Asbury Park Press Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Asbury Park Press Athlete of the Week?

The Asbury Park Press Athlete of the Week is a free weekly fan poll published at app.com — the digital home of the Asbury Park Press, a Gannett regional daily within the USA TODAY Network headquartered in Neptune, New Jersey. Each week of the NJSIAA competitive calendar the sports desk identifies standout performances across Monmouth and Ocean County schools, builds a nominee ballot, and opens it to community voting via the Gannett/SecondStreet poll platform.

• Administered by the Asbury Park Press, which has covered Jersey Shore prep sports continuously since the paper's founding in 1879, making it among the longest-running sources of local high school athletic coverage in New Jersey.
• Coverage footprint: Monmouth County (27 municipalities including Red Bank, Freehold, Manasquan, Rumson, and Wall) and Ocean County (33 municipalities including Toms River, Brick, Lacey, and Jackson).
• All NJSIAA Shore Conference divisions are eligible — from A North/South (the larger-school groups) through B North/South and C North/South, plus Non-Public A/B participants.
• Multi-sport: nominees appear from football, soccer, volleyball, cross country (fall); basketball, wrestling, swimming, gymnastics (winter); baseball, softball, lacrosse, track and field, golf, tennis (spring).
• The vote cap is one vote per device per hour; no subscription to the Asbury Park Press, no Gannett account, and no email address are required to cast a vote.
• Winners receive a published spotlight on app.com and social media; the recognition regularly surfaces in recruiting correspondence and college-coach searches for New Jersey prep prospects.

The Asbury Park Press is one of only two major daily papers covering New Jersey high school athletics in print-and-digital tandem from north-Ocean to south-Monmouth County, making this poll the primary community recognition vehicle for Shore Conference athletes across a two-county footprint of roughly 1.1 million residents.

Shore Conference powerhouse programmes: which schools dominate this ballot?

The Shore Conference is organised into six groupings (A, B, and C, each with North and South divisions) plus Non-Public brackets. The Asbury Park Press ballot draws from the full conference footprint but the schools listed below appear most frequently — they combine large enrolments or deep athletic traditions with organised booster communities that convert well in online polls. Knowing the competitive landscape before a vote opens helps supporters calibrate how aggressively to mobilise.

Private schools vs. public schools on the ballot

The Shore Conference includes both public and Non-Public (NJSIAA classification) members. CBA, Red Bank Catholic, Donovan Catholic, St. John Vianney, and Mater Dei Prep all compete under Non-Public brackets but are fully eligible for the Asbury Park Press poll because they serve students from across the coverage counties. The Catholic-school alumni networks in Monmouth County in particular — Red Bank Catholic and CBA share overlapping parishioner bases from the Navesink corridor north to Keansburg — have historically produced organised and sustained vote mobilisation efforts that rival the larger public schools.

How does Asbury Park Press Athlete of the Week voting work?

The poll runs inside the High School Sports section at app.com and is operated through the SecondStreet polling platform that Gannett deploys across its regional properties. Navigating to the page and casting a vote requires no subscription to the Asbury Park Press, no Gannett account creation, and no personal information. For a broader primer on how online newspaper fan polls like this one are structured, see our guide to online contest voting.

The hourly cap means each device is an independent voting surface that resets every 60 minutes. A family in Monmouth County with two smartphones, a tablet, and a laptop has four surfaces voting once per hour across the full window — roughly 48 to 72 votes per device over a two-to-three-day window if every hourly cycle is used. The poll widget displays live running totals throughout the window, so the competitive standing is visible to all visitors at any point.

The ballot typically goes live Monday or Tuesday after the Asbury Park Press sports desk reviews weekend results, then closes Friday afternoon. The exact close time appears on the widget itself — always verify it there, because Gannett may adjust the window around NJSIAA tournament schedules or holidays without prior announcement on social media.

The poll is accessible from any standard desktop or mobile browser — no dedicated app is needed, though it also functions through the app.com mobile application. Voters outside New Jersey — extended family, college recruiters checking on a prospect, out-of-state relatives — can vote on the same equal footing as local Monmouth or Ocean County supporters.

How is the Asbury Park Press Athlete of the Week winner decided?

The winner is the nominee with the highest cumulative vote count when the Friday-afternoon deadline passes. The Asbury Park Press sports desk controls editorial selectivity at the nomination stage — deciding which athletes appear on the weekly ballot — but exercises no scoring or weighting influence once the poll is live. The outcome is entirely determined by the fan vote total.

1. Performance submission: coaches, parents, and athletic directors submit standout highlights to the APP sports desk, typically via email, covering weekend games and mid-week results. Submissions that include box scores, game context, and a brief coach quote receive faster consideration.
2. Editorial curation: the sports desk builds the weekly nominee slate by judgement, weighting performances across the NJSIAA-recognised Shore Conference divisions and Non-Public brackets. Earning a nomination spot is already a level of recognition — the ballot is not exhaustive.
3. Open public vote: the ballot goes live at app.com, usually early in the week, and the community votes freely until the Friday-afternoon close displayed on the widget.
4. Winner announced: the APP publishes the winner on app.com, its social media channels, and the weekly print edition. There is no editorial override of the vote result.

Because the APP is a Gannett USA TODAY Network property, a win earns the athlete a published, bylined mention that is indexed by Google and surfaces in recruiter name searches — a meaningful credential for Shore Conference athletes seeking Division I or II college programme attention.

How do you build more votes for your Asbury Park Press nominee?

Every organic vote campaign for this poll solves the same problem: getting the direct app.com ballot link in front of as many real people as possible before Friday afternoon. The tactics below are specific to the Monmouth and Ocean County community structure — not generic advice. For the full tactical framework behind online-poll vote building, read our how-to guide and the broader playbook at buy-votes-online.

Shore-specific outreach that moves the needle

• Team group chats (immediate): send the exact app.com poll URL — not just "go vote" — to the full roster's group chat within the first two hours. Players are already talking about the weekend's performance; the poll link rides that momentum.
• Booster club email blast: schools like CBA, Red Bank Catholic, Donovan Catholic, and Manasquan maintain active booster email lists with hundreds of parent addresses. A single booster blast in the first 24 hours can generate the week's single largest organic vote surge.
• Parish networks (Non-Public schools): CBA, Red Bank Catholic, and Donovan Catholic each draw from multiple parishes across their county. A message posted to a parish Facebook group or shared through a parish email chain can reach alumni networks several generations deep.
• Shore-town community Facebook groups: Manasquan, Rumson, Spring Lake, and the Toms River area have active community Facebook groups with thousands of members. A post naming the athlete, school, sport, and contest — with the link — converts reliably from these audiences.
• Multi-device household voting: each phone, tablet, and laptop in the household is an independent hourly voting surface. Coordinate to vote simultaneously at the top of each hour for maximum efficiency.
• 24-hour-before-close push: re-send the link to all networks on Thursday afternoon with the specific close time. Urgency converts reminder-openers who have not voted yet.

When organic networks have been fully activated and the nominee is still trailing, some families and booster organisations use paid promotion to reach additional real voters. If that option is being considered, cap-matched delivery — votes paced to the hourly limit rather than injected in bulk — is the only format that avoids triggering the platform's duplicate-detection. Our sports fan poll votes service is built around exactly that paced model.

What are the rules, and can you buy votes for this poll?

The Asbury Park Press Athlete of the Week is a reader-engagement recognition poll with no cash prize, no sweepstakes classification under New Jersey prize-promotion statutes, and no formal contest law framework. The operative restrictions are the poll platform's own technical terms — primarily the prohibition on automated tools that circumvent the per-device hourly cap. For a balanced, detailed analysis of legality across online fan polls generally, see our full guide; the notes below are specific to this poll's format and platform.

There is a genuine operational distinction between two categories of activity:

• Bot scripts or VPN rotation — automated requests that spoof device fingerprints or cycle IP addresses to exceed the one-hour cooldown. These produce traffic signatures that the SecondStreet platform is designed to detect and remove.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people voting once per hour from their own devices after being reached through a promotion channel. Structurally this is equivalent to a booster email reaching 500 additional Shore families; the voters are genuine, the votes are cast within the cap, and the traffic pattern is indistinguishable from organic community mobilisation.

Whether paid real-voter promotion satisfies the spirit of a given week's contest terms is a judgement each athlete, family, or booster programme must make after reviewing the current live poll page on app.com. This poll carries no cash prize and no formal regulatory structure, so the risk is reputational within the Shore Conference community, not legal.

Asbury Park Press Athlete of the Week voting timeline

The APP poll tracks the full NJSIAA athletic calendar across New Jersey's three recognised seasons. Each season shifts the nominee pool — which sports are active, which Shore Conference schools are competing, and the typical level of booster mobilisation all vary by season. The table below maps the programme to the real NJSIAA calendar for Monmouth and Ocean County schools.

Within each week the APP follows a consistent rhythm: the ballot opens Monday or Tuesday after the sports desk processes weekend box scores, and closes Friday afternoon. The close time is displayed on the app.com widget — verify it there directly, as holiday weekends and NJSIAA tournament scheduling can shift the window by a day or an hour without an explicit public announcement from the sports desk.

Fall is the most contested season for this poll. October weeks involving Shore Conference A North football — games between CBA, Middletown North, Freehold Township, and Howell — and Non-Public rivalries (Donovan Catholic vs. Red Bank Catholic in football) historically generate the year's peak vote totals. Spring lacrosse and track weeks, while featuring elite Shore Conference athletes, typically close at lower cumulative totals because the community mobilisation networks are narrower and less coordinated than football's.

For context on how this poll fits within New Jersey's broader prep-sports recognition landscape, see our New Jersey voting contests hub. For every USA contest guide, visit the national index.