Txt ur <3 out

[north_clt]

Etowah High School had a little help from its friends.

The Towne Lake school found out Monday morning that it had won the Kellie Pickler High School Hookup contest sponsored by Kicks 101.5 after sending in more than 500,000 text messages to the radio station during a 10-day period.

Some details:

-- The station received more than two million texts, and 25 percent of those were for Etowah, which had help from the community, its feeder middle schools and rivals of other schools in the top 10.

A parent of a student at Alexander High School in Douglasville called the station last week and said Alexander students were texting on behalf of Etowah to keep their rival, Chapel Hill High, from winning. The strategy worked, as Chapel Hill came in second place.

-- Mark Richards, program director and operations manager for Kicks said Miss Pickler, a Season 5 finalist on "American Idol," is the perfect performer for reaching the station's younger listeners because of her youth and her "terrific" personality.

-- The 2,300-student school already is preparing for the concert, which is a school activity and won't be open to the public, and is planning "a few welcome things for Kellie" that will involve some students, Dunnavant said.

"We'll have a few presentations for her," he said. "She was a former cheerleader in high school so we'll probably do a little cheerleading thing. We want to make sure she's properly welcomed."

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Cherokee Tribune - Txt ur <3 out