The Journal Athlete of the Week Presented by Glen Oaks CC: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Journal Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

The Journal Athlete of the Week Presented by Glen Oaks CC is a weekly high school sport ballot run by the Journal for communities across southwest Michigan. The title names its sponsor outright: Glen Oaks Community College, which the organizer introduced in its own words when it wrote, "This weekly poll is sponsored by our partners at Glen Oaks Community College." Voting happens on poll.fm under Crowdsignal, and the current ballot address, the latest in the weekly series, is https://poll.fm/17029770.

Each round works as a straightforward public vote. A short list of high school nominees is paired with a vote action any reader can use, and recent rounds have drawn nominees from track and softball squads at schools in Sturgis, Constantine, Centreville and Bronson. Coldwater and Three Rivers are among the other Michigan places tied to the series' market, which gives the ballot a small-town footprint rather than a metro anchor.

Because this is a weekly award rather than an end-of-season trophy, the nominee list turns over constantly while the sponsor, the platform and the organizer stay the same. That shape matters for anyone backing a nominee: the window to act is measured in days, not months, and the ballot you see this week will not be the ballot you see next week.

Dated facts and unpublished details for this ballot

The series is weekly, and confirmed editions cover 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, with 2027 expected to bring the next round. Within the live 2026 cycle, the organizer's own instruction fixed the close: "The polls for this week's nominees will remain open until noon on Saturday, June 20." That makes the cutoff a midday Saturday deadline rather than a midnight one, a detail that matters for anyone planning a final round of reminders.

Other dates are not published. The Journal prints no nomination or entry dates ahead of a round, and it has posted no eligibility rules for nominees or voters. The organizer has also never published a standing list of which sports appear on each week's ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What the confirmed material does fix is the shape of the close rather than a season-long calendar. Each poll carries its own deadline, posted alongside that week's nominees, so a supporter checking on a Wednesday sees the current round's cutoff and not a schedule for the rest of the year. Treat any date other than the one printed on the current ballot as unknown until the ballot itself states it, because a weekly series can move its cutoffs around the school calendar without notice.

How a supporter votes on the current ballot

Casting a vote takes little effort. A supporter heads to https://poll.fm/17029770, where the Journal's weekly poll sits on poll.fm under Crowdsignal. The page presents that week's nominees, each listed by name with a school and sport, next to a vote action. The ballot describes no login or account step, and a round that has ended is labeled closed rather than taken down.

The organizer's instruction defines how often a person may participate: "You can cast votes for multiple student-athletes simultaneously and vote as often as you wish until the deadline." The sentence allows a supporter to back several nominees in a single pass, and it removes any published cap on repeat visits before the close.

In practice the mechanic rewards return visits. A family that votes on Monday and again on Thursday is operating exactly as the instruction permits, and nothing on the ballot asks a voter to register or verify an email address beforehand. When a poll closes, the page keeps the result visible under its closed label, so supporters can see the outcome without hunting through the site for it. That visibility also makes the series easy to follow across a season, since each week's result stays attached to the ballot that produced it.

How this ballot sits among Michigan's high school vote programs

Michigan carries a dense set of high school vote programs, and this ballot stands apart in three ways. It is multi-sport, drawing nominees from track, softball and other squads rather than football alone. It is sponsored by a community college, Glen Oaks CC, whose name sits inside the program title itself. And its market is a cluster of small communities, Sturgis, Constantine, Centreville and Bronson among them, rather than a metro name.

Readers comparing ballots across the state can look at the Ann Arbor-Area High School Football Player of the Week, the MLive Bay City-Area High School Football Player of the Week, 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, all of them football-focused weeklies. The High School on SI Michigan Athlete of the Week is the closest structural cousin, since it also names athletes of the week rather than players of the week, though it speaks for the whole state while the Journal's ballot speaks for its own corner of Michigan.

Each of those programs answers to a different publisher, so a deadline format, a sponsor arrangement or a voting rule on any of them tells you nothing certain about the Journal's ballot.

Strengthening support for a nominee on this ballot

Support for a nominee on this ballot comes down to working with what the organizer already allows. The published instruction permits repeat visits until each deadline, so a steady rhythm of reminders aimed at teammates, families and school social accounts fits the ballot's design better than a single late burst. Because the poll accepts votes for multiple nominees at once, a school community can lift several athletes in parallel without splitting its effort.

The Journal has not published any statement about organized voting drives or outside help on this ballot, so treat that silence as a reason to keep promotion ordinary and public. For tactics suited to polls like this one, see our guide on how to get more votes online, and look over the current week's nominees before sharing the ballot, since the roster turns over every round.