Mesa Sixth Grader Beats Thousands of Entrants to Win Super Bowl LXI Tickets

Big Red and the Arizona Cardinals cheerleaders crashed a morning assembly at Mesa Academy for Advanced Studies to hand sixth grader Mark Lathouwers two tickets to Super Bowl LXI, the payoff for a hands-only CPR lesson he completed as part of a national youth health challenge. Lathouwers said he had no idea it was coming. “I did not expect to win the tickets,” he said, adding that winning them was “very nice.”

The surprise capped weeks of secrecy at the school. According to FOX 10 Phoenix, the American Heart Association and the Arizona Cardinals arranged the assembly after Lathouwers earned the Super Bowl LXI grand prize through a nationwide drawing. Per Lathouwers, the pool of entrants numbered in the thousands. Mesa Academy Principal Dr. Jacob Davis learned of the win roughly two weeks before the assembly and kept it under wraps to plan the reveal, according to 12 News.

How a CPR Lesson Turned Into a Championship Ticket

Lathouwers earned his shot at the prize by completing Finn's Mission, a national youth program run through the NFL Play 60 initiative that encourages kids to learn life-saving hands-only CPR and adopt heart-healthy habits. The initiative requires students to work through eight interactive modules covering hands-only CPR, stroke warning signs, and healthy lifestyle habits, according to the American Heart Association's Kids Heart Challenge program. Completing those modules entered Lathouwers, along with other Kids Heart Challenge and Finn's Mission participants nationwide, into the drawing that ultimately produced his win.

The odds he beat were steep by local measure. Only 11 students at Mesa Academy completed the CPR challenge, 12 News reports, which placed Lathouwers in a West Coast regional sweepstakes pool that included participating schools across several Western states and drew thousands of entrants overall. Lathouwers said he hopes the Arizona Cardinals make it to the Super Bowl themselves, though the two tickets guarantee him a seat regardless of who's playing.

A Valentine's Day Championship at SoFi Stadium

Super Bowl LXI is scheduled for February 14, 2027, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, according to Wikipedia — the first time in NFL history the league's championship game will fall on Valentine's Day. It will mark the second Super Bowl hosted at SoFi Stadium since the venue opened in 2020.

Mesa Academy for Advanced Studies is an accelerated public school within the Mesa Unified School District serving grades 4 through 8 and offering an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program, per Mesa Public Schools. The campus enrolls roughly 380 students in East Mesa. Hoodline previously counted the school among the district's top-performing public middle schools.

Bigger Stakes Than a Ticket Giveaway

The prize structure is designed to pull more schools into CPR training, not just individual students. For every 18 students who complete the Finn's Mission modules, a participating school earns an entry into a separate drawing for a $10,000 campus fitness equipment makeover, according to the American Heart Association. Large districts have leaned into the incentive: Baltimore County Public Schools logged 686 student completions during the 2024–2025 school year, a benchmark that also helped that district rank tenth nationwide in overall AHA youth fundraising.

The underlying health case for the program is stark. More than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur annually in the United States, and about 90% of cases prove fatal, according to American Heart Association data. Separate AHA research published in 2024 found that bystander CPR administered within two minutes of a cardiac arrest raises a patient's survival rate by 81% and boosts survival without brain damage by 95% — yet bystander CPR is currently given in fewer than half of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.

Arizona already requires hands-on CPR training before high school graduation. Under Arizona Revised Statutes § 15-718.01, enacted through Senate Bill 1137 in 2016, the Arizona State Legislature made the state one of the first 41 in the country to set that kind of graduation standard for public and charter high schools. Programs like Finn's Mission extend similar lessons down to elementary and middle school years, well before that state mandate ever kicks in.