Times Reporter Boys Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in the Times Reporter boys athlete poll and why it matters

The people who decide this award are not a panel of sportswriters. They are the readers of The Times Reporter, the Ohio newspaper whose sports desk covers high school athletics in its market, and every week they get to hand the honor to the boy whose performance impressed them most. A dominating outing on the mound, a multi-hit night at the plate or a jump that snapped a decades-old school mark all arrive on the same ballot, and the community picks between them.

That makes the poll a genuinely local event. Schools rally around their nominees, families forward the link through group chats, and the paper's coverage gives every nominated athlete a written summary of the outing that put him on the slate. For a high school athlete, topping a newspaper poll that neighbors, classmates and rival fan bases all read is a visible, shareable honor.

The voting itself happens on Crowdsignal, the polling platform reached at poll.fm. The current ballot sits at poll.fm/16842975. Because the series is weekly, the pool of nominees changes from round to round, and so does the competition: an athlete who loses a close week can reappear later in the season with a new performance behind him.

The essentials of the program sit in this table.

The weekly calendar: nominations, closings and confirmed seasons

Confirmed seasons for the series span 2024, 2025 and 2026, so this is an established part of the paper's high school sports routine rather than a single experiment. Within each season the program runs as a chain of weekly ballots, each covering the prior week's performances and each closing before the next slate of nominees takes over.

The dates the paper itself states shape the rhythm. Nominations for Athlete of the Week go to [email protected] by noon Sunday, which is the cut-off the sports desk gives for getting a performance considered. On the voting side, the paper's current story says the poll will close Friday, Sep. 18 at 3 p.m., giving the week a clear Sunday-to-Friday shape. An earlier ballot in the series was titled with a March 30-April 4 window and now shows as closed, which fits the same weekly pattern across the spring season.

The paper has printed no ceiling on how often a single supporter may submit during a round. The exact hours when each new ballot opens and closes, and which sports or season segments the upcoming rounds will cover, are also not announced in advance; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For supporters the practical takeaway is simple: the week runs Sunday nomination through Friday close, and the ballot link and its stated closing time are published with the paper's weekly sports story at timesreporter.com.

How to vote on the current ballot, step by step

Voting takes under a minute and needs no account. The ballot is a Crowdsignal survey, so the whole flow happens on a single page at poll.fm/16842975.

Open the link and you land on the week's slate of nominated boys athletes. Each option pairs the athlete with a short writeup of what put him on the ballot: the earlier round described a Dover-area hitter collecting three hits with two doubles and a single in a close win, a complete-game pitching effort with eight strikeouts, and a long jump that snapped a fifty-year-old school mark. Read the summaries, pick the performance you want to honor, select that option, and press the vote button. The page confirms your pick and the running results are visible on the ballot.

If the athlete you care about is not listed, the path in runs through the sports desk rather than the ballot. Email [email protected] with the performance details before noon Sunday, the nomination deadline the paper states, and a strong week can put a name on the next slate. Because the series is weekly, a missed round is never final: the following ballot brings new nominees and a fresh chance, and the closing time for each round is printed with the paper's weekly story rather than fixed in advance.

No entry fee, no login and no gate stand in front of the public vote. The one action that matters is submitting before the stated Friday close.

Where this ballot sits among Ohio's athlete of the week polls

Ohio is dense with newspaper and broadcaster reader votes, and this series is the Times Reporter's own entry rather than a franchise of any other outlet. Each of the neighbouring programs answers to a different publisher, covers a different market and runs on its own weekly schedule, so a nomination in one never carries into another.

The closest peers in the state include the Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week, the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week and the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week, each tied to a major metro daily. The Dayton Daily News High School Athlete of the Week and the Dayton High School Football Player of the Week split Dayton-area voting between a general award and a football-specific one. Broadcast readers have the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote, a television-backed honor.

What distinguishes the Times Reporter version is scale and focus: a single publisher's home market, a boys award decided entirely by that paper's readers, and a ballot small enough that an organized school community can genuinely swing the result. Nominee writeups are written by the paper's own sports desk, which keeps the framing consistent from week to week even as the sports rotate.

For an athlete in the paper's coverage area, this local poll is often the most winnable honor on the board, precisely because the voting universe is the paper's own audience.

Building real support for a nominee during the voting week

A weekly school poll rewards organized, human support more than anything else. Start with the deadline structure the paper gives you: get the nomination to [email protected] before noon Sunday so the week is not lost before voting begins, then share the ballot link the moment the sports desk posts it. A Monday-through-Thursday push leaves room to remind people; a scramble on Friday afternoon before the 3 p.m. close does not.

Athletic departments, booster groups and family networks do the heavy lifting on ballots like this. A short message containing the direct poll link, the athlete's performance summary and the closing time spreads well through squad chats and school social pages. The Times Reporter has printed nothing on purchased or organized voting assistance for this survey, and no third-party support can promise a result. For a broader picture of what works on weekly reader polls, see our guide to getting more votes online, and check the paper's own poll language before the next round.