To Decide Martin Dentistry Football Athlete of the Week, CIF SJS: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Martin Dentistry Football Athlete of the Week vote is

Most athlete-of-the-week ballots in California belong to a newsroom. This one does not. The Martin Dentistry Football Athlete of the Week, CIF SJS is run by Martin Dentistry, a dental practice that puts its name on the honor itself, and the ballot title reads "VOTE to decide Martin Dentistry's Football Athlete of the Week, CIF SJS Championship". The sponsor is the publisher, which makes this a business-sponsored community award rather than an editorial one.

Balloting happens on poll.fm, the Crowdsignal host used for this kind of weekly fan poll. The live poll lives at poll.fm/16342680, and the vote itself is embedded at the bottom of that page. The format is a straightforward fan poll: no account, no login, no entry fee, just a choice among the week's football nominees and a submit button.

The market is California high school football, and specifically the CIF SJS Championship orbit. The ballot names its nominees by position and school, and the honor goes to one standout player each week of the season. In the organizer's words, "Each week during the 2026 season, one standout player will be voted the Martin Dentistry Football Athlete of the Week."

Facts at a glance

The dated record for this weekly football poll

The 2023 and 2025 seasons are the editions on file for this program. That spacing marks it as a series that returns each football season instead of a one-off promotion, and it means the 2026 cycle, if it follows the pattern, would be at least the third season the practice has run the honor. The page makes no claim about which year the series began, because the evidence supports those edition years and nothing earlier.

Within a season, the series is weekly. The timing evidence places the season's ballots between August and December, which matches a normal high school football calendar from season openers through championship games. Each week brings a fresh poll with a fresh nominee slate and cutoff, and the ballot at poll.fm/16342680 is the latest poll in the series rather than a permanent landing page.

The one dated deadline carried on the ballot page itself is specific: "The poll at the bottom of this page closes at noon Thursday, Sept. 3." That is how each week communicates its cutoff, a noon Thursday close printed on the poll page. The organizer leaves the week's award categories off the ballot page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Nominations run ahead of the vote. The organizer encourages everyone to submit nominations for the upcoming week by emailing [email protected], so the weekly pipeline is nominate by email, then vote on the published poll.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot today

Voting takes little effort. A supporter opens the current ballot at poll.fm/16342680, scrolls past the nominee write-ups to the poll at the bottom of the page, selects one football player from the answer list and submits. There is no registration step and no payment. The ballot names each nominee by position and school so a supporter knows exactly who they are backing before they click.

The rules are unusually open, and they come from the organizer in its own words: "There are no voting restrictions, so vote now and vote often." That sentence does two things at once. It removes any per-person cap on the face of the poll, and it actively invites repeat participation, which is unusual for a sponsored award and matters for anyone organizing a fan push during the short weekly window.

The window is short by design. The printed deadline on the current ballot is noon Thursday, Sept. 3, and each weekly poll carries its own close in the same pattern. A supporter who learns about the poll on Friday has effectively missed that week; the same supporter who sees it Wednesday has days to vote and to ask others.

Nominating a player is a separate step from voting. Nominations for the upcoming week go by email to [email protected], and the organizer states that everyone is encouraged to submit them. So the full weekly loop is nominate by email, wait for the ballot to post, then vote and share before the Thursday noon close.

How this ballot differs from its California siblings

Set beside the other California athlete ballots, this one stands apart on three points. First, the sponsor: Martin Dentistry is a business, not a newspaper, so the honor carries a commercial name in its title and the practice controls the weekly framing. Second, the scope: this ballot is tied to CIF SJS Championship football coverage, while most siblings cover a whole sport statewide. Third, the rules: the organizer's no-restrictions wording is more permissive than the typical one-vote-per-day framing elsewhere.

The nearest sibling in sport is the California High School Football Player of the Week, which covers the same sport under a separate publisher with its own ballot. The seasonal siblings rotate with the school year: the California High School Baseball Player of the Week and the California High School Softball Player of the Week run in spring, while the boys basketball and girls basketball polls take winter.

The Fresno Bee Athlete of the Week is the clearest contrast in publisher type: a newsroom-run, multi-sport honor against a dentist-run, single-sport one. Where a supporter feels the difference most is the window. A weekly football poll that closes at noon Thursday rewards fast mobilization in a way a longer statewide ballot does not, and the sponsor's own vote-often wording makes repeat returns legitimate here in a way they are not on every sibling.

Strengthening support inside this poll's short window

Everything about this ballot favors an early push. The weekly poll opens with the nominee list already posted and closes at a printed noon Thursday deadline, so the useful span is a few days, not weeks. Share the ballot link the day it posts, name the player and the school in the message so supporters know who they are clicking for, and ask people to vote before Thursday morning rather than at the deadline.

The organizer's rules make two tactics safe here that are not safe everywhere. First, repeat voting is explicitly invited, so asking the same supporters to return on Wednesday and again Thursday morning follows the printed rule. Second, nominations are open to everyone by email, so building next week's nominee list is part of the program, not a workaround. What no supporter should assume is any guarantee of outcome; a poll with no restrictions still has an unknown number of participants on the other side. For a fuller playbook that fits short-window polls like this one, see how to get more votes online.