Who is the Courier & Press fall sports Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Courier & Press fall sports Athlete of the Week is

The Courier & Press fall sports Athlete of the Week runs as a recurring fan vote that the Courier & Press newspaper puts on for Indiana high school athletics. The publisher's full printed name for the program is Courier & Press Athlete of the Week, and its promotion copy frames it as a weekly chance to back a fall sports nominee. The ballot lives at https://poll.fm/16175090, with Crowdsignal as the host behind the poll.fm address supporters use for the current round.

A few details fix the program's shape. The vertical is scholastic sport: nominees are high school athletes from fall programs rather than businesses, landmarks or editorial picks. Voting takes no more than a public click, so anyone holding the link can take part, and the newspaper's own instructions ask for nothing more than that click and, for repeat votes, a page refresh. The award sits with the newspaper's sports desk, which posts each week's nominee list and invites readers to weigh in while the question is live.

The table below gathers the reference facts for this program in a single place.

Because the program is tied to a newsroom rather than a chamber or a festival board, its calendar follows the school sports year. That is why the ballot appears in bursts during the fall rather than running continuously, and why each week's question retires when the next one posts.

The dated record for this Indiana ballot

The confirmed edition years for the Courier & Press fall sports Athlete of the Week are 2022, 2024 and 2025. No year between 2022 and 2024 appears alongside them, so the run reads as those seasons rather than an unbroken streak. Within a season the program is weekly: the publisher's promotion copy states that the vote reopens each week for the Courier & Press fall sports high school ballot. The fall window runs from September into November, which is when the weekly rounds stack up on the poll.fm address.

The ballot at the voting link carries a Poll Closed notice in its title, meaning the round it displayed has ended and a fresh question replaces it once the next week's nominees are chosen. The newspaper prints no open or close dates for the individual weekly rounds on that closed poll; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The organizer also leaves nominee eligibility off the ballot page, and no separate nomination round dates are published anywhere for this Indiana market.

For planning purposes, the practical shape is seasonal rather than fixed to the calendar: September through November is when ballots appear, each closes on its own weekly deadline, and the edition years on file show the series has come back across several seasons.

How to vote in the Courier & Press fall sports poll

Voting in the Courier & Press fall sports Athlete of the Week is deliberately simple. The publisher's stated rule, in its own words, is a poll that accepts "as often as you'd like" repeat votes until 5 p.m. CDT Friday, with a page refresh between them. That instruction carries the whole mechanic: a click per visit, no stated ceiling, and a hard weekly cutoff at 5 p.m. CDT on Friday.

In practice a supporter opens the current poll.fm ballot, reads the week's nominee list, selects an athlete and presses the vote button. Repeating the action means reloading the page and clicking again, which the newspaper explicitly invites. Nothing in the publisher's instructions asks for an account, a sign-in or a donation, and no per-device restriction is mentioned anywhere in its voting copy.

The Friday cutoff matters because it ends the round cleanly. After 5 p.m. CDT the poll closes, the results display shows each nominee's share of the vote, and the next week's question eventually takes the same address. A supporter who wants a nominee to finish ahead therefore treats Friday afternoon as the real finish line, not the weekend.

A caution belongs here: the instruction to refresh and revote is the newspaper's own, printed on its promotion copy. It is not a loophole discovered by third parties, so supporters can repeat votes without worrying that they are misreading the rules of this Indiana ballot.

Where this ballot sits among Indiana fan votes

The Courier & Press fall sports ballot is among several Indiana fan votes in this collection, and its neighbours help show what makes it distinct. The Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week is a comparable weekly series from a different Indiana newspaper, aimed at its own readership rather than the Courier & Press coverage area. The Evansville Courier & Press Football Player of the Year comes from the same publisher but narrows to a single sport and a year-end question instead of a weekly multi-sport poll.

Statewide programs sit alongside these. The Indiana High School Football Player of the Week concentrates on football across the state, 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 class-based honours rather than weekly polls.

What separates this ballot from all of them is its breadth and rhythm. It spans fall sports as a group rather than a single code, it refreshes every week through September, October and November, and it is anchored to a single newspaper's coverage area in Indiana.

For a supporter comparing options, the choice is straightforward: a weekly multi-sport question from the Courier & Press, a weekly series from the Bloomington paper, or single-sport honours from the statewide programs. Each programme answers to a different publisher, with a calendar all its own.

Getting more support for a Courier & Press nominee

Support for a nominee in the Courier & Press fall sports Athlete of the Week builds on the publisher's own repeat-vote rule. Because the ballot allows unlimited revotes until 5 p.m. CDT Friday, the most effective organic tactic is coordination: circulate the poll.fm address among teammates, classmates, family group chats and the school's booster channels, and ask everyone to reload and revote daily rather than voting once and forgetting.

The Friday cutoff gives any push a clear schedule. A nominee trailing on Thursday evening still has Friday morning and early afternoon to close the gap, which is why supporters who plan around the deadline tend to do better than those who vote a single time. For broader tactics suited to polls like this one, see our votes guide, and for the context on award-style ballots generally, the award votes page explains the category.