VOTE to decide Martin Dentistry's Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

A dentist-sponsored weekly ballot for California high school sport

Each week during the season, Martin Dentistry, a California practice that puts its name on the award, puts up a new high school sport ballot under its Athlete of the Week name. The balloting runs on Crowdsignal's poll.fm service, and every round opens as a numbered poll with a fresh slate of nominees. The ballot this page tracks sits at poll.fm/17015547, and the newest round on that address is the one a supporter votes in.

The audience is the community around each nominee. One recent ballot carried softball nominees from Escalon, Oakdale, Linden and Tracy, a girls track and field entry from Oakdale, and a boys track and field nominee from Ripon, so the programme pulls together school communities from several California towns onto a single poll. Each entry lists the athlete's name, sport and town, and supporters do not need an account to take part.

This is a sports award decided by open public voting across the state as a whole, not one school district. The table below gathers the essentials.

The dated record: weekly rounds inside three edition years

Three edition years are confirmed for this programme: 2023, 2025 and 2026. Within the 2026 season the organizer describes the series as weekly, with one standout player voted the athlete of the week each week during the season. That means a single season contains many ballots, and the yearly list above marks the seasons in which the series ran, not the number of polls.

The dated windows on individual rounds are the other anchor. One recent ballot ran May 11-16 and now shows as closed. A later round in the 2026 season closed at noon on Friday, September 11, a shift the organizer attributed to the Labor Day holiday moving the usual Thursday close. The closing time of the round now live, and the opening date of the one after it, are not published here; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

One further gap matters to anyone following the series. The organizer does not print a standing roster of which sports or schools will appear on any given week's ballot, so each Monday's nominee list is known only when that ballot goes up. What the organizer has published is the nomination rule, that anyone can nominate an athlete of the week from any sport, and the voting rule, that there are no voting restrictions. Everything else about a specific round, from its nominee slate to its closing hour, is settled only on the ballot itself when it opens.

How a supporter votes on the live poll.fm ballot

Voting takes little effort. You open the current numbered poll on Crowdsignal, scan the list of nominees where each athlete appears with a sport and a home town, tap the selection circle next to your choice, and submit. No login, no email address and no fee stand between a reader and a counted vote. Once submitted, the platform shows the tally, which is how a race such as the boys track and field round that reached 58 percent of 16,850 votes stayed visible to everyone following it.

Two stated rules shape how the week plays out. First, nominations are open: the organizer says anyone can nominate an athlete of the week from any sport, so a family, a coach or a teammate can put a name forward rather than waiting for a shortlist. Second, voting is unrestricted: the ballot states there are no voting restrictions, so vote now and vote often. A supporter who wants to return on Tuesday, Wednesday and again before the close is acting within the published rule each time.

The weekly rhythm is the practical constraint. Each round closes, the winner moves on, and a new nominee list replaces the old one, so the window for any single athlete is measured in days. Because the ballot is on poll.fm, it also loads cleanly on a phone, which suits supporters sharing the link through team group chats during a short voting window.

How this ballot sits among California's athlete of the week polls

California carries a dense field of high school athlete of the week ballots, and this one is distinguishable by its sponsor and its scope. Martin Dentistry is a local business putting its name on the award, rather than a newsroom brand, and the ballot is open to any sport rather than tied to one. Recent rounds have carried softball and track and field nominees from Escalon, Oakdale, Linden, Tracy and Ripon, towns that sit outside the usual metro-centric coverage of a single newspaper.

The nearest neighbours on this site are the sport-specific state polls: the California High School Softball Player of the Week, the California High School Baseball Player of the Week, and the California High School Football Player of the Week. Girls basketball has its own ballot at the California High School Girls Basketball Athlete of the Week, and boys basketball at the California High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week. The Fresno Bee Athlete of the Week rounds out the set as a publisher-run programme from a different part of the state.

What separates the Martin Dentistry ballot from all of them is the combination of an unrestricted voting rule and a weekly reset. The state-wide sport polls concentrate on one discipline, while this one rotates sports with the calendar and hands every school community the same short, repeatable window to rally behind its own athlete.

Rallying support inside a short weekly window

Because each round lasts only days, effective support for a Martin Dentistry nominee is about reach inside the window, not slow accumulation. The organizer's unrestricted voting rule is the single most useful fact: a supporter group that votes on Monday can vote again on Wednesday and again before the close without breaking any published rule. The practical play is to put the ballot link where a school community already gathers, team message threads and family group chats, and to remind people before the closing hour rather than after.

Nomination is the other lever, and it is entirely in the community's hands. Anyone can nominate an athlete from any sport, so getting a standout onto the ballot at the start of the week is step one, before a single vote is cast. Once listed, the nominee's sport and town appear beside their name, which makes the shareable link self-explanatory to a grandparent or a neighbour with no context.

For supporters weighing outside help, the organizer publishes no policy beyond the no-restrictions voting statement, so the published rules are the boundary a campaign works within. The guide to getting more votes online covers organic methods that fit a weekly window, and anyone comparing options can review the award vote service or read where purchased votes stand legally. No outcome is guaranteed by any method; the total on the ballot decides the award.