Peoria Journal Star Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Peoria Journal Star Athlete of the Week?

The Peoria Journal Star Athlete of the Week is a dual-ballot weekly fan-vote recognition programme — one poll for Boys, one for Girls — published every week at pjstar.com throughout the IHSA school-year sports calendar. The Journal Star, part of Gannett's USA TODAY Network, has operated this format as a reader-engagement feature to spotlight outstanding Central Illinois prep performances across all IHSA-sanctioned sports.

• Presented each week by CEFCU (Citizens Equity First Credit Union), a Peoria-headquartered financial institution that is one of the largest credit unions in Illinois, serving communities across the Peoria metro.
• Two separate polls run simultaneously — a Boys ballot and a Girls ballot — so male and female athletes each have their own competition and winner each week.
• Voting lives at pjstar.com, the Journal Star's digital platform, accessible statewide and nationally — family in other cities or states can vote just as easily as local supporters.
• Nominations are submitted to [email protected] or by tagging @pjstarsports on X (Twitter); the sports desk selects the weekly ballot from submissions.
• Both polls close at noon Friday each week; the vote cap is one vote per device per hour, with no account or email registration required.
• Recent confirmed winners include Sam McCall of Richwoods (baseball, May 2026) and Josiah Kniep of Peoria Christian (baseball, March–April 2026), reflecting the range of schools that appear on these ballots.

A win earns the athlete a named, published credential on the Journal Star's digital platform — searchable by college coaches and recruiting services covering Central Illinois prep sports.

Which Central Illinois schools and conferences appear in the Journal Star poll?

The Peoria Journal Star draws nominees from high schools across the Peoria metro and surrounding Central Illinois counties — primarily Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford, Stark, and Marshall counties. The two dominant IHSA conferences in this footprint are the Big 12 Conference (Peoria city schools and nearby districts) and the Mid-Illini Conference (suburban and small-city schools across Tazewell and Woodford counties). The Prairieland Conference and independent schools also feed nominees.

The Mid-Illini Conference is the spine of this poll. Spanning eight schools across Tazewell and Woodford counties, the Mid-Illini pits Morton, Washington, Metamora, Dunlap, East Peoria, Pekin, Canton, and IVC against each other — a conference where football and wrestling championships are deeply contested and fan communities are tightly organised around small-city booster clubs. Morton football's IHSA title history in particular gives that programme an outsized voting base that activates reliably for any online poll.

The Big 12 Conference anchors Peoria proper — Peoria High, Richwoods, Manual — providing the city's urban core schools and their distinct alumni networks. Peoria Notre Dame, despite competing in the Mid-Illini, draws from the metro-wide Catholic school community, giving it a vote mobilisation reach that crosses conference lines.

How does voting work for both the Boys and Girls Journal Star polls?

Both the Boys and Girls Athlete of the Week polls live in the Sports section at pjstar.com and are free to use — no Peoria Journal Star subscription, no account, and no personal data required. The Gannett poll widget loads on the page and displays each nominee's name, school, and sport alongside live running totals visible to all visitors throughout the window.

The platform enforces one vote per device per hour. Each phone, tablet, and laptop counts as a separate voting surface — a household with three internet-connected devices can cast three votes in the first hour and another three an hour later, repeating until both polls close at noon on Friday. The cap resets automatically; no additional confirmation is needed when it expires.

Both polls — Boys and Girls — are open simultaneously. A supporter can vote in both if they choose, though most campaigns focus their network on the ballot their athlete appears in. The polls open earlier in the week, typically Monday or Tuesday after the sports desk reviews weekend results, and the window runs through Friday noon. For a plain-language overview of how online newspaper fan polls like this function generally, the buy-votes-online guide covers the mechanics in detail.

How is the Peoria Journal Star Athlete of the Week winner chosen?

The winner of each ballot — Boys and Girls separately — is simply the nominee with the most votes when the polls close at noon Friday. The Journal Star sports desk controls only the nomination stage, curating which athletes appear on each ballot based on outstanding performances submitted through the week. Once the polls open, the outcome belongs entirely to the fan vote.

1. Nomination window: coaches, parents, boosters, and school contacts submit performance highlights by emailing [email protected] or tagging @pjstarsports on X (Twitter). Submissions typically cover Friday night through the following Monday.
2. Ballot selection: the Journal Star sports desk reviews all submissions and curates a nominee list for each gender ballot, applying editorial judgement about which performances stand out that week across the covered region.
3. Polls open: both the Boys ballot and the Girls ballot go live at pjstar.com — typically Monday or Tuesday. The poll widget shows nominees with a live tally updating in near-real-time throughout the window.
4. Friday noon close: both polls close simultaneously at noon on Friday. The nominee with the highest vote total on each ballot is named that week's Athlete of the Week.

There is no editorial weighting, no panel override, and no tie-breaking mechanism other than vote count — pure fan-vote decides both winners every week.

The Journal Star publishes each winner on pjstar.com and across the paper's social media channels. Because CEFCU is the presenting sponsor, the recognition is branded as the CEFCU Athlete of the Week — a named credential that carries more weight in recruiting materials than a generic school-level award.

AOTW season schedule: when do the Peoria Journal Star polls run?

Both the Boys and Girls polls run on a continuous weekly cadence aligned to the IHSA high school sports calendar in Illinois. The table below maps the poll programme to the three standard IHSA seasons and notes which sports dominate each phase.

Within any given week, both polls open Monday or Tuesday after the sports desk reviews weekend and early-week results, then close simultaneously at noon Friday. The exact open date can shift slightly around holidays, IHSA tournament scheduling, or spring break — always verify the open status directly on pjstar.com/sports rather than assuming a fixed Monday open.

Fall is the most competitive season. Mid-Illini football weeks in October — particularly matchups involving Morton, Washington, and Metamora — regularly produce the year's highest combined vote totals across both ballots. Spring weeks, especially mid-season baseball and softball with smaller immediate fan bases, can be decided with significantly lower totals, making them easier weeks to win for athletes at smaller schools like Princeville or IVC. For context on other Illinois high school fan polls and recognition programmes, see the Illinois contest guide and the USA contest index.

How do you build votes for a Journal Star CEFCU Athlete of the Week nominee?

Every vote campaign works the same hourly-cap arithmetic: more voting devices, spread more consistently across the Monday-through-Friday window, add up to a larger total. The high-level strategy applies to any online newspaper poll — see the general online voting guide — but the notes below reflect what moves the needle specifically in the Central Illinois market covered by the Peoria Journal Star.

Organic mobilisation: Central-Illinois-specific tactics

The Peoria metro's vote dynamics differ from large-city markets. Tight-knit small-city communities — especially in Tazewell and Woodford counties — share content rapidly through close church, school, and workplace networks. A single WhatsApp message from a Morton or Metamora booster parent to their school's chat can reach several hundred community members within an hour. Parish-connected school networks (Peoria Notre Dame in particular) activate multi-generationally: alumni from 1985 and current parents vote in the same chain with no coordination overhead.

One Central Illinois pattern stands out in Boys basketball and football weeks: the Big 12 Conference's Peoria city schools — Peoria High, Richwoods, Manual — draw on loyal urban neighbourhood networks that often activate faster on social media than suburban booster clubs. Meanwhile, the Mid-Illini suburban schools activate more reliably through formal channels (email lists, printed flyers at games, booster club meetings). Matching the right channel to the right school community is the single biggest leverage point for Central Illinois campaigns.

For nominees from smaller schools — IVC, Princeville, Peoria Christian — the total vote count required to win is often lower in weeks dominated by those schools' sports. A disciplined 5-day hourly device campaign from a tight-knit small community can outperform a lazy effort from a larger school's bigger network.

When organic reach has been fully deployed and the nominee is still trailing, some booster networks in competitive markets use a paid promotion service to extend reach to additional real voters. If you pursue that option, choose a service that delivers genuine, paced votes matched to the hourly cap — rapid-fire injections that circumvent the cooldown are detectable and get removed. The sports fan poll votes service operates on a cap-matched delivery model designed for exactly this type of newspaper fan poll.

Rules, the buy-votes question, and what the cap actually prevents

The Peoria Journal Star's CEFCU Athlete of the Week polls are reader-engagement fan polls with no cash prize, no Illinois prize-promotion law framework, and no formal sweepstakes structure. The operative restrictions come from the Gannett poll platform's technical terms — primarily the prohibition on automated tools that circumvent the one-vote-per-hour cooldown. For a detailed neutral treatment of the legality question across online polls generally, see the how-to voting guide.

Two distinct types of activity get conflated in the "buying votes" question, and they are practically different:

• Bot scripts and automated tools — rapid-fire requests from a single device fingerprint or rotating IP ranges that skip the hourly cooldown. These violate standard poll platform terms, produce statistically anomalous traffic signatures, and result in vote removal when flagged by the platform.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people casting genuine single votes per hour from their own devices. Structurally, this is identical to a booster club email reaching three hundred additional families — it is real fans voting, found through a paid channel instead of an organic one.

Whether that distinction satisfies the spirit of any given week's poll terms is a judgement each athlete, family, and booster club must make after reviewing the current official page at pjstar.com. In the context of a regional newspaper fan poll — no prize, no sweepstakes, no athlete disqualification, no legal framework — the risk is reputational rather than legal. The Journal Star publishes the athlete's name upon winning; that recognition is not revoked retrospectively if vote sources are later scrutinised.