Who is your pick for the Delaware Online Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Delaware Online Athlete of the Week is

Every week of the Delaware school sports year, Delaware Online puts one question to its readers: who had the standout performance? The answer comes through a short public ballot, run by the news organization's high school sports desk, asking supporters to name the Delaware Online Athlete of the Week. The vote runs on Crowdsignal and lives at poll.fm, where the current season's ballot is numbered poll 17098123.

This poll sits inside a family of weekly honors from the same publisher. Delaware Online also runs a dedicated football athlete of the week during the fall and a winter athlete of the week once the colder sports take over. The all-sports ballot presented here is the flagship version, covering girls and boys across every sport in season at the time.

Timing evidence gathered from the poll series shows it active across the school year, with ballots appearing in every month from September through June and a summer pause between seasons. The organizer's coverage describes the series as presented by Delaware Orthopaedic Specialists, a local sponsor whose name appears alongside the weekly vote in the publisher's own coverage.

Confirmed seasons and the 2026 fall window

The weekly series is confirmed for three seasons: 2024, 2025 and 2026. The poll cited here, numbered 17098123 on Crowdsignal, belongs to the Week 11 ballot of the fall 2026 cycle and had closed when its page was last read, which is normal for a series that replaces its ballot every few days.

The fall 2026 window is the one dated stretch the organizer has published. The first Athlete of the Week poll of the fall season begins Monday, September 14, and that week's voting runs through Thursday, September 17, with the winner announced on Friday, September 18. Delaware Online's coverage adds that Athlete of the Week and Football Player of the Week voting runs Monday through Thursday each week with winners declared on Fridays, so the September dates are simply the season's opening instance of that weekly pattern.

Nominations feed the ballot from outside. The publisher's coverage directs nomination emails for the next Athlete of the Week to its high school sports reporter, and the polls themselves are described as open to the public with unlimited voting. Two things the organizer does not print anywhere on the poll page: the full list of ballot categories, and any closing calendar for individual weeks later in the season; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

One caution on interpretation. Because each weekly ballot is its own Crowdsignal poll with its own number, a closed page does not mean the program has ended. It means that week's round is over and the next numbered poll has already taken its place at the series' root address.

How a supporter votes this week

The mechanic is as simple as public polls get. A supporter opens the current ballot on Crowdsignal, sees a short list of Delaware high school athletes each tagged with their school and sport, picks one, and submits. Nothing stands in the way: no fee, no registration, no sign-in, and the organizer states plainly that voting is free and unlimited from Monday to Thursday.

Unlimited voting changes how a serious supporter should behave. Where many polls cap one person at one vote, this ballot rewards the daily return: vote Monday, vote again Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and ask everyone in your group to do the same. A team with thirty coordinated daily voters has a real edge over a team whose fans vote once, because the organizer's own rule makes every return count.

Coordination beats volume alone. The link to poll.fm travels well by text message and team group chats, and the shorter the ballot window, the more it matters that your supporters know exactly when voting opens and closes. Set a Thursday-night reminder, since the poll closes that evening and the winner is named the next morning.

On fairness, the organizer's stated framework is what governs. Unlimited voting is published policy, so a group that organizes daily returns is working within the printed rules of the ballot rather than around them. Anyone asking whether outside help is appropriate should start from what the publisher itself allows; the rest is a question for our legality page, which covers the general ground.

Where this ballot sits among Delaware's weekly polls

Delaware high school sports readers have no shortage of weekly ballots, and this one is best understood by contrast. Unlike the 302Sports.com Athlete of the Week, run by a separate Delaware sports site with its own way of gathering nominees, this program belongs to Delaware Online and answers to that newsroom's weekly rhythm. Unlike the publisher's football-only honor, it spans every sport in season, from fall cross country and soccer through spring baseball and track.

The publisher's own siblings split the calendar. The football ballot owns Friday-night sport in autumn, and the winter edition covers the colder months, while this all-sports vote runs alongside them through the full September-to-June stretch. An athlete strong enough to headline a week can appear on both the specialized ballot and this one.

Two more Delaware programs share the space. Sports Illustrated's Delaware franchise runs football, boys basketball and girls basketball athlete of the week polls of its own, each under a different publisher with different rules. Support given on one never counts toward any other.

What makes this ballot distinct is scale and openness. It is the statewide newspaper's flagship weekly honor, it is free and unlimited to vote, and its Monday-to-Thursday window gives supporters four days of coordinated pushing rather than a single sprint. For a Delaware high school program deciding where to spend its fan energy, those are the practical differences that matter.