Vote for the Big Bend Preps Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Big Bend Preps Athlete of the Week poll is and who runs it

Tallahassee Democrat/Big Bend Preps runs Vote for the Big Bend Preps Athlete of the Week, a weekly ballot devoted to high school sport in the Big Bend region of Florida. The publisher describes the contest as recognizing one standout high school athlete each week, and the vote is open to any supporter who reaches the ballot while a round is live.

The balloting runs on Crowdsignal, whose poll.fm service carries each round of the series. The current round sits at poll 17420452, and because the series is weekly, that address serves the newest ballot in the run rather than a permanent single poll. Each week the publisher posts a fresh nominee list, supporters vote, and the round closes before the next one opens.

The ballot format is simple. Nominees are listed by name alongside their school, a supporter picks one, and the running result is shown as percentages once a vote is cast. On the newest round posted, the leading nominee held 80 percent of the vote, with the remaining shares spread across the rest of the field.

The dated record for the Big Bend Preps Athlete of the Week series

The series has a long confirmed history for a weekly poll. Ballots are confirmed for 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026, a spread of seasons that shows the Athlete of the Week format is an established part of the publisher's preps coverage, not a one-time promotion. The next cycle is expected in 2027.

Within each season, the voting calendar follows the school sport year. Ballots fall between August and February, which covers the fall and winter sport seasons in Florida high school athletics. The series is weekly, so a season is not one long vote but a chain of short rounds, each with a fresh nominee list and a closing moment of its own.

Nowhere on the ballot does the publisher print the exact open and close timing of each weekly round, the list of sport categories covered, or any rule about how often one supporter may vote; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. For a weekly series that missing schedule is less of an obstacle than it would be for an annual contest, because a round is short enough that a supporter who sees the poll shared on social media is almost always inside the open window already.

One practical consequence of the weekly shape: the voting URL always serves the newest round the publisher has posted. If you open it between rounds you will see the previous poll marked closed, and the fresh round appears when the publisher posts it.

How a supporter votes on the Big Bend Preps ballot today

Voting here is a straightforward public poll. A supporter goes to the current poll.fm ballot for the Big Bend Preps Athlete of the Week, reads the nominee list, selects one athlete, and presses the button. Crowdsignal logs the choice at once and the page refreshes to show the result.

Two details of that ballot are worth knowing before you share it. First, the result is public: after voting, each nominee's share appears as a percentage, so the standings are visible to every visitor. On the latest round posted the leader sat at 80 percent, a margin that shows how quickly a well-mobilized school community can pull ahead in a weekly format.

Second, the ballot presents no login step and no nomination form. The publisher selects the nominee list, and the public's entire role is the vote itself. That makes the supporter's job straightforward: get the link in front of people who care about the school, while the round is still open.

Because the series is weekly, the same link serves a new round each time. A supporter who wants to follow along should simply return to the ballot address during the August to February window and check whether the current poll is open or marked closed. If it is closed, the next round is the one to watch for, and the publisher's preps coverage is where each new nominee list is announced.

How this ballot sits beside its Florida neighbours

The Big Bend Preps Athlete of the Week sits among several Florida high school sport ballots on this site, and its nearest neighbours are the Central Florida series. Those include the Central Florida Flag Football Player of the Week, the Central Florida High School Baseball Player of the Week, and the Central Florida High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week.

The parallel set continues with the Central Florida High School Football Player of the Week, the Central Florida High School Girls Basketball Player of the Week, and the Central Florida High School Girls Flag Football Player of the Week. Each of those is a separate programme with its own publisher and its own ballot, and a vote cast on one counts for nothing on any other.

What separates the Big Bend ballot from that Central Florida family is scope and rhythm. The Central Florida programmes are organized by sport, one ballot per girls or boys competition, while the Big Bend Preps series recognizes a standout athlete across the publisher's whole preps beat, week by week through the August to February season. Both approaches are public votes on the same Crowdsignal platform, so the supporter experience is similar even though the nominee lists, the schedules and the sponsoring newsrooms differ.

The practical lesson for a supporter is to check which programme actually covers your school before rallying votes, because the regional split decides where your athlete's ballot lives.

Strengthening support in a weekly Big Bend Preps round

A weekly ballot rewards speed. Each Big Bend Preps Athlete of the Week round is short, so the campaigns that move the percentage numbers are the ones that push hard in the first hours after the nominee list posts. Share the poll.fm link directly rather than a search result, because the live address always points at the current round.

The publisher has printed no rule about outside help or organized voting for this series, so the honest position is that ordinary encouragement is what the format is built for: team parents, school accounts and group chats all pointing at the same ballot. What the ballot does make visible is the result itself, since Crowdsignal shows each nominee's share as a percentage the moment a vote lands.

If you want a fuller playbook, how to get more votes online covers timing, outreach and the mechanics of public polls in general terms.