The Courier & Press Orthopaedic Associates Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes and why this Indiana ballot exists

Run by Courier Press, The Courier & Press Orthopaedic Associates Athlete of the Week lets the paper's readers decide each week's honoree. The sponsor's name in the title points to Orthopaedic Associates, a partner whose support underwrites the weekly feature. Crowdsignal hosts the balloting at poll.fm, the platform the publisher uses for this and similar reader polls, and the current ballot in the series is reachable at poll.fm/17123387.

The people who decide it are the paper's sports readership across Indiana. Every week during a season, the publisher nominates a short field of high school athletes from the games it covered and asks readers to pick the standout. That makes the program a community award in the truest sense: no panel of judges, no editorial pick, just whichever nominee can rally the most support from classmates, teammates, families and local fans before the weekly ballot closes.

Because the program is a weekly series rather than a single contest, the ballot at the voting URL is the latest poll in the run, not a permanent page. When a week's poll closes, the results stay visible on that same Crowdsignal page, and the next ballot takes over the series. A supporter who wants to influence the outcome has to act inside the week the ballot is live, which is why the paper's regular readers hold a real advantage over casual visitors.

The dated record for the Courier & Press series

Confirmed editions of the Courier & Press series exist for 2022 and for 2026. Those two years are what make the program qualify as annual, and they show the feature has survived across multiple seasons of the paper's sports coverage. Within the 2026 season, the voting window ran from February through June, a stretch calibrated from fifteen ballots in the series dated between those months. The next season would be expected in 2027, though the publisher has not posted a forward calendar saying so.

What the publisher has not published is just as relevant to a supporter. No exact open or close date appears on any individual weekly ballot, so a reader cannot plan around a deadline printed in advance. The ballot page also carries no category roster beyond the athlete list itself, no stated cap on repeat votes, and no eligibility text of any kind. The dates of each platform round are likewise not posted anywhere a reader can check ahead of time.

For a weekly series this thinness of published detail is fairly typical: the paper treats each ballot as a short-lived feature, not a standing competition with a rulebook. The practical consequence is that the live ballot is the single source of truth. A supporter who needs to know whether this week's poll is still open, who is nominated, or what happens on a repeat visit has to open the current poll.fm page and read it.

How a supporter votes on the current ballot

Voting in the Courier & Press Orthopaedic Associates Athlete of the Week is a short sequence. Bring up the week's ballot at poll.fm/17123387, which is the latest poll in the Courier Press weekly series. The page shows the question, the list of nominated athletes with their schools beside each name, and a set of radio buttons. Choose the nominee whose week you want to reward and press the vote button on the Courier & Press ballot to log your choice. Crowdsignal takes the answer at once and the page reflects it.

After the weekly poll closes, the same page displays the final tally, with each nominee's share of the answers shown as a percentage. That closed poll stays reachable at its own address, so a supporter can go back and see how the field finished even after the next ballot has replaced it at the series URL.

Two things about the format shape how a supporter should act. First, because the ballot changes weekly, a bookmark to the series URL always lands on whatever poll is current, which is the page a supporter wants. Second, the publisher prints no voting rules on the ballot, so if a supporter is unsure whether a repeat vote counts, the live page is the only place that behavior will show itself. No login step is advertised on the ballot, and no fee is mentioned anywhere on it; the vote is free to cast.

How this ballot sits beside its Indiana neighbours

The Courier & Press weekly athlete ballot is one of several Indiana reader-vote programs a sports fan can take part in, and each belongs to a different publisher. The Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week runs the same weekly shape for a different paper's readership. The Evansville Courier & Press Football Player of the Year comes from the same publisher as this program but crowns a season-long honor rather than a weekly one.

Statewide programs fill out the set. The Indiana High School Football Player of the Week narrows to one sport, while the Indiana SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year, the Indiana SI Football 3A Player of the Year and the Indiana SI Football 4A Player of the Year are classification-based season awards rather than weekly polls.

What makes the Courier & Press program distinct is the combination of a newspaper masthead, a named sponsor in Orthopaedic Associates, and a weekly cadence that spans February through June in the 2026 season. A supporter can vote in several of these programs at once, since every ballot answers to a separate publisher, but support given to one program's nominee does nothing for a nominee on any other ballot.

Rallying support inside a weekly ballot

A weekly poll rewards speed and reach. The Courier & Press ballot is only live for the span of one week, so a campaign that starts on the day the poll opens reaches far more voters than one that scrambles in the final hours. The people most likely to vote are the ones who already follow the school: teammates, classmates, families, and the local fan groups where the paper's coverage is already read. Passing the poll.fm address around those circles, with a plain request to vote before the ballot closes, is the mechanic this series is built for.

The publisher posts no statement about outside help or organized voting alongside the poll, which leaves the question of permitted rallying unaddressed in print. What is certain is the format: one public Crowdsignal poll per week, a visible tally, and a fresh field of nominees each time. Support built on real people actually casting votes is the only kind the format can measure. For a fuller rundown of approaches that work in reader-voted contests, see our votes guide.