Who was the Holland Sentinel High School Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes and what the ballot decides

The readers who decide this award are not a panel of judges. They are the same people who follow Holland-area high school sports every week: parents, teammates, students and local fans who open The Holland Sentinel's sports coverage and click for the athlete they think earned it. That is what makes the poll a genuine community vote. A nominee from a smaller school can beat a nominee from a bigger program if that school's community turns out harder on the days the ballot is open.

The Sentinel, the daily newspaper for Holland, Michigan, publishes a shortlist of high school nominees drawn from the teams its reporters covered that week. The ballot has mixed sports within a single round, so golfers and soccer players can sit side by side, and schools from across the paper's coverage area appear on the same list. Voting happens on Crowdsignal, the polling service behind poll.fm, and the current representative ballot lives at poll.fm/17091329.

Because nominees are high school students, this page deliberately describes the ballot without reprinting any individual athlete's name. What matters for a supporter is the structure: who publishes the list, where the click happens, and when the window closes. The table below collects those anchors in one place.

If you support a nominee, the practical picture is simple. The paper names the shortlist, Crowdsignal counts the clicks, and the school community that shares the link most effectively usually takes the round. Everything else about strategy, from timing reminders to widening the share circle, is covered in our votes guide.

Dated facts: seasons, windows and what the paper does not print

The series has a long confirmed history. Ballots from this program are confirmed across six seasons running from 2021 through 2026, which places it among the longest-running high school polls of its kind in Michigan. The series follows the school year rather than the calendar year: ballots appear from September into June, matching the fall, winter and spring sports seasons the newspaper covers.

Individual windows are short because each poll is a single week's round. The Sentinel has cited at least one closing time in its own coverage, telling readers the poll would stay open until noon on Friday, September 4, 2026. That pattern, a midweek opening followed by a Friday-midday close, is typical of weekly newspaper polls, but the paper has not committed to a fixed schedule on the ballot page itself.

Several facts are simply not published alongside the poll. The Sentinel does not print a standing rule about how often a single person may vote, an eligibility policy for nominees, or a nomination deadline on the ballot page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The weekly structure matters for anyone planning a push. A window measured in days rewards preparation before the ballot even opens: the share list, the group chats and the reminders should be ready when the nominees go live. Waiting until Thursday night to start leaves almost no runway before a Friday close, which is why weekly polls punish late starts far more than month-long contests do.

For a supporter, the timeline boils down to three habits. Watch the Sentinel's sports section during the school year, open the ballot as soon as the nominees publish, and treat the printed close time on that week's page as the deadline that counts.

How to vote on the live poll, step by step

Voting is a single-click mechanic on Crowdsignal, and the whole action takes under a minute. Open the current ballot, which for this series is reached through the Sentinel's high school sports coverage or through the poll address listed on this page. The page shows a question followed by a list of nominees, each labelled with the athlete's school and sport so you can find your pick quickly even when the round mixes sports.

Select the radio button beside one nominee. Crowdsignal polls do not ask for a ranking or multiple selections, so the choice is all-or-nothing. Then press the vote button beneath the list. The platform confirms the click and, on most polls, reveals the running tally immediately, so you can see where your nominee stands after voting. If the poll has already closed, the page shows the final results instead of accepting a selection, which is how you can tell a live round from a finished one.

Repeat behavior depends on the poll's configuration, and the page itself is the authority. If a second vote is accepted, the platform will simply count it; if the poll restricts repeat votes, it will say so or ignore the extra click. The Sentinel has not printed a per-supporter rule, so the honest instruction is to vote, observe what the page allows, and stop where the page stops you.

One caution applies to any group push: a burst of identical voting patterns can draw scrutiny from a publisher even without a printed rule. Natural turnout from a genuine fan base is what these polls are designed to measure, and it is also what survives a newspaper's review. Share early, share broadly, and let the actual supporters do the clicking.

How this ballot sits beside its Michigan neighbours

Michigan has an unusually crowded field of reader-voted high school awards, and this poll differs from most of its neighbours on three points: the publisher, the scope and the sports mix. The Sentinel's ballot belongs to a single city newsroom covering the Holland area, while several competitors are statewide or multi-city operations run by larger media groups.

Among those neighbours, the MLive Bay City-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the MLive Kalamazoo-Area High School Football Player of the Week are football-only ballots from the statewide MLive group. The Flint-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the Jackson-Area High School Football Player of the Week follow the same single-sport model. The High School on SI Michigan Athlete of the Week takes a statewide sweep instead of a local market.

The Sentinel's poll stands apart by mixing sports within a round. Where the football-only ballots ask readers to compare running backs and quarterbacks, the Holland ballot has put golf and soccer nominees on the same list, which means a school's whole athletic community, not just its football fans, has someone to vote for each week. That breadth tends to spread turnout across more schools and keeps the poll competitive in fall and spring alike.

The practical difference for anyone backing a nominee comes down to the link. A vote cast for the Sentinel's poll counts only in the Sentinel's round; nothing carries over to MLive or SI ballots, and each publisher enforces its own rules on its own platform. Follow the link for the market you actually support.