Western New York High School Football Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Thursday noon tells you before you vote

The detail most supporters miss is the deadline. The Buffalo News Prep Talk Boys Athlete of the Week closes at noon Thursday Eastern time — not Sunday night, not Friday, not after the week's games. That cutoff is specific to how a newspaper-driven poll works: the article goes up Monday or Tuesday, runs through mid-week, and the editors use Thursday afternoon to write the winner announcement before the next Prep Talk cycle begins.

For a supporter used to SI's statewide New York poll — which runs to Sunday 11:59 p.m. Pacific and gives campaigns a full week — this deadline is a hard reorientation. The practical voting window for the Prep Talk is Monday through Wednesday. A campaign that posts the ballot link on Thursday morning is telling people to vote three hours before the widget goes dark. That is not a campaign; it is a notification that someone already lost.

There is one other thing the Thursday noon close makes clear: this poll rewards preparation, not size. The programs with the largest alumni bases in WNY — Lancaster in Class AA, Jamestown Red Raiders, the Monsignor Martin powers — have an absolute edge in reach, but only if they activate it early. A smaller Section VI program whose coaching staff pushes the link Monday evening and reminds on Wednesday can finish ahead of a larger school that assumes its name carries the vote on its own.

The ballot structure — and what it means to share the field with other sports

In fall, the Prep Talk Boys Athlete of the Week does not separate football from soccer and cross-country. The same weekly ballot lists nominees from all three sports together, and voters choose from the combined field. That is not a quirk to work around — it is the defining competitive fact of this poll.

On the September 23, 2023 ballot, Joe Carlson of Starpoint and Gavin Susfolk of Akron both appeared as football nominees. Carlson threw and ran for five touchdowns in a 41-15 win over West Seneca East; Susfolk recorded five sacks as a sophomore in a 47-0 shutout of Cleveland Hill — a school record. Those are outstanding football performances. On a football-only ballot, both might be frontrunners. On a multi-sport ballot they were two football nominees among a field that also included soccer and cross-country athletes, all competing for votes from the same WNY readership.

The structural consequence is that a football campaign here cannot only reach football families. The soccer parents voting for the soccer nominee are pulling from the same pool. A football program that mobilizes its entire school community — not just the football booster group, but the broader student section, the band, the school social accounts — draws from a wider base than one that limits outreach to athletic families. That is the concrete advantage of treating this as a school contest rather than a sport contest.

Section VI and Monsignor Martin on the same ballot

Western New York high school football runs through two governing bodies that rarely appear on the same list. Section VI of the NYSPHSAA covers public schools across Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, and Cattaraugus counties — five enrollment classes from AA down to D, with sectional championships held at Highmark Stadium. Lancaster won the 2024 Class AA title over Jamestown 28-21 at Highmark; Orchard Park reached the Class AA semifinals that same fall. Below Class AA, smaller programs from Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties make the sectional bracket without the name recognition of the metro schools.

The Monsignor Martin Athletic Association runs separately — Canisius, St. Francis, St. Joe's, Cardinal O'Hara, and Bishop Timon-St. Jude compete in their own league outside NYSPHSAA, play for Monsignor Martin titles, and operate on a schedule that overlaps but does not intersect with the Section VI playoff bracket. St. Francis's Trent Buttles won the 2025 Dick Gallagher Buffalo News Player of the Year — the annual editorial honor; Canisius held the Monsignor Martin championship in 2023.

For the Prep Talk fan vote, those league boundaries disappear. A St. Francis nominee and a Lancaster nominee land on the same ballot, voted on by the same Buffalo-area readership. A Canisius supporter casting a vote and a Jamestown fan casting a vote are equal participants in the same poll. The Monsignor Martin programs draw heavily from Catholic school families and parish networks across the metro — a specific kind of community mobilization that differs from a public school's alumni reach and is, in practice, often faster to concentrate when it activates.

Anthony Robinson of Starpoint — a Section VI program in Niagara County, outside the metro core — is confirmed as a Prep Talk Athlete of the Week winner. Starpoint's win illustrates the same dynamic: a program without the name recognition of the Monsignor Martin powers or Class AA public schools mobilized enough of its community before Thursday noon to take the poll. The vote-support options used for this kind of uncapped regional poll are structured around exactly that window — reaching more real supporters inside a defined deadline, which here is tighter than anywhere else in New York.

For the WNY sports landscape and regional contest context, see /usa/buffalo-new-york/ and the statewide directory at /usa/.