Vote for Tuscaloosa News Boys Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

A local weekly ballot in a statewide field

Alabama's high school reader-vote calendar is crowded, and most of the ballots on it are statewide. The football, basketball and baseball player programs that sit beside this one collect nominations from schools across Alabama and hand the whole state a single vote. This ballot works differently. It belongs to The Tuscaloosa News, the daily newspaper serving Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and its question is deliberately narrow: which boys athlete from the Tuscaloosa area delivered the most impressive performance of the week? The paper runs it as a weekly series through the high school sports year, and readers, not a panel of reporters, decide each winner.

The voting happens on Crowdsignal, the polling service that operates poll.fm addresses. The current ballot lives at https://poll.fm/16953265, and that address is refreshed with each new week's nominees rather than retired after one poll closes. Nominees appear with the stat lines that earned their spots, so a reader can weigh a pitching line against a hitting line before choosing. The subject matter is sport, the format is a public vote, and the people deciding are the newspaper's own readership in west Alabama.

The dated record for this series

The series has confirmed editions in 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Because it runs weekly, a single calendar year holds many ballots rather than one annual event, and each of those years stands for a stretch of weekly polls rather than a single winner.

The most recent confirmed window covers Aug. 29 to Sept. 4, with voting open until noon Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. An earlier ballot in the same series covered April 25 to May 1 and now displays as closed, with the final share of votes each nominee received still visible on the poll page.

Nomination runs on a separate track from voting. Coaches and team stat keepers send statistics to [email protected] by 11 p.m. Friday to put players on the top performer lists that feed the following week's ballot, which is how the nominee roster assembles before readers ever see it.

One thing the ballot leaves out is a rule set. The page publishes no list of award categories beyond the single athlete of the week question, and it never states whether the same person may vote repeatedly; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How a supporter votes this week

Voting takes one visit. Pull up the ballot at https://poll.fm/16953265, which always carries the latest poll in the series, and read the nominee list. Each athlete appears beside the statistics that earned the nomination, drawn from the top performer lists the newspaper builds from coach submissions, so the choice is a comparison of documented weeks rather than of names alone.

The ballot asks one question and takes one selection. Mark the choice beside the athlete whose week you want to reward and submit. The poll page describes no account requirement and no write-in step; the mechanic is selection and submission, nothing more elaborate.

Timing matters more here than on an annual ballot. The most recent confirmed window closed at noon Thursday, Sept. 10, so a vote cast after a week's deadline lands on the wrong ballot. When a window ends, the poll shows as closed and the next week's ballot replaces it at the same address, which means a supporter who arrives late sees the finished poll rather than a live one.

Because the series resets weekly, the habit that works is returning to the same poll.fm address each week during the sports year rather than saving a link to one specific poll, which goes dark within days of its close.

Where this ballot sits among its Alabama neighbours

Six sibling programs share this page's state and vertical, and the contrast with each of them defines what this one is. The Alabama High School Football Player of the Week and the Alabama High School Baseball Player of the Week are sport-specific and statewide; this ballot is multi-sport and local to the Tuscaloosa area.

The basketball programs split further. The boys player of the week, the girls player of the week, the boys player of the year and the football player of the year cover single sports or single seasons, some weekly and some as year-end awards. None of them carries a newspaper's name in its title, because none of them belongs to a single local publisher the way this one belongs to The Tuscaloosa News.

That publisher tie is the practical difference for a supporter. Nominees here come from the paper's own coverage area and its own top performer lists, the audience is its readership, and a win means being the standout in the Tuscaloosa area that week rather than across all of Alabama.

Making a weekly push count

A short window rewards early movement. The ballot closes at noon Thursday, so support built on Friday or Saturday has a week to work, while support that starts Wednesday has hours. Share the poll.fm link as soon as the nominee list appears, and point people at the specific athlete rather than at the newspaper's homepage, because the poll is one click deep.

The nomination channel is also open to teams. A coach or stat keeper who sends numbers to [email protected] by 11 p.m. Friday puts a performance in front of the paper's sports desk, and that submission is what earns a player his place among the nominees. For the broader playbook on rallying support inside a tight voting window, see how to get more votes online.