The Athens High School football stadium is lit up each Friday night as a symbol of hope during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Athens High School football coach Cody Gross believes the smallest things can lift people up and give them hope and inspiration.

So, when he saw many high schools around the country were turning on their stadium lights on Friday nights as a symbol of hope during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was inspired to do the same.

“I’m pretty much a thief,” Gross said. “I saw on Twitter where there were some high schools in Texas that were doing it, and thought it was a neat idea.”

It’s called the “Be the Light” movement, and it began at Dumas High School in Dumas, Texas, when principal Brett Beesley was driving by the darkened high school one night in late March and decided to do something to honor and inspire the students and faculty during the new coronavirus outbreak.

“I wanted to let (the students) know that we’re thinking about them and we miss them and love them,” Beesley told The Associated Press.

What began at one high school quickly spread across Texas and then the nation, as #BeTheLight trended across Twitter.

Most schools turn their lights on either Monday or Friday nights for about an hour or so. Gross turns the Athens Stadium lights on as it begins to get dark each Friday night, then goes back to shut them off at 8 p.m.

“Just the fact the school is such a big part of a community, especially in our town and being a one-high-school town, there is a lot of tradition here,” Gross said. “The school means a lot to the people of Athens, and so does football with Friday night lights. Having the lights on Friday nights hopefully gives some people some hope for those Friday nights in the future when we’ll be back playing again.”

Gross said seeing the stadium lights on each Friday, even if only for about an hour, gets him excited about things getting back to normal in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis that has caused people to hunker down at home for the past month and a half.

“As I’m turning them on, it’s not fully dark yet, so when I go back to turn them off, I can see them a ways off,” Gross said. “It really does fire me up when I get on (U.S.) 31 and see those lights shining. Hopefully, it does the same for other people.”

The lights aren’t the only thing Gross has done to try to cheer up and inspire the people of Athens.

In late March, as part of Athens Spirit Week, he was filmed jogging around each of the Athens City Schools campuses while the theme of the movie “Rocky” played in the background. He closed the video by running up the steps of Athens stadium and holding his arms up in the iconic pose of Rocky Balboa in the popular movie.

“The ‘Rocky’ deal was not my idea,” Gross said. “I’m not that creative. Myra Carter, coach (Steve) Carter’s wife, suggested that. That was the first week we were back (doing) online learning, doing the e-learning. Part of the deal that week and that day was, I think you were supposed to do a dance and put it on social media. I’m not a dancer, so I wasn’t even going to attempt that one. So, that was my entry into social media that day. It was a lot of fun and a lot of folks got a kick out of that.”