Crawford Mcdonalds High School Athlete Of The Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Finding the ballot, and who actually runs it

A supporter who types this program's name into a search box meets radio-station clutter before meeting a ballot. WDEA AM 1370's site carries trending promotions, a careers link and advertising slots beside its voting pages, and the athlete of the week ballot is easy to lose inside all of that. The dependable route is the direct address, the ballot page on wdea.am, which is also the voting URL for this program.

The program behind the address is simple to describe. WDEA, a classic hits station in the Bangor market that calls itself a Downeast tradition, runs the Crawford McDonald's athlete of the week on wdea.am, its own domain. The award goes to a Maine high school athlete, and the title ties each edition to the Crawford McDonald's sponsor name. The format is a public vote: the ballot page is open to visitors, and the athlete who collects the most supporter clicks inside the window takes the weekly honour.

What the page does not hand a visitor is a printed rulebook, and that gap shapes everything else on this reference. The table below gathers the stable details; the sections after it take the timing, the mechanics and the neighbouring ballots in turn.

The dated record, and what the station leaves unprinted

The dated side of this program is thin but real. Confirmed editions ran in 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, which makes the ballot an annual fixture in recent seasons even though the run skips 2020 and 2021. The most recent confirmed edition is 2025, and the pattern points to another run in 2026.

The window sits in October. A past ballot printed its close as Wednesday, October 25th at midnight, and that single dated line is the clearest timing marker the program has left. WDEA prints no opening day for the current cycle, no category list and no eligibility note on the ballot page, and no separate nomination or promotion-round dates are posted for this market either; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For a supporter, that thinness has a practical consequence. Every plan built around this ballot has to start from the live page in the window rather than from a schedule published weeks ahead. The station sets the nominees, the open and the close on the ballot itself, and anything else, from the category shape to the per-visitor rule for the current cycle, is read off that page when it appears.

How a supporter votes on the WDEA ballot today

Voting takes place on the ballot page at wdea.am, the station's own domain. A supporter opens the page, reads the nominee write-ups, picks an athlete and presses the vote control. A past edition's page stated the rule plainly: you can vote once per hour. That hourly rhythm is the most practical fact on the page, because it tells a family or a teammate exactly what a return visit looks like and how a day of support is spaced.

The ballot also carries live sports storylines. A past edition's page led with the line "For the 1st time in the program's history, the Ellsworth Eagles Football Team is in the playoffs!", which shows the nominees are tied to real high school football results around Ellsworth rather than to a fixed roster. A supporter who follows the station's coverage will recognise the names on the page, and the vote is the way to back them.

Taking part costs nothing on its face. The page asks for clicks, not payment, and the count decides the winner. Because the ballot lives on a broadcast station's site, the write-ups are short and the action is immediate: read, choose, press the control, and come back when the hour allows.

Where this ballot sits among Maine's athlete of the week votes

WDEA's ballot is among several athlete of the week programs running across Maine, and every one of them runs under its own publisher. The Aroostook County Athlete of the Week takes its name from its county, the Central Maine Athlete of the Week from its region, and a three-part series splits the school year into a fall edition, a spring edition and a winter edition. A separate ballot honours the weekly boys basketball player vote.

What separates the Crawford McDonald's ballot from those neighbours is its anchor. It belongs to a single radio station rather than to a regional or seasonal series, and its name carries a commercial sponsor, the Crawford McDonald's brand, in the title itself. Its window also sits in October, inside the fall sports calendar, where the seasonal series spread across the whole school year and the basketball ballot follows the winter sport.

That distinction matters for anyone collecting support. A click on the wrong program's page helps nobody, because the counts are separate and the publishers are separate. Before building a push for a Maine athlete, check which ballot the nomination actually sits on, and point every supporter at that exact page.

Building support inside this ballot's hourly rhythm

Support in this program is built around the hourly rule a past ballot set. A nominee's family, teammates and classmates can plan returns across an October day instead of betting everything on a single visit, and sharing the direct ballot link in team group chats is the organic core of any push. WDEA has not published a stance on outside voting help for this ballot, so anyone considering paid support should read our votes guide and the organizer's own page first, and weigh award-vote support against rules the station has not printed.