WIBW Scholar Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Kaw Valley Bank's name on this award actually tells you

Start with the sponsor, because it explains the shape of the whole programme. Kaw Valley Bank is a community bank headquartered in the Topeka area, the kind of institution that sponsors a local scholarship dinner or a Little League scoreboard, not a national broadcast contest. Pair that with Cable Dahmer, a regional auto dealer group, and the funding behind WIBW's Scholar Athlete of the Week looks exactly like what it is: a hometown recognition series built by local businesses that want their names attached to good kids doing well in the classroom and on the field, not a mass-audience voting spectacle.

That distinguishes it immediately from statewide ballot contests elsewhere in Kansas. The Greater Wichita Sports Banquet Athlete of the Year runs on public voting with a real tally to chase. WIBW's version does not. It sits closer, in structure, to a hometown honor roll than a contest. The station's sports team reviews nominations and picks a name, week after week, through the school year.

Topeka itself is a mid-size media market wedged between the Kansas City sprawl to the east and the Manhattan/Junction City corridor to the west. WIBW's coverage stretches across that whole footprint: USD 501 schools in the capital city, smaller county-seat schools like Holton and Wamego, and college-town programmes near Fort Riley. That geographic spread is the actual community context here, not one dominant rivalry but a wide patchwork of small and mid-size districts all feeding into the same weekly segment.

Is there actually a vote for the WIBW Scholar Athlete of the Week?

No. That is worth stating plainly rather than dressing it up. WIBW has not published a fan-vote ballot, a live tally, or a per-device voting cap for this program. What is confirmed is simpler: WIBW publishes weekly honorees as part of an annual series, and Kaw Valley Bank and Cable Dahmer are the named sponsors. There is no button to click that increases anyone's chances.

Why does that matter to someone landing on this page? Because most other "athlete of the week" pages in this state, the SBLive and Hy-Vee polls covering other Kansas markets, or the Catchy Awards Kansas High School Athletics, do run on click-to-vote widgets with a visible leaderboard. WIBW's programme reads differently on the page: it is a recognition feature, closer to a newspaper's "student of the month" column than a contest. If the current wibw.com page shows something different by the time you check it, that update supersedes what is written here; confirm the live page each cycle rather than assuming this description is permanent.

How WIBW actually runs the weekly selection

The programme runs across the full northeast Kansas school year: fall, winter, and spring, publishing a new honoree on a weekly cadence rather than pausing between sports seasons. That annual-series framing is different from a single season-long contest with one champion; it functions more like a recurring newspaper feature, with each week's write-up standing on its own.

Who gets picked

WIBW's sports staff make the call. Exactly how nominations reach the desk, whether through coaches, school communications offices, viewer submissions, or some mix, is not stated anywhere confirmed for this page. Treat any specific nomination channel as something to verify directly with WIBW's newsroom rather than assume. What is confirmed is that the choice is editorial, and it weighs both classroom performance and athletic achievement, which is the whole point of calling it a "scholar athlete" award rather than a pure athlete-of-the-week honor.

Where it lands

WIBW publishes the weekly pick on wibw.com and folds it into the station's on-air sports coverage. That gives a selected student a dated, searchable feature from a CBS affiliate: a real, third-party credential, even without a public vote attached to it.

For how weekly recognition programmes like this compare against ballot-driven polls more broadly, the how-to hub covers both formats. Kansas alone runs several different models side by side, some editorial and some public-vote, and the Kansas contest guide lines them up.

If there's no ballot, what can a family or school actually do?

Not much, honestly, in the sense that matters for a page normally built around vote-driving tactics. There is no leaderboard to push, no per-device cap to work around, no closing-hours push that swings a total. That is the honest answer, and padding it out with generic "share on social media" advice would misrepresent what this specific programme is.

What families and school communications staff can reasonably do is make sure the right people at WIBW know about a qualifying student: strong grades, a documented athletic season, a coach or counselor willing to put a name forward. Beyond that, sharing a published feature after the fact, once a student has already been named that week's honoree, does something real. It extends the reach of a credential that already exists, the same way a family might share a newspaper clipping. It just does not change who gets picked next week.

Contrast that with Kansas contests built around a live tally, where reach and timing genuinely move the outcome. The Best of Johnson County and Best of KC (Kansas City Magazine) programs are both public-vote formats, and the online contest voting guide covers how that kind of campaign actually works. Those mechanics simply do not apply here.

Where WIBW's programme fits among Kansas recognition contests

Kansas runs a genuinely mixed landscape of student and athlete recognition. Some are statewide public-vote polls with real vote caps and closing deadlines. Others, like WIBW's Scholar Athlete of the Week, are single-market editorial features tied to a specific TV station's sports desk and a couple of local sponsors. Knowing which kind of programme you're looking at before assuming a vote-driving strategy applies saves a family real time.

The Catchy Awards Kansas High School Athletics ballot and the Greater Wichita Sports Banquet Athlete of the Year both sit on the public-vote side of that line. WIBW's Topeka-market series does not, at least not based on anything confirmed here. A student or family choosing where to spend energy each week should start by checking whether the specific programme even has a ballot before building a campaign around one.

Legality questions come up constantly around Kansas fan polls generally. Is paid promotion appropriate for a given contest? What counts as manipulation versus organic reach? Those questions are real for ballot-based programmes, and the legal-guidance page addresses them directly. For WIBW's Scholar Athlete of the Week specifically, the question is close to moot. There is no tally to influence, so the usual vote-support conversation, covered for Kansas's ballot-based sports polls at buy-sports-fan-poll-votes, does not map onto this particular award.