Lewiston Tribune Prep Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

A ballot built on both banks of the Snake River

Cross the bridge from Lewiston into Clarkston and you've left Idaho for Washington, but you haven't left the ballot. The Lewiston Tribune runs its Prep Athlete of the Week fan vote at lmtribune.com/sports/vote-for-the-prep-athlete-of-the-week, and it's confirmed live each season through the Tribune's own social promotion announcing the poll "is back." Unlike Idaho's statewide SI/SBLive Athlete of the Week poll, which draws from schools across the whole state, the Tribune's ballot is anchored to one specific market: the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, straddling the Idaho-Washington line where the Snake and Clearwater rivers meet.

Lewiston and Lapwai sit in Idaho's Nez Perce County. Clarkston sits directly across the water in Washington's Asotin County. Pullman and Moscow anchor a university-town corridor further north, and schools in the wider Prairie area of north-central Idaho round out the field. Any of these communities can show up on a single week's ballot. That makes the LC Valley poll a bi-state regional program in practice, not a single-city vote with a wider mailing list. For the statewide program it gets compared against most often, see the Idaho High School Athlete of the Week guide.

Six sports, one ballot, and a field that never sits still

Baseball, softball, basketball, track, wrestling, soccer, that's the Tribune's confirmed range, and it rotates hard with the calendar. Winter polls skew toward basketball and wrestling. Spring pulls from baseball, softball, and track. There is no locked nominee pool; the field simply reflects whatever sports are being played across the Valley that particular week. For season-long honors rather than a weekly snapshot, the Idaho High School Player of the Year program covers that different, longer-arc conversation.

One nearby program worth a mention: KLEW's prep athlete page at klewtv.com/sports/prep-athlete covers a lot of the same LC Valley talent, but nothing points to a separate, confirmed fan-vote mechanism running there. It reads more like coverage of the same athletes than a competing ballot. The Tribune's poll remains the one confirmed, distinct public vote for this market. Browse other weekly programs statewide from the Idaho fan-vote hub.

Why Wednesday, and why that's not a small detail

Idaho's statewide SI/SBLive poll closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m., right on the heels of the weekend's games. The Tribune closes Wednesday evening instead. Three extra weeknights doesn't sound like much, until a nominee's supporters actually use the time: talking to coaches, looping in the school's booster contacts, keeping the ballot in front of people who were at Friday's game but forgot about the vote by Monday.

What the Tribune hasn't nailed down is the exact minute. "Wednesday evening" is the confirmed language across seasons, not one fixed timestamp, so the live ballot page is the only source worth trusting for that week's actual cutoff. See is buying votes legal for the broader legal context that applies to any fan-vote program like this one.

What a bi-state community map means for a real weekly push

A nominee's support base here doesn't sit in one county. Lewiston and Lapwai draw from Idaho's Nez Perce County. Clarkston pulls from Washington's Asotin County. The Pullman-Moscow corridor further north brings two university towns with their own separate sports followings into the same ballot. A Prairie-area nominee, by contrast, often represents a small, geographically spread community where a handful of schools already share overlapping fan bases: different math entirely.

So a real campaign here has to think across a state line, not just across a county. Family in Clarkston, alumni in Pullman, a cousin's group chat in Moscow, the Snake River splits jurisdictions, not networks. Reminders sent steadily through Wednesday, aimed at both sides of that river, are usually what separates a week where a strong performance actually wins from one where it quietly loses to a bigger program with a louder group text. For the ideas and mechanics behind organizing that kind of push, see how to get votes on social media. And for the full range of ways people support fan-vote campaigns like this one, poll vote packages and the real votes overview cover the options, while the buy votes online guide is the starting point for any of it.