, Gettysburg, Viborg-Hurley and Jones County.

Lennox activities director Casey Shade says it’s been a long journey for the school district since campaigning first started in the summer.

“It's all about how you present it and how your community also goes out and post stuff about it and tells the Lennox story,” Shade said of the application process. “We hit that pretty hard in the summer. And then we made a big deal about our $5,000 check presentation at our football game against Sioux Falls Christian to start the season there.”

The school district was later notified that it was one of 40 schools left for the $1 million grand prize. Each of the final 40 schools are divided into four regions (East, South, Midwest, and West) as it now turns into community voting.

By reaching this stage of the contest, Lennox earned an additional $25,000 and home game hosted by T-Mobile.

The school district was told on Oct. 1 it was one of 40 schools left in the contest with the official announcement coming on Oct. 8 with a district-wide pep rally. Lennox’s last home game was the next day, involving free admission, a free meal among other giveaways with T-Mobile.

“We had to plan it pretty quick and T-Mobile brings an event coordinator and all that to make sure that to recognize T-Mobile in the right way but also how we can really make it shine too so that helps,” Shade said.

But now the competition looks towards community support if Lennox wants to reach the next round. Lennox is currently fourth in the Midwest region and roughly 32,000 votes behind the top school from Ohio.

A photo of the Lennox student section at the latest home game hosted by T-Mobile on Oct. 9, 2026, in Lennox. (Courtesy photo / T-Ray Media)

If Lennox earns the most votes in its region, it will earn an additional $250,000, a Gronk Fitness Gym and another $5,000 award to a student.

“That's the biggest thing that Lennox needs, that we need help with is the votes,” Shade said. “Because it can't just be our community alone that wins this award. There are nine other schools in the Midwest, and we're all battling for $250,000 and it goes by votes.”

Shade says they hope to put the money earned from the contest to various field and facility upgrades to the football field, including turf, a bigger grandstand and a new press box. Between three different levels of football, marching band and the newly added girls soccer, the current grass field gets plenty of use. 

“A turf field would just be huge cause now we could do our youth soccer out there in the mornings on a Saturday in the afternoon, do flag football on it,” Shade said. “And the band could practice throughout the week in the mornings out there. It'd be better for track. We could even put lines out there for softball to play and get a portable backstop and do all that.”

Shade added that the grandstand on both sides of the field are way too small, especially with home games against closer opponents such as Sioux Falls Christian and Canton and often have rows of people standing along the fence to watch the game.

(Courtesy Photo / T-Ray Media)

“The people that come and watch, we get two or three people deep standing along the fence at a home football game,” Shade said.

But Shade and the Lennox School District hope other people and communities will rally behind the Orioles as they eye a chance at the next round.

“We put out to a lot of our community and our students and stuff like that to get out there and get people to help,” Shade said. “Because again, we just in Lennox can't do this alone. It needs to be kind of an all–South Dakota thing.”

You can vote once daily by going to the T-Mobile Friday Night 5G Lights website. Voting ends on Oct. 25. Shade hopes this motivates South Dakota communities every year to have at least one school in from the state in the running.

I'm hoping this raises awareness and if we can get up there that somebody else maybe next year, we get a South Dakota school every year. It would be pretty powerful in this, just help out activities.”