HOUSTON – There's nothing better than a pleasant surprise and that's just what happened at Sharpstown High School Tuesday when students won $100,000 worth of sports equipment.
Over the summer the school’s athletic director, Carlos Quintero, discovered the “Let’s Play High School Challenge” -- a $100,000 grant competition put on by Good Sports and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
More than 30 qualifying schools from across the country assembled 60- to 90-second videos based on the theme “Because of Sports...”
Once accepted by the competition, each school had to rally public support through an online voting system to make it into the top 10. From there, a committee narrowed it down to three and then ultimately to one grand prize winner: Sharpstown High School.
“I honestly thought we didn't have a chance. I don’t know why at the moment,” said Clyaneli Garcia, a senior at Sharpstown and one of the students who helped create the submission video. She was also one of the five students to be included in the official conference call declaring them the winners.
“The weight room, we couldn't really use it because everything ... wasn't working, basically," Garcia said. "The balls are really flat. We couldn’t play with them."
That said, Garcia feels despite all of her time on campus playing volleyball, basketball, cross country and track has been spent with not the best of equipment, she would do it all again.
“We are who we are right now because of sports, in my opinion,” Garcia said.
After the conference call Garcia and four other students took part in surprising the rest of the athletes and student body with the news. Needless to say, a cheer erupted.
“Even if we’re not the best, even if people think that we suck, we still push ourselves every day and we work really hard,” Garcia said.
Now that the school has won the next step is to figure out just what all they want to purchase with the grant. They are hopefully to get most if not all of the equipment this year.
Check out the school’s submission video here.
