Athens Banner-Herald High School Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Athens Banner-Herald Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

The Athens Banner-Herald runs its High School Athlete of the Week as a public-vote award for high school athletes in and around Athens, Georgia. The organizer is the Athens Banner-Herald, the Athens newspaper whose newsroom publishes at onlineathens.com, and the paper presents the series together with Piedmont Athens Regional. The paper's own description of the format is simple: each week, a handful of student-athletes from the 18 schools in the paper's coverage zone are nominated to earn the title based on their in-game performance from the previous week.

The vote itself runs on Crowdsignal at poll.fm, a plain public ballot where every nominee appears with a name, a school and a sport. The confirmed ballot for the series lives at https://poll.fm/15328171, and the poll answers on it span baseball and soccer, with nominees from schools such as Apalachee, Athens Christian and Prince Avenue Christian. Because the series is weekly, the ballot at that address is the latest poll in the series rather than a permanent single contest, and a fresh ballot follows each week's nominee announcement.

Facts at a glance

The dated record for the Athens Banner-Herald series

The series shows confirmed editions in 2023 and 2025. The 2025 evidence is a weekly ballot titled Athens Banner-Herald high school athlete of the week: April 7-13, and that poll is marked closed. Because the series runs week by week during the school sports year, each edition is a short window rather than a months-long season, and the paper nominates a new group of student-athletes from its 18 coverage-zone schools every week.

Several facts about the format are not published anywhere the paper prints them. There is no category list beyond the sports named on the ballot itself, no per-supporter voting limit, and no eligibility text for nominees. Open and close dates for the next weekly ballot are also absent from the paper's pages; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

A single percentage is visible on the closed 2025 ballot: a Prince Avenue Christian baseball nominee held 63 percent of the vote at the point the poll closed. That figure belongs to that week's poll alone and says nothing about how a future week's count will look, since each weekly ballot resets with its own nominee group and its own window.

How a supporter votes in the weekly Athens ballot

The weekly Athens ballot runs on Crowdsignal as a plain public vote. To take part, a reader loads the poll.fm address the paper posts for that week, reads the nominee list where each athlete appears with a school and a sport, selects a single choice and submits. The Athens Banner-Herald has printed no account or registration requirement, and no rule on repeat voting inside a weekly window appears in its coverage either.

The ballot at https://poll.fm/15328171 is the latest poll in the series, not a permanent contest. When a week's window closes, the paper's next nominee group appears on a fresh ballot, so the address a supporter uses can change from week to week. The closed April 7-13 poll listed baseball and soccer nominees among its answers, so the spring ballots draw from more than a single sport.

Timing is the practical constraint. A weekly window gives supporters only the days the poll is open, and the April 2025 ballot is already marked closed, so a vote cast today lands on whatever ballot the paper has posted most recently. If the page shows a closed status, the supporter waits for the next nominee announcement at onlineathens.com and votes when the new poll.fm ballot goes live.

Where this ballot sits among Georgia fan-vote programs

The Athens Banner-Herald series is one of several Georgia fan-vote programs covered on this site. Its neighbours are the Falcons Girls Flag Football Coach of the Week, the BLITZ Sports GA Football Player of the Week, the Fox 5 Atlanta High 5 Sports Team of the Week, the Georgia Baseball Player of the Week, the Georgia Boys Basketball Player of the Week and the Georgia Football Defensive Player of the Week.

What separates the Athens ballot from those neighbours is its scale and its sponsor. The others carry statewide names or station brands, while this series is tied to a single Athens newspaper and its named coverage zone of 18 schools, presented with Piedmont Athens Regional. Its window is also shorter: a weekly poll decided in days, where a seasonal player-of-the-year style ballot runs across a whole sport's schedule.

For a supporter, that difference matters in two ways. The nominee list is small and local, so a school community can realistically reach every voter it knows inside the window. And because a fresh ballot follows each week's announcement, a push that misses its week does not carry over; the next window starts from a new nominee group and a new count at zero on poll.fm.

Strengthening support inside a short weekly window

Support in this series is won inside a short weekly window on poll.fm, so the practical play is timing and reach. Share the ballot link with the school community as soon as the week's nominees appear at onlineathens.com, since a push that starts on the final day has far less room to work than a push that starts when the poll opens. The Athens Banner-Herald has printed no policy on outside voting help for the series, so treat that silence as a reason to keep promotion straightforward: real people, real shares, no automation. Tactics that fit short public ballots, from timing a push to rallying a school's own networks, are covered at how to get more votes online, and the award-vote options are described at buy award votes.