Erika Selberg and Kyle Lavender have been making lots of phone calls and sending lots of emails. Why? They want people to vote, but not for political candidates. Rather, they’re hoping people will quickly vote, daily, through Sunday, Oct 25 to support Redmond High School in its bid to win $1 million in the 2026 T-Mobile Friday Night 5G Lights sweepstakes.
People can vote daily for Redmond High, which is competing against 40 U.S. high schools for the $1 million prize. There are 10 schools each from the West, Midwest, South and East parts of the country. The schools with the most votes in each division win $250,000, a Gronk Fitness Gym and “The Big Deal” Student Leadership Award worth another $5,000.
Redmond High has won $30,000 in other T-Mobile giveaways during the 2026 sweepstakes, including $25,000 for being one of the 40 finalists and another $5,000 as one of 10 Oregon schools selected during weekly Friday drawings during the April 9-Sept. 18 application period. Voting to select the final four finalists began Oct. 8, and those four finalists will be named Oct. 29.
The grand-prize winner will be named Nov. 12. Redmond is the only Oregon school in the West bracket, which is currently led by Lakeside High School in Washington with approximately 78,000 votes. Redmond is in 10th place, but Selberg is confident they can rack up a lot more votes before Oct. 25 and at least score a $250,000 award for being one of the four finalists.
“The benefit goes across the board because it’s facilities that every team could use,” said Selberg, administrative assistant for Redmond High athletics. “The $250,000 could benefit all of athletics, because it’s not attached to the stadium upgrade. Football is what draws the attention, but it’s not just football that benefits from any sort of facility upgrade.”
“Pretty much this entire week has been Kyle and I reaching out to people across the state,” she added. “The state really rallied around Lebanon last year, and so we’re reaching out.”
Last year, Oregonians turned out in a big way to help Lebanon High School finish second to Dierks High School of Arkansas overall. In 2024, the first year of the sweepstakes, Oklahoma’s Inola High School won.
Lavender, Redmond High’s head football coach, said the $30,000 the school has already won will be used to purchase new shoulder pads for the football team and cover its helmet rentals. The $250,000, should Redmond win it, would go toward new or updated locker rooms and storage facilities. Currently, the football team is using the baseball team’s dugouts as a locker room and the stairway to the football stadium’s press box as a storage area, as the school is under construction to modernize it thanks to the Redmond School District’s 2024 Capitol Bond Program.
“Erika and I pretty much have been spending the last couple of days calling the entire state, trying to get them on board. Radio stations, news stations, schools, businesses. Any contact that we have, we’re trying to spread the word,” Lavender said. “It’s beneficial for the entire athletics program, and we’re trying to get the word out to everybody. It’s going to benefit not just football, but our entire athletics department here at Redmond.”
T-Mobile, a U.S. wireless carrier and network operator, is awarding more than $8 million in prizes with this year’s sweepstakes. Representatives from the company will be on hand for the Panthers’ next home football game on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 7pm against the Bend High Lava Bears. Finalists in the sweepstakes get a “T-Mobile” game at which company representatives have booths and giveaways for spectators.
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