Vote for Mohawk Valley Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Mohawk Valley Athlete of the Week ballot is and who stands behind it

This program is a reader-driven award for high school athletes in the Mohawk Valley area of New York. It sits in the sport vertical and runs as a public vote: the result is decided by the tally of supporter clicks on the ballot, not by a judging panel, and anyone who opens the page can take part.

The balloting runs on Crowdsignal through its poll.fm address, and the series ballot lives at poll.fm/16961563. Each weekly edition replaces the previous one on that host, so the address is the working voting URL for the program all season long.

Nominees do not enter themselves. A sports desk compiles the weekly list of candidates from information submitted by coaches and athletic directors via emails and other communications, which means the roster of names changes with every ballot and reflects what schools report while their seasons are running.

The dated facts behind the series

The program has a multi-year history. Confirmed edition years are 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026, and 2027 is the year the next cycle is expected. Within each confirmed year the publisher posts many ballots, because the series posts a new poll weekly through the scholastic seasons rather than as one event per year. A year missing from that list does not by itself prove a skipped season, since a weekly series can hold dozens of ballots in an active year and the confirmed list only marks the years with editions on file.

Two dated ballots show the shape of a season. A spring edition titled Vote for Mohawk Valley Athlete of the Week for April 13-19 ran on poll 16961563 and has since closed; its leading answer finished with 2,933 votes, a 51 percent share of the total. On the winter side, the 2025-26 ballot featured 20 athletes from basketball, hockey, volleyball, wrestling and gymnastics teams.

Not everything a supporter might want is printed. The publisher has not posted the ballot's category breakdown, any cap on repeat voting, or eligibility terms; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. No prize for the winning athlete is described on the ballot page, and the exact hour a new weekly edition goes live is not stated either.

How a supporter votes on the current ballot

Casting a vote takes only a moment. A supporter visits the current ballot at poll.fm/16961563, reads the nominee list printed on the page, selects one athlete, and submits the choice. Each nominee is shown with their school and sport, so a reader can find a particular athlete by scanning the list rather than searching through menus.

Timing matters as much as the click. The winter 2025-26 ballot kept voting open until noon on Friday, March 13, which means a nominee's supporters need to act inside the week's window rather than assume voting stretches into the weekend. Once a ballot closes, its result is fixed and attention shifts to the next weekly edition.

Nomination works differently from voting. Coaches and athletic directors send information about their athletes via emails and other communications, and the sports desk turns those submissions into the weekly list. A family or team that wants an athlete considered therefore works through the school side, not through the ballot itself, and a player who is not on the list cannot be voted for that week.

The page does not state whether voting requires an account or a login, and it does not describe any device or residency restriction. A supporter simply follows whatever the live form asks on the day.

Where this ballot sits among New York's athlete of the week votes

New York is crowded with reader votes for scholastic athletes, and this program sits inside that family without being interchangeable with any of its neighbours. Six related pages cover the state: the Buffalo News Prep Talk Girls Athlete of the Week, the Hudson Valley New York High School Football Player of the Week, the lohud Boys Basketball Player of the Week, the Lohud Girls Basketball 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.

Every one of those ballots belongs to a different publisher in a different market, so support earned on one does not carry over to another. What sets the Mohawk Valley series apart is breadth: where several neighbours concentrate on a single sport or a single gender, this ballot rotates across the season's schedule, from softball, lacrosse and baseball on the spring sample to whatever sport is in season when the next ballot posts.

It is also regional rather than citywide or statewide. The nominees come from schools around the Mohawk Valley, which keeps the audience tight: readers who follow local teams, plus the families and classmates behind each name on the list.

Building support for a Mohawk Valley nominee

Support here is built week by week, and the weekly rhythm shapes what works. Because each ballot ends midday Friday, a push that starts late in the week runs out of room, so families and teams do best when they share the poll.fm link early, leaving classmates, teammates and local followers room to vote well ahead of the cutoff.

Nomination is a separate channel. Coaches and athletic directors submit names via emails and other communications, so getting onto a future ballot runs through a school's athletic staff rather than through any public form.

Winning a weekly reader poll is never something any vote service, this site's included, can promise, and nothing on the ballot speaks to outside help of any kind. For tactics suited to public ballots, see our votes guide, and readers weighing a purchase for an award-style vote can compare options at award vote packages.