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

What the Times-Reporter Girls Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

Run by The Times Reporter, a newspaper serving Ohio whose home on the web is timesreporter.com, the Times-Reporter Girls Athlete of the Week recognizes high school girls athletes through reader choice. The newspaper names a slate of nominated athletes for the week, publishes a short note on what each nominee did in her sport, and lets readers decide the winner by clicking their choice on the ballot.

The voting itself is carried on Crowdsignal at poll.fm, a polling platform that newspapers commonly use for reader awards. The live ballot for the program sits at poll.fm/16843001, and that address is where the current girls athlete round appears. Each weekly round is its own poll with a fresh nominee slate, fresh write-ups and its own closing point, so the ballot a reader sees today belongs to the round that is live now rather than to the season as a whole.

The vertical is school sport, and the ballot's scope is the newspaper's own Ohio coverage area rather than a statewide field. Recent rounds have drawn nominees from sports including track and field and softball, with the write-ups describing specific performances such as a winning pitching effort with a home run at the plate, or a shot put mark that set a new school-best figure. The table underneath collects the program's fixed facts.

The dated record: seasons, ballots and the March 30-April 4 round

The program's confirmed history covers three seasons: 2024, 2025 and 2026. Across those three years the series produced 42 ballots, which is the clearest evidence of its rhythm, a new girls athlete poll for each weekly round while the sports calendar is running. The next expected season is 2027, though The Times Reporter has not printed a start date for it.

The most recent round on file is the ballot titled Times-Reporter Girls Athlete of the Week (March 30-April 4), which has closed. Its poll number is 16843001, the same address that now serves the current round. That ballot's write-ups included a Dover freshman winning the shot put with a new school-best mark, and a Garaway nominee who took the pitching win and hit a home run in a 12-1 Inter-Valley Conference victory over Buckeye Trail.

What the newspaper has not published is a fixed calendar of round dates for the girls athlete series; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The nomination side is equally unprinted: the page does not explain how athletes are placed on the ballot each week, and it does not list the sports that qualify round by round. A reader who wants the exact open and close times of the current round, or the slate of nominees before it appears, has to check the live poll or the newspaper's sports section directly, because neither the season schedule nor the nomination process is printed alongside the ballot itself.

How a supporter votes in the current girls athlete round

Voting in the Times-Reporter Girls Athlete of the Week is a short, literal sequence on the Crowdsignal ballot. A supporter opens the live poll at poll.fm, reads the nominee list for the current weekly round, clicks the selection control next to the athlete they want to back, and presses the vote control beneath the nominee list to log the selection. No write-in step is shown on the ballot, and no payment or purchase of any kind is part of the process; the round is decided entirely by reader clicks.

On repeat voting, the organizer's own published guidance is unusually direct. In voting instructions The Times Reporter attached to its poll coverage, the newspaper tells readers: "Refresh the page after each time you vote to be able to vote as often as you'd like." That sentence is the organizer speaking about its own polls, and it is the strongest available statement of how often a supporter may vote in a round. The girls athlete ballot page itself does not add a separate limit, an eligibility rule or a verification requirement beyond what appears on the live form.

Timing is the part a supporter cannot plan far ahead. Each round closes when its window ends, as the March 30-April 4 ballot did, and the next poll takes its place at the same address. Because The Times Reporter has not published the open and close times for upcoming girls athlete rounds, the practical habit is to vote early in the week a ballot appears and to check timesreporter.com for the announcement of each new slate.

How this ballot sits beside its Ohio neighbours

The Times-Reporter Girls Athlete of the Week is one of several Ohio high school sport votes in this family of pages, and every one of them is run by a different publisher. The siblings are the Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week, the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week, the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week, the Dayton Daily News ballot for football players, the Dayton football weekly vote and the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote. A vote cast in the Times-Reporter ballot carries no weight toward any of those programs, and vice versa.

What separates the Times-Reporter program from its neighbours is its focus and its scale. It is a girls-only ballot, where several of the sibling programs run open-gender or football-specific formats, and its market is the newspaper's own Ohio coverage area rather than a metro the size of Cincinnati or Columbus. Its host is the same Crowdsignal platform at poll.fm that carries many newspaper polls, so the click-and-submit mechanic will feel familiar to anyone who has voted in the sibling rounds.

The weekly shape is the other difference. Where a year-end player of the year vote concentrates attention into a single window, this program spreads its 42 ballots across the 2024, 2025 and 2026 seasons, which means a supporter has many short chances to participate rather than a single long one. For readers comparing Ohio programs, the girls athlete ballot is the Times-Reporter's own weekly fixture, run under the newspaper's name and on its own schedule.

Strengthening support for a nominee in this weekly round

Because each Times-Reporter Girls Athlete of the Week round is short, support works best when it starts the day the new ballot appears. The organizer's guidance that readers may refresh and vote as often as they'd like means a nominee's family, teammates and classmates can return daily through the round's window without any special access. Sharing the poll.fm link directly, with the nominee's name and the round's dates, removes every step between a supporter and the click.

On the subject of outside help, the organizer's published words are limited to that voting guidance: The Times Reporter invites repeat reader voting and prints nothing that endorses paid services. A push that depends on real people clicking the live ballot fits the program's own rules; anything automated sits outside what the newspaper describes. For a longer walkthrough of supporter outreach in public votes like this one, see our votes guide, and for the general rules question see whether buying votes is legal. If you are comparing award ballots before committing effort, our award votes overview explains how these programs differ from open entry contests.