DSBA Delaware Athlete of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

Why DSBA's Athlete of the Year isn't limited to one sport

Six All-State teams. Three sports. One boy, one girl, chosen from every sport DIAA sanctions, not just the handful that get their own All-State roster. That combination is what separates the DSBA Delaware Athlete of the Year from almost everything else the Delaware Sportswriters and Broadcasters Association hands out in the same annual cycle.

DSBA already names sport-specific Players of the Year, basketball among them, each decided within that one sport's own field of candidates. The Athlete of the Year sits above that tier. A state-champion wrestler, a standout swimmer, a three-sport athlete who never led a single roster in scoring, all compete for the same two annual titles: one boy's award and one girl's award, judged against a full athletic year rather than one season in one sport.

Newark Post Online, at newarkpostonline.com, is the confirmed public source for the 2025 results. A community paper covering New Castle County's Newark area carrying a statewide association's marquee annual award is a small but telling detail. The same outlet that covers a Friday night at Newark High School is also the one that put DSBA's biggest yearly honor into print, which says something about how compact Delaware's prep-sports media world really is.

What's confirmed for 2025, and what this guide leaves out on purpose

DSBA named a boy and a girl as its 2025 Athlete of the Year, and Newark Post Online carried both results. That much is solid ground. This guide stops there on purpose: it covers the program, not the students. Anyone who wants the specific 2025 honorees, their schools, and their season highlights can find that in Newark Post Online's own coverage, where it belongs.

The program-level detail is more useful for understanding how the recognition actually works. Two categories, decided separately: a boys' title and a girls' title, not one combined award with a runner-up on the other side. The same banquet cycle produced six All-State teams spanning three sports, which puts DSBA's 2025 slate at seven total honors named in one pass, one Athlete of the Year per gender plus six sport-specific rosters. Which three sports fielded those All-State teams isn't part of the confirmed record used here. That roster detail sits with Newark Post Online and DSBA directly, worth checking before assuming it matches whichever sport a given reader happens to follow.

How DSBA's Athlete of the Year differs from Delaware's other statewide honors

Three different Delaware programs use language that sounds interchangeable and mean three different things. DSBA's own Athlete of the Year, decided across every sport by the association's working sportswriters and broadcasters, is one. DSBA's sport-specific Players of the Year, the basketball honor being the documented example, are a second, narrower version of that same process. High School on SI's Delaware Player of the Year, run by SBLive, is a third thing entirely: a football-only award decided by an open public fan vote that reached 27,027 votes in its 2024 edition.

Mixing those up costs a family real time. A parent who spends a week rallying group chats to "vote" for a DSBA honoree is chasing a button that doesn't exist on newarkpostonline.com. A parent working to get season highlights in front of DSBA's own voters is doing exactly the right thing for that program, and would be wasting the same effort on the SI/SBLive poll, where fan turnout, not press-corps visibility, decides the winner.

Where DSBA's tri-county press corps actually looks for standouts

DSBA's working membership isn't concentrated in one county. New Castle County programs, from Newark High School's home turf out toward Wilmington's Salesianum School and William Penn High School, get regular DSBA-affiliated coverage. So does Kent County, anchored around Dover High School and Smyrna High School, and Sussex County, where Cape Henlopen High School and Sussex Central High School sit closer to the beach than to any newsroom up north. A statewide sportswriters' association only functions if its membership genuinely covers all three counties, and DIAA's own tri-county structure means a standout season in Georgetown is, in theory, just as visible to DSBA's voters as one in Wilmington.

Newark Post Online carrying the 2025 results is its own small data point. Newark Post covers New Castle County's Newark area specifically, Newark High School's backyard, and a local paper picking up a statewide association's top honor suggests DSBA's announcement travels well beyond whichever outlet happens to be based in Wilmington or Dover. Whether every county's paper covered the announcement with equal depth isn't something the confirmed record settles either way.

How a Delaware program actually gets in front of DSBA's voters

Mass-forwarding a link to friends and family does nothing for a DSBA nomination, because there's no public tally to add to. DSBA's Athlete of the Year isn't decided by a running total a family can push up before a deadline. It's decided by working sportswriters and broadcasters who cover Delaware prep sports as their actual job, across a full season, in every sport DIAA sanctions.

What plausibly moves the needle is the same thing that moves any press-driven honor: getting a program's results and standout performances in front of that same press corps, consistently, across a full season rather than just the week before an announcement goes up. A coach or athletic director who sends game recaps to local outlets all year, not just after one signature win, gives DSBA's voting membership more to draw on when the Athlete of the Year conversation starts.

That's a different problem than what online contest voting generally solves, and our own sports fan-poll vote support is built for programs like 302Sports.com's Athlete of the Week or the Delaware Online football poll, open ballots with a real number to move. For DSBA specifically, that budget is better spent on getting a program's own results in front of DSBA's working members, and reading the is buying votes legal page is worth doing before promoting any Delaware honor publicly, regardless of which program it is. Delaware's other statewide programs are indexed at the Delaware contest hub.