Charlevoix Courier Petoskey News-Review Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Charlevoix Courier athlete of the week vote is and who runs it

This program is a weekly high school sports honor that northern Michigan's Charlevoix Courier decides by public vote. The newspaper, whose online home is petoskeynews.com, assembles each ballot, and the voting runs on Crowdsignal at the poll.fm address https://poll.fm/16149636. Nominees come from schools across the region, with Charlevoix, Petoskey, Boyne City, Harbor Springs, East Jordan, Pellston and Mackinaw City among the communities whose athletes have appeared as options on the polls on file.

The series is weekly in shape: a fresh ballot replaces the previous one as the fall schedule advances, and a poll that has finished is marked closed on the same platform. The voting URL above points at the latest ballot in the run, so a supporter who opens it sees the current nominees rather than a finished round. Whether any login is required is not printed on the ballot.

The fixed details sit in one place below.

The dated record behind this weekly athlete vote

Confirmed seasons for the series run in 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025, a spread that makes the program annual, and 2026 is the next expected year. Across those seasons the ballots fall between September and December, matching a Michigan fall sports schedule, and sixteen individual poll.fm ballots from the series have been identified.

The Charlevoix Courier does not print precise opening or closing dates for any weekly round on the ballot page, so the window for the current nominee list is something to confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Other details are equally absent from the published page. The organizer has never posted a category list for the series. No rule against repeat voting and no eligibility rule appear anywhere on the ballot. The dates of each weekly round are also not announced ahead of time, so a supporter learns a round is open only by reaching the live poll.fm page.

Finished rounds do leave visible results. On one closed ballot, the leading nominee took 54 percent of the vote on a tally of 14,428, the runner-up finished at 38 percent on 10,302, and a third nominee held 4 percent on 1,084. Those tallies show the scale a weekly round here can reach when a school community mobilizes behind its nominee.

How a supporter casts a vote in the current poll

Voting here takes three small actions. Reach the poll.fm page carrying the live round, read the nominee list, mark one athlete and submit. That is the whole interaction the ballot asks for, and it is the same for every nominee on the page regardless of school or sport.

Three points about this format matter in practice. First, the voting URL always points at the newest ballot in the Charlevoix Courier's run, so there is no need to hunt for the current round; an old link reaches the live poll until it is replaced. Second, a page marked Poll Closed is finished, and votes cast after that point are not part of the round, so timing matters in a way a one-off annual contest does not demand. Third, the ballot prints no account requirement, no fee and no rule about how often a person may return, so the Crowdsignal page itself is the only authority on any limit that might apply.

Because the nominee list turns over weekly, a supporter backing a particular school, such as Charlevoix or Boyne City, should check the ballot at the start of each round rather than assuming the same athletes are still listed. The fall sports calendar, running September through December, is what drives the turnover.

Where this ballot sits among Michigan athlete of the week votes

Northern Michigan is not the only part of the state running this format, and the sibling programs help show what makes the Charlevoix Courier's version distinct. The Ann Arbor-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the MLive Bay City-Area High School Football Player of the Week both serve single metro markets under larger publishers, while the High School on SI Michigan Athlete of the Week takes a statewide view.

Two more siblings cover their own cities: the Flint-Area High School Football Player of the Week, the Jackson-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the MLive Kalamazoo-Area High School Football Player of the Week.

Against those, this program is the small-market newspaper version. Its nominee pool draws from a cluster of small communities, Charlevoix, Petoskey, Boyne City, Harbor Springs, East Jordan, Pellston and Mackinaw City, rather than a single large metro, and its host is the same Crowdsignal platform at poll.fm that carries many local publisher polls. For a nominee's supporters that means a smaller potential vote pool than a statewide ballot, and a weekly rhythm that rewards fast mobilization within each short round.

Building support for a nominee in this weekly poll

The weekly shape of the Charlevoix Courier's ballot changes what effective support looks like. A round is live for a short stretch inside the September to December season, so the useful moves are immediate: pass the poll.fm address directly to teammates, families and school booster groups at the start of a round, and ask each person to vote once while the page is still live rather than after it is marked closed.

Because the nominee list turns over every week, a school with several athletes in the running can campaign across multiple rounds, carrying the same supporter group from one ballot to the next. The organizer has not printed any rule about outside help or organized voting pushes, so the safe reading is the ballot's own behavior: an ordinary public vote, open to whoever reaches the page.

For a fuller set of tactics that fit short-window public polls, see our votes guide, and for the award-style context around ballots like this one, the award votes page covers the wider category.