The State Journal-Register Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the State Journal-Register Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

Most Illinois fan-vote programs covered on this site are seasonal: a single player of the year ballot, or a readers' contest that opens once and closes once. This one works differently, week by week. The State Journal-Register, the newspaper at sj-r.com serving Springfield and central Illinois, names an Athlete of the Week after each covered period, posts a fresh ballot for that round, and moves on to the next one seven days later.

Crowdsignal, whose poll.fm domain carries many newspaper polls, hosts the voting. The ballot reachable at poll.fm/17087378 covered June 1-6 and is marked closed, which is how the platform displays a finished round until the next one replaces it. The vertical is high school sport, and the nominee pool comes from the paper's Springfield area coverage.

Key facts

Because the series is weekly, the ballot reachable at the voting URL today is the latest round of the series, not a permanent single contest. The nominee names change from week to week, and the paper's sports desk assembles that list before each round opens.

The dated record: editions, windows and what the paper has not published

Confirmed editions of this series cover 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. That four-year span is what makes the program annual in status even though its rhythm is weekly: each school year produces a run of weekly ballots rather than one standalone edition. The 2026 coverage is documented through rounds such as the February 23-28, 2026 nominee period and the June 1-6 ballot.

The dated facts the organizer has published are specific. Nominations can be submitted by the end of every Friday to [email protected], which is how the paper builds each week's list. One 2026 round's poll was stated to close at noon on Friday, Sept. 25. And the paper's own coverage states that participants may cast their votes every 12 hours, a rule that shapes how any supporter plans a week of voting.

What the paper has not printed on the ballot itself is a category roster, a nomination deadline for the next round, or the open and close dates of future rounds; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The June 1-6 ballot, for instance, displayed its answers as TBD placeholders once the round ended, so the finished page carries the period it covered but not the names that competed in it.

The practical takeaway for a supporter: the series recurs, the weekly cadence is established across four years, and the live poll.fm ballot linked from the paper's sports coverage remains the one place where the current week's dates and nominees appear.

How a supporter votes in the current week's ballot

Voting takes place on the Crowdsignal ballot at poll.fm. The paper's sports articles carry the link to the current round, and the ballot page shows the covered period in its title, such as the June 1-6 round or the February 23-28, 2026 round. A supporter selects one nominee and presses the vote control, and the platform logs the choice immediately.

The interval rule is the part that matters most for anyone supporting an athlete across a full week. The State Journal-Register states that participants may cast their votes every 12 hours, which means a determined supporter has two chances per day during the round. There is no published account requirement on the ballot page, and the paper has not printed a per-device or per-network policy for this series.

Nominations work separately from voting. Anyone can put an athlete forward for a future week by submitting a nomination by the end of every Friday to [email protected]. That email route is the paper's stated intake for the series, and it is distinct from the poll.fm ballot where the actual voting happens.

One caution about timing: rounds close, and the June 1-6 ballot is already marked closed on the platform. A vote pressed on a closed poll does not count toward anything. Before rallying support, check that the ballot you are sharing is the live round for the current week and not a finished one, which is easy to do by reading the period in the ballot's title.

How this weekly poll sits beside its Illinois siblings

Illinois has a crowded field of fan-vote sports programs, and this one stands out on three axes: cadence, publisher and market. The Herald-News Joliet Athlete of the Week shares the weekly athlete-of-the-week format but answers to a different newspaper in a different city. The Herald & Review Illinois Player of the Week and the Daily Chronicle DeKalb County Athlete of the Week are likewise separate publishers with their own ballots and their own rules.

The closest structural contrast is with the seasonal awards. The Illinois SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year, the Illinois SI Football Class 1A Player of the Year and the Illinois SI Football Class 4A Player of the Year each run as a single seasonal ballot for one sport and one classification. This program instead runs many short rounds across every covered week, so momentum has to be rebuilt weekly rather than sustained over a season.

That weekly rhythm changes the strategy for nominees and their supporters. A player of the year campaign can bank support over months; an athlete of the week campaign has roughly a week per round, with the paper's stated 12-hour voting interval as the multiplier. It also means a nominee can appear on the ballot more than once in a season, since each week's list is assembled fresh from the paper's Springfield area coverage.

For readers comparing programs, the practical difference is attention: this series rewards a fast, concentrated push inside a short window, while the seasonal siblings reward endurance.

Strengthening support within this poll's rules

Because the round is short, timing does most of the work. The paper's published interval allows votes every 12 hours, so a supporter group that votes morning and evening from the first day of the round has a structural advantage over one that waits for the final Friday noon close. Share the live poll.fm link, not a closed round like the June 1-6 ballot, and remind people which period the ballot covers.

The organizer's stated rules are the boundary. The State Journal-Register publishes the 12-hour interval and the Friday nomination email, and it has published no policy covering outside or organized support for this series. Anything that would inflate the vote count beyond what a real supporter can do within the published interval is a risk the nominee carries, and no outside help can promise a result against a newspaper tally.

The honest playbook is breadth: ask teammates, families and the school community to vote on their own devices, twice a day, until the round closes. For a fuller treatment of methods suited to weekly newspaper polls, see how to get more votes online, and check award vote options if you are weighing support for a seasonal ballot instead.