photo by: Submitted

Baldwin High School's mascot shows off a check the school's athletic department received as part of a national Friday Night Lights contest run by the mobile phone company T-Mobile.

Baldwin High School won $30,000 in a national competition for upgrading athletic facilities, and the school’s athletic director said it is already being put to work strengthening the weight room.

The competition for division finalists in T-Mobile’s Friday Night 5G Lights finished on Oct. 25, and Baldwin High School Athletic Director Dayton Valentine said Baldwin finished third in the Midwest division. The Lawrence Journal-World previously reported that Baldwin remained the only Kansas school in the competition as a division finalist out of 2,500 schools across the

country.

Schools competed against each other through online voting, where anyone could vote online with a phone number for one school daily until the period closed. In total, Baldwin — a community of about 5,000 people — received 148,732 votes. People were allowed to vote once per day, the Baldwin community took the message far and wide, even creating yard signs like you see in political campaigns.

“I feel like the dust is settling a little bit, but prior to that, I think it was really cool to see the community outpouring behind the school and excited for possibilities,” Valentine said. “It’s been awesome just to see the Baldwin community rally behind the school and come up with all sorts of creative Facebook posts and kind of bring everybody together.”

Valentine said the school is working to add new turf to the weight room and added he plans to talk with the football coach to see how the school could use the leftover money with high equipment costs. For example, one football helmet costs $500, Valentine said, with larger equipment such as offensive line training sleds costing around $15,000.

“Right now, it’s just been more like brainstorming of what we could potentially do with money for future spending,” Valentine said.

For Baldwin, one of the facility upgrade proposals for the competition was to add lights to the school’s soccer field and use it for multiple sports. Valentine said adding lights remain at the top of his priority list, but he will have to find new avenues to pay for the approximate $250,000 price tag.

“I do think that kind of looking around to see what’s possible, whether it be kind of capital outlay money, a future bond or private donations, but still very much, you know, was going to see how far we could go in the T-Mobile challenge,” Valentine said. “But it’s like our needs and wants and things that our kids deserve haven’t changed.”

Valentine said the school would try entering next year to win larger prizes when the competition opens. He thanked the school’s supporters who voted and shared the competition with others across the state.

“I just thought it was really cool to see as an athletic director, so many people come together in support of a little 4A school in the eastern part of the state here,” Valentine said.

Four schools from the West, Midwest, South and East divisions received $250,000 and advanced to the final round of voting. The school with the most votes by Nov. 8 will receive $1 million and win the competition. Midwest division champion Menasha High School from Menasha, Wisconsin, won with 422,583 votes.