Times Herald-Record Varsity Boys Basketball Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

One paper's weekly ballot in a crowded New York player-of-the-week field

New York has no shortage of high school player-of-the-week votes, and this page covers only one of them. What separates the Times Herald-Record Varsity Boys Basketball Player of the Week from its neighbours is the publisher behind it, the sport it covers and the footprint it draws from. It belongs to the Times Herald-Record, the newspaper publishing at recordonline.com, and it sits under the paper's Varsity 845 high school sports brand rather than under a statewide or section-wide banner.

The vote itself lives on Crowdsignal at poll.fm, a balloting platform behind many newspaper player-of-the-week polls, and the voting URL points at a specific weekly poll rather than a standing homepage. Nominees come from varsity boys basketball programmes in the paper's coverage area, with communities such as Tuxedo, Warwick, Middletown, Liberty, Woodbury and Highland represented in the ballot geography.

The facts of the programme at a glance

Contrast that with two obvious neighbours. The lohud Boys Basketball Player of the Week covers the same sport but answers to a different publisher, and the New York High School Football Player of the Week shares the state but not the season or the sport. Each vote is its own competition with its own nominee list, and support earned in one counts only inside that poll and nowhere else.

The dated history of this weekly boys basketball vote

The confirmed history of the programme rests on three edition years: 2022, 2023 and 2024. Those stamps qualify the series as annual, and the most recent confirmed season is 2024. Within a season the vote runs as a weekly series through the boys basketball calendar, so an edition year covers many individual ballots rather than one contest.

The voting phase sits in January and February. A concrete example of a single week is the ballot at poll 13315447, headed as the Varsity 845 boys basketball player of the week question for the Jan. 29-Feb. 4 span, which now displays as closed on the platform. That closed ballot is the most specific dated window carried for the series, and it shows the shape of a normal week: nominees listed with their school communities and a running result tally beneath the question.

Several things about the schedule are not printed. The paper does not publish exact open and close dates for each weekly ballot, the total count of ballots per season, or the round dates for future polls. Which season comes next is equally unlisted, so check the current status of the series on the live ballot each cycle. The Times Herald-Record also publishes no stated rule on repeat voting, eligibility or how nominees are selected; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For planning purposes the safest reading is the one the evidence supports: a January-February weekly vote, confirmed in 2022, 2023 and 2024, whose next appearance should be judged from the paper's Varsity 845 coverage when the season approaches.

How a supporter votes in the Varsity 845 boys basketball poll today

Voting takes no special skill, which suits the Crowdsignal format. A supporter opens the voting page at poll.fm, reads the weekly question, and sees the nominee list for that week. Each nominee appears with the school community they represent, so the ballot is readable even for a voter who follows only their own town's programme. The voter marks the preferred name and submits, and the platform then shows the tally as it stands after that ballot is counted.

Because this is a weekly series, the page at the voting URL points to the most recent ballot of the season rather than a permanent archive. When one week's poll closes, as the Jan. 29-Feb. 4 ballot has, the next weekly question takes its place at the series' voting page. Anyone keen to back a player across the season therefore returns week after week through the January-February window, checking the Times Herald-Record's coverage for each new nominee list.

Three practical points follow from that structure. First, always check the week label in the poll heading before voting, so your vote lands on the week you intended. Second, the closed marker on a ballot means that week is finished, and votes cast elsewhere do not transfer. Third, the ballot publishes no instructions about repeat voting, so the page in front of you is the only authority on what a single visit permits. The votes guide on this site covers how short weekly ballots like this one reward organised, repeated community outreach.

How this ballot sits beside its New York neighbours

Within this site's New York coverage, six sibling programmes share the player-of-the-week format with this one, and the differences matter to any backer choosing a target. The lohud Boys Basketball Player of the Week and the Lohud Girls Basketball Player of the Week cover basketball under a different publisher. The Hudson Valley New York High School Football Player of the Week, the New York High School Football Player of the Week and the New York Section 1 High School Football Player of the Week cover football in the autumn. The Buffalo News Prep Talk Girls Athlete of the Week takes a multi-sport girls angle for a different corner of the state.

Set against that field, the Times Herald-Record ballot is the boys-basketball-only, winter-window vote in the group, run by a single newspaper under one branded sports desk. Its nominee geography is the paper's own coverage territory, drawing from communities such as Liberty, Middletown, Tuxedo, Warwick, Woodbury and Highland, which means the competitive base is a set of neighbouring school communities rather than an entire state. That concentration changes the shape of a campaign: a smaller, tighter supporter pool where weekly consistency matters more than any single surge, and where a school community that turns out every January and February tends to dominate its ballots.

Strengthening support within this ballot's rules

Everything that works in this vote flows from its weekly rhythm and its school-anchored nominee list. A nominee's natural base is the school community named beside their name on the ballot, so outreach that reaches families, students and local followers in towns such as Tuxedo, Warwick, Chester, Ellenville and Onteora is the honest core of any push. Because each ballot resets, sustained turnout across the January-February window beats a one-week spike.

On outside help, the position is straightforward: the Times Herald-Record has not published a policy for this series, so no organiser rule can be quoted either way. That absence is not permission, and support methods that respect the ballot's own structure are the ones that carry no avoidable risk. Our award votes reference explains how purchased support works in polls of this kind and what it cannot promise, and the legal position page covers the wider question. Whatever route a supporter takes, the weekly tally on poll.fm is public, so the result of any approach is visible immediately on the ballot itself.