The Howard County Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Howard County Athlete of the Week is and who publishes it

This page covers a county-scoped weekly honour rather than a statewide readers choice. The Howard County Athlete of the Week names a high school athlete each week across boys and girls sports in Howard County, Maryland, and the publisher behind it is the Baltimore Sun's Howard County operation, the same newsroom family as the Howard County Times at howardcountytimes.com. The ballot itself lives at poll.fm on the Crowdsignal platform, and the confirmed voting address is https://poll.fm/17016606.

Unlike the statewide player-of-the-week ballots that cover all of Maryland, this vote asks a single county's readers to weigh in on a short slate of nominees drawn from county schools, with a different sport mix each week depending on where the high school calendar stands. The May 11-17 round, for example, put girls lacrosse, softball, girls tennis and boys outdoor track and field nominees side by side under a single question: who should be the Howard County Athlete of the Week. That multi-sport format is the programme's defining trait, and it is what separates it from the single-sport ballots elsewhere in the state.

The table gathers the programme's fixed details in a single place.

The dated record: which weeks and seasons are confirmed

The confirmed edition years for this programme are 2025 and 2026, and its recurrence evidence describes the Howard County edition of a weekly athlete of the week vote with the 2025-26 season confirmed. That makes this a running weekly series rather than a standalone annual event: each week during the sports season brings a fresh ballot with a new nominee slate, and the voting URL points to the latest ballot in the series rather than to a permanent landing page.

The most recent dated round is the May 11-17 poll, which closed with the leading girls lacrosse nominee holding 80 percent of 218 votes. Those figures describe that round alone; they do not carry into any later week, because each weekly ballot resets the slate and the tally.

What the publisher has not printed anywhere alongside this ballot is a nomination window, a per-supporter vote limit, an eligibility list or the dates of upcoming rounds; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Platform round dates beyond the current poll fall into the same gap. The practical reading is to treat every weekly ballot as its own dated event with its own close, and to check the live poll.fm page before planning any support push around a specific week's window.

How a supporter votes in the current Howard County ballot

Voting in the Howard County Athlete of the Week means casting a plain public vote on the Crowdsignal-hosted ballot at poll.fm/17016606. A supporter opens the current weekly poll, reads the question, which always names the covered date range in parentheses such as the May 11-17 round, and reviews the nominee list underneath it. Each nominee line pairs an athlete with a Howard County school and a sport, so a reader can tell at a glance which week's slate is on screen.

To log a vote, select the option beside the chosen nominee and submit the poll. The page then displays the running percentage and vote total for each answer, as it did when the May 11-17 round closed at 80 percent on 218 votes for its leader. No account creation step is printed on the ballot itself, and no daily return rule is published either, so the practical mechanic is simply to open the live weekly poll and cast a vote while the round is open.

Because each round closes, a vote cast after the close does not count toward that week's result, which is why timing matters more here than on evergreen ballots. The following week's question replaces the closed poll at the same address, with a new slate and a fresh tally.

How this ballot sits beside Maryland's other high school sport votes

Within Maryland's high school sport ballot field, this programme occupies a narrow county lane. The Baltimore Sun's Howard County vote covers only Howard County, while its neighbours reach further or narrower in different directions. The Delmarva Now Fan's Choice Athlete of the Season runs on the Delmarva peninsula rather than in the Baltimore orbit. The Herald-Mail Athlete of the Week (Hagerstown / Western Maryland) serves the western part of the state under a separate publisher.

Three statewide single-sport ballots sit alongside them: the Maryland High School Baseball Player of the Week, the Maryland High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week and the Maryland High School Boys Lacrosse Player of the Week, each following a single sport across the whole state. The Maryland High School Football Defensive Player of the Week narrows further, to one side of the ball in a single sport.

What makes the Howard County ballot distinct is the combination of a weekly cadence, a multi-sport nominee slate and a county-only footprint, all on the same Crowdsignal host. A nominee who misses a week here does not appear in those other ballots, because each programme answers to its own publisher and runs its own calendar.

Rallying support inside a weekly window

Because this is a weekly ballot with a short window, support has to move fast. A nominee's week runs from the moment the new question posts to the poll's close, and the May 11-17 round is the model: a few days, a fixed nominee slate and a running percentage that updates as votes land. The publisher has printed no rule about outside help or vote sources on this ballot, so the general reading for public polls applies, and the votes the poll counts during the open week are the ones that decide the round.

School communities typically rally support through team group chats, booster communications and social posts that link straight to the live poll.fm address, since a direct link removes the step of searching for the current week's ballot. For broader tactics that fit a short weekly window, see how to get more votes online. Whatever the approach, the round's close is the hard deadline, and there is no carryover into the following week's slate.