The Journal News Lohud Football Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the lohud football player of the week poll is and who runs it

Each week of the high school football season, the sports desk at The Journal News asks lohud readers to pick a Football Player of the Week from the standout performers in that weekend's games. The program belongs to the Rockland/Westchester newspaper, whose sports coverage publishes under the lohud brand, and it sits squarely in the sport vertical. The Crowdsignal platform behind poll.fm carries every ballot, and the current one in the series sits at poll.fm/14661958.

The poll serves readers of The Journal News across its Rockland and Westchester coverage area in New York. Past ballots have carried nominees from communities including Tuckahoe, Ardsley, Somers, North Rockland, Valhalla, Carmel, Pearl River, Mount Vernon, Scarsdale and Mahopac, which gives a sense of the geographic spread the vote draws from.

Because this is a weekly series, one page covers the whole program rather than a separate page per week. The voting URL above always points to the newest ballot of the series, so it reflects whichever poll is live right now. The key facts are gathered below.

The dated record: seasons confirmed, weekly rhythm, and what is not printed

Two seasons of the program are confirmed: 2023 and 2024. The 2024 season alone produced nine separate ballots on poll.fm, dated across September, October and November, which is how the weekly rhythm shows up in the platform's own series. The Journal News describes the pattern plainly: to kick off each week of the football season, the desk highlights standout performers from the weekend's games.

Within a season the window is easy to state. A ballot opens at the start of the week and the poll remains open until Thursday at 3 p.m., after which the winner gets a feature on lohud sports social media accounts. That Thursday deadline is the one dated fact the organizer prints on the ballot itself.

Just as useful is what the desk leaves off the page. No category list appears beyond the one player of the week question, no nomination round is described anywhere, and the start date for the next season has not been announced; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The exact opening day of each new weekly poll is likewise announced only with that week's story, never on a fixed calendar.

One recent closed ballot shows how lopsided the tallies can get: the leading nominee finished with 64 percent of the vote, the runner-up with 29 percent, and the remaining three nominees split the rest at 5 percent, 1 percent and 1 percent. A single strong week of community mobilizing can decide the whole poll.

How a supporter votes in the current lohud football poll

The mechanic could hardly be simpler, and that simplicity is why the poll draws heavy participation from school communities. A supporter opens the live ballot on the Crowdsignal platform behind poll.fm, reads the week's list of nominees, each shown with the high school the player represents, selects one name, and taps the vote control. The lohud poll logs the pick at once and the running percentage tally is visible on the page.

Published guidance attached to this poll sets the limit at one vote per person per day. A supporter who intends to keep voting returns on each new calendar day and repeats the same three steps: open the ballot, select the nominee, tap the control. The window closes hard at Thursday at 3 p.m., when the poll shuts and the result moves to lohud sports social media accounts.

The ballot page describes no account creation, and no login wall appears before the vote control. Anyone who can reach the page can participate within the daily rule. If the organizer ever adds a verification step, it will be printed on the live ballot itself.

Because the URL above always points to the newest ballot in the series, a supporter who bookmarks it lands on the current week's poll without hunting through the lohud sports section. Once a poll closes it is marked closed on the platform, and the next week's ballot takes its place in the series.

How this ballot sits beside its New York neighbours

The lohud football poll is one of several player and athlete of the week programs running in New York, and knowing the neighbours helps a supporter land on the right ballot. Within the same publisher's family, The Journal News also runs the lohud Boys Basketball Player of the Week and the Lohud Girls Basketball Player of the Week, which follow the same weekly poll pattern in the winter sports season.

Elsewhere in the state, the Buffalo News Prep Talk Girls Athlete of the Week serves western New York under a different publisher, while the Hudson Valley New York High School Football Player of the Week and the New York Section 1 High School Football Player of the Week overlap geographically with the lohud coverage area. A statewide New York High School Football Player of the Week ballot also exists.

What distinguishes the lohud football poll is its publisher and its rhythm: it belongs to The Journal News specifically, it runs weekly through the September to November football season rather than as a single long ballot, and it closes each week on Thursday at 3 p.m. A supporter whose player is nominated in a given week has that one weekly window to work with, which is a much shorter runway than an annual award provides.

Strengthening support inside a Thursday-deadline weekly poll

A weekly ballot with a Thursday at 3 p.m. close rewards early and repeated effort far more than a month-long poll does. Since the published limit allows a single vote per supporter per day, the most effective habit for a nominated player's community is a daily reminder cycle: a team group chat message each morning from the weekend kickoff through Thursday afternoon, so nobody loses a day they could have used.

The organizer's own conduct rules matter here. The Journal News runs this as a reader engagement feature, and votes that break the stated daily limit are the kind of thing an organizer can remove. Mobilizing real supporters, from the student section to the booster club to the school's own social accounts, works with the format rather than against it, and the weekly reset means a slow start is recoverable only within the same week.

Because each ballot is short-lived, planning matters more than volume. Families who line up their daily voters on the first day of the poll bank five or six voting days before the Thursday deadline, while a community that discovers the nomination late has only a day or two. For a fuller rundown of methods that fit a daily-limit public poll, see how to get more votes online.