With only days to go, the passionate fans of Hughson’s unbeaten football team have the high school in position to win $100,000 in a nationwide contest to go toward much-needed upgrades at Husky Stadium.

Hughson is one of 16 finalists in the Friday Night Lights program sponsored by T-Mobile. The contest requires schools in cities of 50,000 or less to create 90-second Instagram videos about their football teams. Schools are then ranked by how many “likes” each video receives.

As of Thursday morning, Hughson was first in the country with nearly 264,000 “likes,” about 10,000 votes ahead of second-place Inola High School in Oklahoma. People have until Tuesday to go to Hughson’s Instagram page, watch the video and like it. T-Mobile will announce the winner in early December.

Here are other ways Hughson fans can participate:

·         Follow the Hughson High Football IG page @hughsonhighfootball and like its posts.

·         Post their own Hughson Husky experiences on Instagram (posts or reels only) and include these four tags: @tmobile, #FN5GL, @hughsonhighfootball and #sweepstakes. All four tags must be used for the post to count.

·         Set their personal IG page to “public” so their posts are viewable by all.

At stake is a treasure trove of cool stuff to benefit the winning high school – the $100,000 grant, a new high-tech scoreboard, 5G network upgrades, a new weight room courtesy of former NFL player Rob Gronkowski’s fitness company, improvements to the football field, and an epic tailgate party with live music and a halftime drone show at a future game.

Hughson’s efforts in the contest have been spearheaded by Melinda King – a teacher at Ross Middle School who also is the wife of football coach Shaun King – along with a growing group of dedicated volunteers. Together, they have created content for Hughson’s IG page and found other ways to spread the word. They have:

·         Distributed 2,000 flyers in English and Spanish in the community

·         Partnered with the Hughson Moms Facebook group, which literally has promoted the contest around the world

·         Had a presence at community events like Hughson Trunk and Treat and the Hughson Arboretum Fall Festival

·         Purchased a cutout of Gronkowski to use in social media videos about “Gronk” sightings

·         Teamed up with the high school’s FFA program, its broadcasting class and counseling department

·         Reached out to local media, which has generated TV, radio and newspaper coverage

·         Created a new TikTok account Hughson_high_football to reach more people

“Our No. 1 goal has been to get people to visit our Instagram page, so they can like the pinned post, as well as encourage others to share our direct link so others can like and share it as well,” King said.

Hughson already has earned $30,000 in the contest -- $5,000 in September for its first IG videos and another $25,000 in October when it was named one of the 16 finalists nationally.

The contest is just the latest positive development in what has been a magical season so far for Hughson’s unbeaten football team, which is 10-0 and seeded first in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division 5 playoffs. The Huskies have a first-round bye this week and will host a game on Nov. 15.