The Cheboygan Daily Tribune Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Cheboygan Daily Tribune Athlete of the Week is

Run by the Cheboygan Daily Tribune, a newspaper serving Cheboygan, Michigan, this Athlete of the Week honor turns each sports week into a reader choice. The paper nominates a short slate of area high school athletes and hands the decision to its audience: the nominee with the most public votes when the poll closes takes the honor.

The ballot itself is carried by Crowdsignal's poll.fm service, and the voting link reflected here is https://poll.fm/17063095. As a sport-vertical award, it is a pure public vote: no entry fee, no jury, no panel. Readers decide. That separates it from the paper's editorial coverage, where writers pick season awards themselves. Here the audience is the judge, and a nominee's standing depends on how many people the nominee's school community can rally to the ballot before the Thursday night close.

Everything else on the ballot, from the nominee slate to the closing hour of a given week, is set week by week by the paper, which is why this reference sticks to what the Tribune has actually printed.

The dated history of the Tribune's weekly athlete ballot

Confirmed seasons for this program run 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, drawn from 39 weekly ballots the Tribune has published on Crowdsignal. Recurrence is weekly while the honor is in season: as the paper's own instructions put it, "Each week, Cheboygan-area high school athletes will be eligible for the athlete of the week honor."

Within a week, the shape is fixed and stated by the organizer: "Athlete of the Week polls go live on Tuesday, and voting closes at 9 p.m. on Thursday." The most recent ballot reflected here is the poll for May 26-30, which is marked Poll Closed on the Crowdsignal page.

What the paper has not printed is a standing description of the ballot itself: which sports appear, how nominees are chosen, and whether the format shifts between seasons. The Tribune does not publish that breakdown anywhere on its ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For a supporter, the practical reading of the dated history is simple. The program is not a single long contest with a grand deadline; it is a chain of short weekly polls, each with its own nominees and its own Tuesday-to-Thursday clock, and the paper has kept that chain running across every season from 2022 onward.

How a supporter votes on the Cheboygan ballot

Voting happens on the poll.fm ballot the Tribune posts through Crowdsignal, at poll.fm/17063095, during a week when the poll is live. The ballot presents that week's nominees as a list of poll answers, each carrying the athlete's sport, and a supporter selects an answer and presses the vote button to log the choice.

The Tribune's stated rule is generous: "Voting is unlimited until 9 p.m. on Thursday." A supporter who feels strongly can return to the ballot again before the close, which is unusual among newspaper polls and changes how a campaign for a nominee should be run.

No account requirement is printed on the ballot, and the paper attaches no eligibility conditions to the act of voting itself. The practical sequence is short: open the link while the week's poll is live, read the nominee list, pick, submit, and come back before the Thursday close if you want to vote again.

After the close, the ballot page stays up marked Poll Closed, as the May 26-30 ballot does now, and the following week brings a new ballot from the Tribune with a fresh nominee slate. That means a supporter who misses a week has not lost the season, only that week's honor, and the paper's coverage at cheboygannews.com is where the next live link appears.

How the Cheboygan ballot sits beside its Michigan neighbours

The Cheboygan ballot is the northern entry among the Michigan high school athlete programs on this site, and it differs from its neighbours in scope. Where the Ann Arbor-Area High School Football Player of the Week, the MLive Bay City-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the Flint-Area High School Football Player of the Week each track football in their own metro, the Tribune's honor spans the high school sports the paper covers in the Cheboygan area, with softball and baseball among the nominees on the spring ballot reflected here.

The High School on SI Michigan Athlete of the Week carries a statewide name, and the Jackson-Area and MLive Kalamazoo-Area programs cover their own football markets under MLive's banner.

What separates the Cheboygan program is the publisher's local grip. A small-paper audience means a school community can genuinely swing the result, and the Tuesday-to-Thursday window keeps each week's race tight. For a nominee in Cheboygan, the competition is not a statewide field of voters but the paper's own readership, which makes direct outreach to local supporters the decisive move.

Building support inside the Tuesday-to-Thursday window

Because the Tribune allows unlimited voting until 9 p.m. on Thursday, support in this program is a race against a short clock rather than a test of raw volume. A nominee's backers do best when they treat the window as a campaign: share the poll.fm link as soon as the ballot goes live Tuesday, remind teammates, classmates and family to vote before the Thursday close, and ask them to return again before the deadline since repeat voting is allowed.

The paper has printed no rule against outside help on its ballot, and it has printed no rule encouraging it either, so the safe reading is the printed one: unlimited votes, closed Thursday at 9 p.m. Anything a supporter does should fit inside that printed frame rather than assume rules the ballot does not state.

For broader tactics suited to a poll like the Tribune's, see our votes guide, and for the service side of vote packages see buy votes online. No vote package, ours included, promises a win in a poll whose outcome is decided by the Tribune's readers.