Savannah Morning News Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Savannah Morning News Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

Each week during the school year, the Savannah Morning News, the daily newspaper serving Savannah and the Georgia coast, asks its readers to pick a high school Athlete of the Week. The paper's sports coverage publishes at savannahnow.com, and each week it names a slate of high school athletes from the Savannah area across multiple sports rather than a single one.

Unlike statewide Georgia ballots such as the Georgia Baseball Player of the Week or the BLITZ Sports GA Football Player of the Week, this program is anchored to one coastal market and to one publisher's high school sports desk. The program is described as a multi-sport high school feature for the Savannah area, and as separate from the Coastal Empire CCA coaches' program that also operates in the region.

Crowdsignal, the balloting platform behind poll.fm, carries the vote itself. The series ballot address is https://poll.fm/16960057, which carries the latest ballot in the weekly series. Because each week brings a new slate of nominees, the names on the ballot change from poll to poll while the address and the publisher stay the same.

Seasons and dates for the Savannah Morning News Athlete of the Week

Three seasons of the series are confirmed: 2024, 2025 and 2026, drawn from the weekly ballots on the Crowdsignal series. Those edition years make the program annual, and the next season is expected in 2027.

The voting months run from September through April, which follows the Georgia high school sports calendar from fall football through spring sports. Within that span the program is weekly, so a fresh ballot appears as the previous one closes.

The latest ballot closed on Tuesday, Sept. 8, at 11 a.m., a date the newspaper printed in its own story asking readers to vote. The ballot at the series address currently displays that closed poll, with the final tally visible beside each nominee's name.

A standing calendar of weekly nomination and voting rounds is not printed by the newspaper; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two other details stay off the page. The ballot does not print eligibility criteria for the nominees it lists, and it does not publish the nomination process that puts an athlete on the slate. Both are set by the paper's high school sports desk rather than shown to voters.

How a supporter votes in the Savannah Morning News Athlete of the Week

Voting is simple by the newspaper's own description. In the story that accompanies each week's ballot, the Savannah Morning News calls the contest "a chance for readers to weigh in and select the Savannah Morning News High School Athlete of the Week in an open poll with no restrictions on the voting."

That open-poll framing is the operative rule for supporters. The ballot lists the week's nominees, each shown with the high school the athlete represents, and a supporter picks one nominee and confirms the choice. The ballot names no login step, and no membership of any kind is named as a requirement.

Because the poll is open, the practical limits that shape other Georgia ballots, such as the daily return rules some organizers publish, are absent here as far as the ballot shows. The newspaper publishes no per-supporter limit for this poll.

One timing fact matters more than any other for a supporter right now: since the week's ballot closed on Tuesday, Sept. 8, at 11 a.m., a vote cast today lands on a closed poll rather than a live one. The live ballot for the following week replaces it at the same series address once the paper publishes it.

How this ballot sits beside its Georgia neighbours

The Savannah Morning News Athlete of the Week sits in a crowded Georgia field of reader-voted sports honors, and its neighbours help define what makes it distinct. Six sibling programs cover the state from other publishers, and none of them combines this ballot's local market, multi-sport scope and weekly rhythm.

The Falcons Girls Flag Football Coach of the Week honors coaches in one girls sport rather than athletes across many. The Fox 5 Atlanta High 5 Sports Team of the Week is an Atlanta television program that votes on whole teams. The BLITZ Sports GA Football Player of the Week, the Georgia Football Defensive Player of the Week, the Georgia Boys Basketball Player of the Week and the Georgia Baseball Player of the Week are each single-sport ballots with a statewide reach.

This program, by contrast, is a newspaper's high school desk putting forward a weekly slate of Savannah area athletes in any sport the season supplies. A supporter choosing where to spend attention is choosing between one local multi-sport poll and a set of statewide single-sport ones, and the two kinds reward different kinds of campaigning.

Strengthening support in the Savannah Morning News poll

Supporters who want to move numbers in this poll work with an unusually open format, since the Savannah Morning News itself frames the vote as a chance for readers to weigh in without restrictions. The newspaper's weekly story at savannahnow.com is the shareable asset: it names the nominees and points to the ballot, so circulating that story through team parents, school communities and booster groups puts the ballot in front of people who already care about the athletes listed.

Timing matters more here than in a season-long vote, because each weekly window is short and a fresh slate replaces the last one. A push that lands early in the week reaches more voters than one that arrives as the poll closes. For broader tactics that apply to any public vote, see our votes guide, and for award-style ballots generally see our award votes page.