Who is The Gardner News Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What The Gardner News Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

The Gardner News Athlete of the Week is an award series decided entirely by reader voting and published by The Gardner News, a Massachusetts newspaper whose home on the web is thegardnernews.com and whose base is the city of Gardner. Each ballot asks readers a single question, which local high school athlete deserves the weekly honor, and lists a short slate of nominees drawn from the newspaper's sports coverage. Recent ballots have spanned several sports at once, including baseball, boys lacrosse and girls tennis, so the series follows the school sports calendar rather than a single code.

Voting happens on Crowdsignal, the service that powers poll.fm, and the ballot linked for this program lives at poll.fm/17068664. The mechanic is straightforward: a reader opens the poll, picks a listed nominee and submits. A new poll goes up as the newspaper's coverage moves through the season, so the series is really a chain of short ballots rather than one long campaign.

Since every nominee is still in high school, this page keeps to publisher, sport and season when describing the program and never names individual athletes. The voters are the newspaper's own readers in and around Gardner, not a statewide or national field, and the table underneath pulls the fixed facts together.

The dated facts: seasons, windows and what is not printed

Confirmed seasons span 2023 through 2026, four in all, which makes the series a settled fixture of the newspaper's sports desk rather than a one-time promotion. Within a season it runs as a chain of weekly polls, one per coverage week, each with its own nominee slate and its own deadline.

Two dated anchors exist for the 2026 run. The ballot linked for this program, framed around the week of May 25-30, is one ballot in that chain. A later poll in the 2026 run, covering September 7-12, carried a stated close of midnight on September 21, which shows the newspaper does print an explicit deadline on each individual ballot.

What no single page carries is the season-wide schedule. The newspaper has not printed the open and close dates for every weekly poll in one place, and no nomination round ahead of voting is described anywhere on the ballot, so those details are a matter to confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Fine print sits in the same position: no published text states how often a person may vote in a poll, whether repeat submissions are limited, or what eligibility rules govern the nominee slate. The slate itself is published fresh on each poll, so readers see the current nominees the moment a ballot opens.

How a supporter votes on the current ballot

Voting takes only a moment. Open the current poll at poll.fm, read the question and the nominee slate, select an athlete and submit the ballot. The entire process takes place on one page, with no separate registration published anywhere on the form.

Because each weekly poll is a separate Crowdsignal ballot, the practical rhythm of the series is one short window per coverage week. The linked ballot, framed around May 25-30, is the round this page points to, and later polls in the chain replace it as the season advances. A supporter who wants to back an athlete in a future week should return to the newspaper's sports coverage for the newest link rather than reusing an old address, since each poll covers its own dated window.

The rules that would shape a voting push, such as how often one person may submit or whether votes from the same household count separately, are not printed on the ballot. That silence matters for anyone planning support: the only published guidance is the ballot itself, and the deadline printed on each poll is the one hard date a supporter can rely on for that week.

How this ballot sits beside its Massachusetts neighbours

The Gardner News poll is one of several Massachusetts athlete and player of the week programs tracked here, and its neighbours help show what makes it distinct. The Eagle-Tribune Athlete of the Week and the Enterprise Brockton Athlete of the Week are also newspaper-run series, each tied to its own publisher's coverage area, while the Massachusetts Gatorade Softball Player of the Year is a statewide, single-sport award.

Broader lists sit alongside these too: the Massachusetts High School Athlete of the Week, the Massachusetts High School Baseball Player of the Week and the Massachusetts High School Basketball Player of the Week cover the state rather than one newspaper's readership.

What sets the Gardner ballot apart is scale and scope. It is a hometown series: the nominee slate comes from one newspaper's coverage around Gardner, the sports rotate with the season instead of fixing on one code, and the weekly cadence means a fresh question every poll. For a supporter, that matters because the competition is the newspaper's own audience, not a statewide field, and a strong local push travels further here than it would on a larger ballot.

Strengthening support inside a weekly window

Support in a weekly poll rewards speed and reach more than volume. The window is short, so the useful moves are the ones that work inside a few days: sharing the poll link directly with teammates, families and others around the school, and asking them again before the printed deadline passes. The Gardner News has not published a stated position on organized voting campaigns or outside help, so supporters planning anything beyond personal outreach should read the ballot's own terms first. A practical starting point is our votes guide, which covers outreach that fits a short weekly window, and readers weighing paid help can review the background in our legality overview before deciding anything.