Here Is Where to Times Recorder Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes here and who runs the poll

The Times Recorder Athlete of the Week lets high school sports supporters across Ohio pick a weekly honoree through a public vote. The organizer is the Times Recorder, a newspaper whose registry entry lists it as an Ohio publication, and the full printed publisher name on its own coverage reads The Times-Reporter. The sports desk sits at the center of the program: it receives nominations by email, publishes the week's ballot, and tells readers where and until when to vote.

Crowdsignal, the poll service behind the poll.fm domain, carries the ballot itself. The ballot address on file is https://poll.fm/16528280. A supporter does not need an account with the newspaper to take part; the mechanic is a public poll, which means anyone who opens the page can see the answer list and submit a choice while the poll is live.

Facts at a glance

The ballot options on the confirmed poll are athletes nominated for their performances in basketball and other high school sports, with point totals and game results printed beside each name. Individual nominees are students, so the program is described here through its publisher, its sport and its season instead of by any nominee's name.

The dated timeline for this program

Two years carry confirmed polls for the Times Recorder Athlete of the Week: 2025 and 2026. Those two years are what qualify the program as an annual series in this market, with a 2027 cycle expected next. Each edition is not a single long window but a sequence of dated weekly polls, and the ballot held on file covers Jan. 12-18 of its competition week, with the poll now marked closed.

The timing rules the publisher does confirm come from its own coverage. Voting remains open until noon on Friday for the week on the ballot. Nominations for Athlete of the Week should be emailed to the sports desk by noon on Sunday, which means a performance from the previous competition week has to reach the desk before that Sunday deadline to be considered for the ballot that follows.

What the publisher has not printed anywhere in the confirmed coverage is the roster of ballot categories, any cap on votes per person, and the eligibility rules for nominees; those details should be confirmed on the live ballot each cycle. The open date for a future week's poll is likewise not published ahead of time, so the newspaper's own Athlete of the Week story is where each new window appears first.

How a supporter votes today

Voting takes little effort. A supporter opens the Crowdsignal poll for the current competition week, reads the answer list of nominated athletes, and submits a choice before the close. The confirmed close is noon on Friday, so a push that arrives after that moment lands on a closed poll and does nothing. The poll page itself carries the status line, and a ballot marked closed is the clearest signal that the week's voting has ended.

Before voting, a supporter should read the instructions printed beside the answers. The confirmed ballot does not say whether one person may vote once, once a day, or repeatedly, and it does not say whether any login is required. Those rules, if the publisher prints them anywhere, sit on the live poll page, which is why the instructions beside the answer list matter more than any summary.

For a supporter whose favorite athlete is not on the ballot yet, the entry path is email. Nominations go to the sports desk and must arrive before noon on Sunday. That Sunday deadline is the hinge of the whole cycle: performances from the week reach the desk through it, and the answer list that appears on poll.fm for the following window is built from what it produces. Missing the Sunday noon deadline does not cost a vote already cast, but it does put a name outside the next week's consideration.

How this ballot sits beside its Ohio neighbours

Ohio runs a crowded field of newspaper and station athlete-of-the-week polls, and the Times Recorder program is the one attached to its own publisher's coverage area. Sibling programs on this site include the Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week and the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week, each run by a different publisher, each carrying its own ballot on its own schedule.

The same pattern continues across the state: the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week, the Dayton Daily News High School Athlete of the Week, the Dayton High School Football Player of the Week and the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote all answer to their own newsrooms. A vote cast in one carries no weight in any other, so support has to be directed at the correct publisher's poll.

What makes the Times Recorder ballot distinct within that field is the combination of its email nomination step and its Crowdsignal host. Several Ohio programs run their polls on other platforms or fold nomination and voting differently. Here the sports desk stands between a performance and the ballot, with the Sunday noon email deadline deciding who appears on the following week's answer list, and poll.fm carrying the vote itself through the Jan. 12-18 ballot confirmed on file.

Strengthening support within this poll's rules

Because the confirmed format is an email nomination plus a public Crowdsignal poll, effective support in this program starts with the calendar. A performance needs to reach the sports desk by noon on Sunday to enter the next ballot, and the vote needs to arrive before noon on Friday to count. Circulating the poll.fm link to teammates, families and the school community inside that Friday window is the most direct use of the time the publisher actually gives.

The publisher has printed no rule covering outside help, purchased votes or voting software for this poll, so no organizer position can be quoted here. What is known is the close time and the open, public nature of the ballot. For a wider view of methods that supporters use across similar newspaper polls, the get more votes online guide and the award votes page cover the ground without assuming any particular platform's rules. Whatever route a campaign takes, the practical ceiling this ballot imposes is the same for everyone: the Friday noon close, and the Sunday noon nomination deadline before it.