Who is the Monroe News-Star's athlete of the week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Monroe News-Star athlete of the week is and who runs it

Every week of the season, The News-Star, the daily newspaper publishing under the Monroe News-Star name in Monroe, Louisiana, names a slate of high school athletes and asks its readers to pick the one who deserves the week's recognition. The paper writes a short introduction to each nominee; the audience decides the winner. It is a fan-vote award in the truest sense, with editorial control over the nominations and reader control over the outcome.

The balloting itself sits on Crowdsignal, reached through poll.fm. The current ballot in the series lives at poll.fm/17007282, and each new week brings a fresh numbered poll on the same platform. Nothing about the vote requires an account. A reader opens the page, sees the week's nominees grouped by school and sport, and clicks. Closed ballots stay online marked Poll Closed, with the final tally published as percentages beside each name.

The programme belongs to the broader world of Louisiana publisher polls, where a paper's brand carries the award and a third-party platform carries the mechanics. That split matters to a supporter: editorial decisions, such as who is nominated each week, answer to The News-Star, while the voting behaviour, such as how often one person may vote, follows what the publisher states on the poll page itself.

Confirmed seasons and the dates that are actually known

Confidence in the annual pattern rests on two edition years, 2023 and 2026. The 2026 season is documented through a series of fifteen weekly ballots on poll.fm, dated across the months January to May, which is why the season window is known with confidence while any individual week's hours are not. The next edition is expected in 2027 on the strength of the annual pattern those two seasons establish.

Dated evidence within the 2026 run is specific. One ballot covers the week of 5/11-16 and carries a Poll Closed marker, and its published result shows a leading nominee holding 52 percent of the count on 8,225 votes. A separate dated phrase in the series notes a poll closing on Friday, Sept. 18, which shows that weekly windows are set and printed ballot by ballot rather than following one fixed weekly clock.

What the publisher has not laid out anywhere in advance is which sports, schools or grade levels will make up any given week's nominee list, and no standing calendar of weekly close dates exists outside the ballots themselves; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

That gap is the practical limit of planning for this programme. The season shape, the platform and the repeat-vote allowance are stable across the run, but the weekly detail arrives only when The News-Star posts the next poll, so any supporter working ahead should treat the live page, not this summary, as the final word on dates.

How a supporter votes on the current ballot

Voting asks almost nothing of the person doing it. The live ballot on Crowdsignal presents the week's nominee list; a click beside one athlete's name and a press of the vote control completes the action. The poll logs the choice at once, with no sign-in, no email verification and no payment step anywhere in the flow. On a phone the whole action fits inside a minute, which is exactly why publisher polls on this platform turn out large weekly audiences.

Two features of the platform shape what a supporter sees. While a poll is open, the page shows the nominee list and the voting control; once the window ends, the ballot is relabelled Poll Closed and the final distribution appears as percentages beside each nominee. The 5/11-16 ballot's published result, a 52 percent leader on 8,225 votes, is what a closed poll looks like after the count settles.

The most consequential instruction a supporter needs is the publisher's own line about repeat voting: you can vote on this poll as many times as you would like. That single sentence turns a one-click gesture into a weekly habit, because a ballot stays open for days and every return visit adds another count. There is no cap to respect and no daily reset to track, so the only discipline that matters is coming back before the poll flips to closed.

One caution follows from the short windows. Because each poll belongs to a single week, a link saved from a previous ballot is dead weight once its poll closes. Supporters should always reach the current ballot through the paper's latest post or the newest poll.fm address rather than an old bookmark.

How this poll sits beside its Louisiana neighbours

Louisiana is well covered by publisher-run athlete and player polls, and this programme is the northeast corner of that map. Six sibling programmes in the state answer to other publishers and other markets, and each runs its own ballot independently. The Baton Rouge High School Athlete of the Week serves the capital region, while the New Orleans Area High School Athlete of the Week and the New Orleans Area Prep Football Player of the Week cover the southeast.

Two state-level cousins round out the set: the Louisiana High School Football Player of the Week and the WAFB Sportsline Player of the Week, the latter run by a Baton Rouge television station rather than a paper. The Shreveport Times High School Athlete of the Week is the closest structural twin, because it is also a Gannett-style newspaper poll on the same publisher family's sports desk model.

What makes the Monroe programme distinct is its publisher's market. The News-Star speaks to Monroe and the surrounding communities of northeast Louisiana, so its weekly nominee lists draw from a smaller pool of schools than the Baton Rouge or New Orleans ballots. For a nominee's family that cuts both ways: fewer rival nominations per week, but a correspondingly concentrated voting base where every returning supporter counts for more of the final percentage.

A vote cast on one of these polls counts only on that one ballot, so supporters with ties to more than one market should vote on each separately.

Building real support inside a one-week window

This programme's structure rewards early, repeated action more than any single big push. Because the publisher allows repeat voting and each ballot lives for roughly a week, the winning pattern is a small circle of committed supporters who return daily, not one burst on the final evening. A nominee's team, classmates and family group chat are the natural engine: send the live ballot link Monday, agree on a daily return, and keep it up until the poll closes.

Ground the ask in the local audience the poll already reaches. The News-Star's readers are northeast Louisiana sports followers, so shares into school booster groups, team pages and community sports threads land with people who actually vote. Our guide on strengthening support for online votes walks through organising that kind of return-traffic campaign for short-window polls. For context on outside help, the service overview at buying votes online and the award-specific page on award vote packages describe the options without promising results, and the rules discussion at whether buying votes is legal covers the compliance question every campaign should settle first.