CLEWISTON- The Clewiston High School Tiger football program was one of 10 schools in the country to be chosen as a recipient of Kia Motor’s “Accelerate The Good” Campaign.

The Tiger football program will receive $50,000 from the company. The money will help the Tigers to upgrade different aspects of their program, facilities, and equipment.

“It’s a blessing that we received this,” said Tiger coach Pete Walker after announcing the donation to his players. “Think about this guys, not ten schools in the county, not 10 schools in the state, but we are one of out of 10 schools in the entire country that received this donation. I can’t thank them enough for it. It’s gonna allow us to do a lot of great things with our football program.”

Supporting high school football teams is the latest extension of Kia Motors' "Accelerate The Good" charitable initiative, which began in 2019 when the Great Unknowns Scholarship was established to help young people in need get a foothold in higher education.

“Football is America’s game, and this Sunday will provide the welcome break we all need from the pandemic. As we thought about it more, we realized Kia could use this as an opportunity to help high school players keep working toward their dreams of someday being on football’s biggest stage,” said Russell Wager, vice president, marketing, Kia Motors America after announcing the program.

Tiger coach Eric Green called the donation a blessing.

“COVID has really effected a lot of places and us being a smaller community we were really impacted tremendously,” Green explained. “All the tournaments and other ways we could raise money was shutdown. This money is going to be a huge opportunity to give our kids a chance to get better and to win.”