Star Health / Delaware SportsZone Athlete of the Week (WDEL): How Voting Works & How to Win

What the WDEL poll page doesn't tell you

No published vote cap. No fixed close time. That's the first thing worth knowing before treating this like the other Delaware athlete polls. The page at wdel.com/sports/high-school/athlete-of-the-week/ hosts an online fan vote with no account required, but it stops short of stating a per-device limit or a set weekly deadline the way several sibling programs in the same state do. Anyone planning a campaign around an assumed Sunday or Wednesday cutoff is guessing, not reading.

What is confirmed carries real weight anyway. This is Delaware's only radio-run athlete-of-the-week program: WDEL 101.7 FM, owned by Audacy, not a newspaper chain and not an independent sports blog. The award's full name, "Star Health / Delaware SportsZone Athlete of the Week," pairs a presenting sponsor with WDEL's own high school sports brand, Delaware SportsZone. For how open fan-vote polls generally work before diving into WDEL specifics, the online contest voting guide covers the baseline mechanics.

Five sports, not the whole DIAA calendar

Football. Basketball. Lacrosse. Soccer. Cross country. That's the confirmed list, and it's narrower than it might look at first glance. A wrestler pinning his way through January or a softball player carrying a spring lineup doesn't have a lane on this particular ballot, no matter how strong the season. Compare that with 302Sports.com's Delaware poll, built to cover every DIAA-sanctioned sport year-round, and the gap becomes the point: WDEL settled on five sports and, going by the current page, hasn't broadened the list beyond them.

Five sports across three seasons still means the ballot runs most of the school year, just without the wrestling mats, diamonds, or golf courses that round out a full DIAA calendar. Fall carries football, soccer, and cross country nominees at the same time; basketball fills winter; lacrosse and soccer's spring season close it out. No public archive confirms whether one of those windows draws heavier turnout than another.

How an Audacy radio station runs a vote differently than a newsroom

WDEL isn't chasing pageviews the way a digital-only outlet does. It's a broadcast station first, with a website and a sports vertical, Delaware SportsZone, built around that on-air identity. That distinction shows up in one real advantage: WDEL can mention the weekly ballot over the air, on a station Delaware listeners already have tuned in for news and sports talk, not just push it through a social feed the way a web-only competitor has to.

The vote itself still happens online, through the widget posted at wdel.com/sports/high-school/athlete-of-the-week/. Nothing about casting a vote requires a radio or a live broadcast. The mechanism is a standard digital poll. What changes is discovery. A listener driving home might hear a mention of the current nominee field before a teammate ever shares the link on a group chat, a path none of Delaware's newspaper-run or independent-web polls have built in.

Where the nominee pool actually comes from across the state

Statewide reach means the ballot can pull from Blue Hen Conference schools clustered in New Castle County, with programs like Salesianum in Wilmington, and from Henlopen Conference schools further south and central, Caesar Rodney in Kent County, Cape Henlopen down in Sussex. Nothing on wdel.com restricts the poll to one conference or one county the way Delmarva Now's peninsula-only footprint does.

That breadth cuts both ways for a supporter. A Sussex County program competing against a New Castle County school on the same weekly ballot means the field isn't limited to one region's usual rivalries. But it also means a nominee's network has to reach further than a hyper-local booster chain to register. For the full slate of Delaware fan-vote programs tracked here, including the newspaper-run and independent-outlet versions, the Delaware contest hub lists every one side by side.

Running a campaign against an unpublished deadline

No stated cap. No fixed close time. That's an unusual amount of open room compared with most Delaware athlete polls, and it changes the practical advice. Instead of pacing a push around a known Wednesday-afternoon or Sunday-night cutoff, the first move here is simpler: read the actual post at wdel.com/sports/high-school/athlete-of-the-week/ for that week's specific close note before telling anyone a deadline at all.

Once that's confirmed, the same basics apply that move any open, human-vote poll: a direct link to the specific post, not just the athlete's name, shared with teammates, coaches, and the school's booster network, works better than a vague mention. A short on-air callout, if WDEL runs one that week, can widen the audience beyond whoever already follows Delaware SportsZone on social. If organic reach runs out before the post's own deadline arrives, sports fan-poll vote support exists for polls exactly like this. The standard caution applies: match the pace to whatever the live post's current rules allow, and re-check what's actually permitted before running anything at volume. The full USA fan-vote directory and the general guide to earning more votes cover tactics that apply beyond Delaware.