The Daily Advertiser Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Daily Advertiser Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

The Daily Advertiser Athlete of the Week is the honor the Louisiana newspaper The Daily Advertiser hands each week to one high school athlete. Where the sibling ballots in this market carry a television station's name or pin the honor to one sport, this one is the paper's own all-sport award: any high school athlete, in any sport the nominations produce, can land on a weekly ballot. The paper's own wording sets the standard: "The athlete that receives the most number of votes will be highlighted as the Daily Advertiser's Athlete of the Week."

The vote runs on Crowdsignal, reached through poll.fm, and the live ballot sits at https://poll.fm/17006676. The program is a rolling weekly series during the school year rather than a single yearly event: the paper invites readers to nominate for "next week's ballot," so a fresh poll opens, closes and is replaced in succession, and the confirmed edition years behind it are 2023, 2025 and 2026.

The market is Louisiana as the paper covers it, and the program sits in the sport vertical beside five other Louisiana reader votes linked at the bottom of this page. The table gathers the fixed facts.

The dated record for the Athlete of the Week ballot

The program carries three confirmed edition years, 2023, 2025 and 2026. The 2026 run is documented from its opening days, when the paper promoted "the first Daily Advertiser's Athlete of the Week of 2026" in early January, and ballots continued through the spring and into a new school year in the autumn.

One confirmed window ran May 11 to 17, and by its end the poll carried a closed marker. On that ballot the leading nominee, a tennis player, held 69 percent of the 626 votes shown on the page, a margin that illustrates how lopsided a weekly high school poll can become once one school community mobilizes around its nominee.

The rhythm inside a year is weekly while school is in session, but the paper does not print a standing calendar of which weeks get a ballot or when each poll opens and closes. The Advertiser also publishes no per-reader vote limit and no eligibility rule for its Athlete of the Week; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What that means in practice is simple: a reader who wants to vote should treat the current poll.fm page as the only source of truth for the week, because the nominee list, the sports represented and the closing moment all change from ballot to ballot, and no published schedule predicts any of them in advance.

How a supporter votes on the current ballot

Voting happens on the Crowdsignal ballot the newspaper links from its prep sports coverage. Open the poll.fm page and the current Athlete of the Week poll appears with its answers listed as nominee lines, each naming an athlete's sport and school. Pick one line and press the vote button, and the choice is logged straight away; no nomination round stands between the reader and the click.

Readers who want a different athlete on a future ballot take the nomination route instead. The paper's instruction is verbatim: "Anyone can propose an athlete for the Athlete of the Week in any sport. To submit nominations for next week's ballot, please email reporter Shannon at [email protected]." So the path onto the ballot runs through one email address, and the paper assembles the next poll from what arrives there.

A window that has ended, like the May 11 to 17 poll, no longer accepts clicks; the vote button gives way to a closed notice, and support for that week's nominee is finished. Because each poll is a fresh Crowdsignal page, the exact nominee list changes week to week, and the sports represented change with it, so a supporter should always confirm the current ballot is the live one before clicking.

How this ballot sits beside its Louisiana siblings

Louisiana readers have six sibling ballots in this market, and each differs from the Daily Advertiser's in a specific way. The Baton Rouge High School Athlete of the Week and the New Orleans Area High School Athlete of the Week tie the honor to a metro coverage area. The Louisiana High School Football Player of the Week and the New Orleans Area Prep Football Player of the Week narrow the sport to football. The Shreveport Times High School Athlete of the Week belongs to a different newspaper's coverage area, and the WAFB Sportsline Player of the Week comes from a Baton Rouge television station rather than a paper.

The Daily Advertiser's ballot stands apart from every one of them on three points. It is all-sport, so a tennis, baseball or track nominee can share a ballot with any other athlete. It is reader-fed through a single email address rather than a staff-only selection. And its polls live on Crowdsignal at poll.fm under the newspaper's own sports desk, which keeps the weekly rhythm the paper's coverage assumes.

What this means for a supporter is practical: the click pattern learned on one Louisiana ballot transfers to the others, but the nomination habit does not, because only this program asks readers to email a reporter to build the next week's list.

Turning out support for a weekly newspaper poll

Support in this program starts before the vote. Email the nomination address the paper prints, [email protected], early in the week so the athlete's name reaches the next ballot while it is still being assembled. Once the poll is live, the paper's stated rule leaves no ambiguity about what counts: the most votes wins the week, so the work is turning out voters before the poll closes.

Post the poll.fm link straight into teammate groups, the school community and family chats rather than making people search for it, because a closed poll cannot be repaired after the fact and a wrong link lands on a dead ballot. For a fuller treatment of turnout tactics that fit a weekly newspaper poll, see our votes guide.