Vote: Who should be High School on SI's Michigan Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the SI's Michigan athlete of the week vote is and who runs it

The program titled Vote: Who should be High School on SI's Michigan Athlete of the Week is SI's Michigan's recurring fan poll that asks readers one question each week: which Michigan high school athlete deserves the state's athlete of the week honour. SI's Michigan is the state edition of Sports Illustrated's dedicated high school sports coverage, and the ballot it publishes is a public-vote format, meaning the tally on the ballot decides the winner rather than a staff panel.

Crowdsignal provides the balloting infrastructure, reached through the publisher's poll.fm addresses. The live voting page for the series sits at poll.fm/15178330, and each weekly edition takes its own poll.fm address as the season rolls forward. That split matters to a supporter: the publisher writes the nominee list and announces results on its own site, while Crowdsignal handles the mechanics of collecting selections.

The program covers high school sport across Michigan, so the ballot is statewide in reach. Nominees come from a mix the publisher describes itself: fans, readers and staff gather the best performances of the week. Schools from across the state appear on the ballots, which is what makes the vote a genuine statewide contest rather than a single-community poll.

One practical note for anyone following the series: the poll.fm address above corresponds to the series' latest edition ballot, and the publisher swaps in a fresh poll every week. Readers who want the newest ballot should start from SI's Michigan's own high school page, where each new vote is announced.

The dated facts: seasons confirmed, the voting window and what is not printed

Two seasons of this program are confirmed: 2024 and 2025. Ballots from those seasons carry dates from October through March, which shows the vote tracks the Michigan high school sports calendar rather than a calendar year. A poll dated March 12, 2025 sits near the tail end of that season's window, and an October start lines up with the fall sports schedule.

The weekly rhythm is printed on the ballot itself in a single line: voting wraps at 11:59 p.m. PT each Sunday, after which Monday brings the announcement. That gives each edition the same shape, a ballot that lives for a few days, a Sunday-night cutoff, and a Monday result, regardless of which sport the nominees come from.

Because the program is weekly inside an annual season, the recurring pattern runs on two clocks. The season clock opens each October and closes each March, and the weekly clock resets with every new ballot. SI's Michigan describes the gathering process as continuous during the season, with fans, readers and staff feeding performances into each week's nominee list.

What the publisher has not printed matters as much as what it has. High School on SI publishes no per-supporter vote cap, no eligibility terms and no advance roster of upcoming nominees alongside the Michigan ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same applies to exact opening timestamps for each coming week, since only the Sunday close and Monday announcement are fixed in the ballot text.

For a supporter planning around a specific athlete's nomination week, the workable approach is to watch the publisher's Michigan page early in the week a nomination goes live, then vote before the Sunday deadline printed on that week's poll.

How a supporter votes on the Michigan athlete of the week ballot today

Voting takes four bare actions. Find this week's poll.fm page, read through the nominated athletes, tick your pick, and send the ballot off. Crowdsignal tallies the choice straight away and displays the running result, so a voter can see where a nominee stands before the window shuts. Nothing on the ballot asks a supporter to register an account, enter an email address or complete any step beyond the selection itself.

Timing is the part that catches people out. The window is short by design: each ballot shuts down on Sunday night, and Monday brings the announcement. A vote cast Monday through Saturday counts for that week's poll, but once the deadline passes the poll is settled and the winner is named. There is no carry-over; the following week brings an entirely new ballot with a new nominee list and a new address.

Nomination is separate from voting. The publisher invites readers to put athletes forward for future weeks by email: send a message to [email protected] with the subject line MIHSAW Nomination. That email route is the nomination channel the organizer itself states on the ballot page, so a coach, parent or fan who wants an athlete considered should use it rather than waiting for the poll to refresh.

Because the nominee list changes weekly, supporters of a particular school or athlete should check the ballot early in the week. The publisher gathers nominations with help from fans and readers, which means a community that nominates actively has a better chance of seeing its athletes on the ballot at all. Anyone wanting more ideas on rallying support can read how to get more votes online, which covers the general tactics that work on short weekly windows like this one.

How this statewide ballot sits beside Michigan's other fan votes

Among Michigan's crowded field of high school fan polls, this program is set apart from its neighbours on two counts: geography and scope. The ballot run by SI's Michigan covers the entire state and honours an overall athlete of the week across sports, while most of the other weekly polls anchor themselves to a single region and usually to football alone.

The regional neighbours include 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 is answered for by its own publisher, with a nominee list, a rules page and a result announcement that belong to that program alone, so a result on one ballot says nothing about another.

The same regional pattern continues with the Jackson-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the MLive Kalamazoo-Area High School Football Player of the Week. A related sibling page also covers the publisher's broader Michigan athlete of the week series, where season-long recognition builds on the weekly votes.

What this means for a supporter comes down to where attention goes. An athlete nominated to the statewide ballot competes against the whole state's best performances of the week, which usually means a larger and more dispersed voting base than a regional poll would draw. That makes early nomination, a school community that votes together, and consistent weekly presence on the ballot the factors that separate athletes who win a week from those who only appear once. Anyone comparing programs should read each ballot's own page, since the rules are set per publisher rather than shared across Michigan's high school polls.

Strengthening support for a Michigan athlete of the week nomination

Weekly polls reward concentrated, fast support. Because every Michigan ballot runs to its Sunday night deadline, a nominee's backers have only a few days to act, so the useful moves are all about timing: nominate early through the publisher's stated email route, share the ballot link with the school community the day it appears, and remind people before the Sunday close rather than after.

The organizer has not printed a rule about outside help or purchased support on the ballot itself, so any supporter weighing that question has no published organizer position to point to for this specific poll. What is fixed is the format: a short window, a simple one-selection ballot on Crowdsignal, and a fresh list every week, which favours organized communities over one-off pushes.

Supporters weighing options beyond organic outreach can look at buying award votes for context on how purchased support is generally discussed for ballots like this one, then weigh it against the publisher's silence on the subject. No result is promised either way; the Monday announcement simply reflects whatever the tally shows when the Sunday deadline passes.