MileSplit New York Girls Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the MileSplit New York Girls Athlete of the Week poll?

The MileSplit New York Girls Athlete of the Week ballot, tagged NY Girls AOTW on the polling service itself, is a recurring public vote run by MileSplit New York, the New York desk behind the running coverage published at ny.milesplit.com. Its subject is narrow and seasonal: each week the desk nominates a group of girls runners from high schools around the state, and readers decide which of them takes the weekly honor. The organizer's own posted description calls the award the Runner of the Week, which ties the series to running rather than to any other sport.

Crowdsignal, the polling platform behind poll.fm, hosts the vote. The series' voting link points at poll 16478641, a ballot headed NY Girls AOTW: Jan 5 and currently marked closed. That address serves whichever weekly poll is newest in the series, so the heading a visitor meets changes as each fresh ballot replaces the expired one.

School names attached to recent nominee lines give a sense of the ballot's catchment: Baldwin, Williamsville East, Bay Shore, Connetquot and Corning have all appeared on a closed NY Girls AOTW ballot.

Which years and weeks are confirmed for the NY Girls AOTW ballot?

The dated run

Weekly ballots in the series are confirmed across 2024, 2025 and 2026. The best-documented stretch inside that run is the mid-September 2025 week: the organizer's nomination article for that week opened voting on September 15 and stated plainly, "This week's poll will close on Friday (September 19th) at Noon." Voting for that week therefore ran September 15 through September 19, 2025.

That closed ballot also preserved the outcome:

Two habits of the series matter for anyone following it. Each week fixes its own voting days, published with that week's nomination article on ny.milesplit.com, so no permanent calendar exists. And the series keeps no standing category list, because every ballot asks a single weekly question about a single honor.

What the organizer has not printed anywhere alongside the ballot is a per-supporter vote rule or eligibility terms for the nominees; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter vote in the weekly NY Girls AOTW poll?

From nomination to submission

The weekly rhythm has two stages. The MileSplit NY crew selects the nominees, and the ballot then goes up with the slate laid out under Poll Answers, each runner's school printed beside her name. A supporter opens the current poll at the series' voting address, reviews the list, marks the selection next to the preferred nominee and submits. Nothing in the ballot's visible text suggests a payment step, a membership gate or a lengthy form; the vote is a click-and-submit exercise aimed at moving as many supporters through as possible before the deadline printed with that week's post.

After the vote: sharing

The ballot does not end at submission. Its closing lines urge supporters onward: "Give others the chance to vote. Share this poll, because the more votes the better." Share and Tweet buttons sit directly beneath that message, so a voter can push the poll to classmates, teammates and family groups without leaving the page. That built-in distribution request is the clearest signal of how the organizer expects the percentage race to move: a nominee's share climbs when her school community passes the link around, and the weekly format rewards whoever mobilizes fastest inside a few days.

Mobile participation needs no special route. The poll renders as a standard web page in a phone browser, and the share buttons hand off cleanly to social apps, which is where most young supporters and their families meet the ballot in the first place.

How does the NY Girls AOTW vote differ from New York's best-of ballots?

Among the New York public votes covered on this site, the AOTW ballot's nearest neighbours are the best-of surveys: Best of Brooklyn, Best of the Bronx, Best of Queens, Best of Hudson Valley, Best of Westchester and The City's Best - Best of New York City. Those campaigns share a family resemblance: seasonal windows, many local categories and a broad civic electorate of residents and business patrons.

The NY Girls AOTW vote breaks that pattern in useful ways. It is a sports honor rather than a business or community ranking, its electorate is a track-minded public of runners, parents and coaches, and its cycle is measured in days. A best-of survey gives a campaign a long runway of gradual outreach and repeated reminders; a weekly athlete poll compresses the entire contest into a working week with a hard stop at the posted closing moment. Anyone borrowing tactics across the two shapes should read that difference before anything else, because pacing that suits a season-long survey rarely fits a ballot that shuts within days of going live.

How can supporters widen a NY Girls AOTW nominee's reach?

The organizer's own playbook is the starting point: the ballot asks supporters to share it, on the stated logic that the more votes the better. A weekly window turns that advice into a sprint. Families, teammates and booster groups should move the evening the ballot goes live, because a poll that shuts at a posted midday moment leaves no room for a slow burn. Levers that cost nothing include a group message to team parents on opening night, a mention at practice, and a link passed through the channels a school already uses.

For supporters weighing paid help alongside organic outreach, the general methods are gathered in the guide to getting more votes online; read the organizer's posted terms first, since this series prints no dedicated policy on outside assistance beyond its own share prompt.