Vote now for the Chillicothe Gazette Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Chillicothe Gazette Athlete of the Week is

This program is a fan-voted athlete award run by The Chillicothe Gazette, the daily newspaper serving Chillicothe, Ohio, and published at chillicothegazette.com. The ballot itself lives on Crowdsignal (poll.fm), the commercial polling platform many papers use for reader votes, and the current edition sits at poll.fm/16230684. The vertical is high school sport, and readers take part through a plain public poll: a nominee roster appears, supporters pick a favorite, and the poll closes on the schedule the Gazette prints alongside it.

What separates this ballot from Ohio's larger athlete votes is scale and market. The Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week and the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week draw on big-metro school systems, while this one serves a single small city and the schools around it. The evidence tying nominations to Zane Trace, Unioto and Adena puts the roster firmly in Chillicothe's surrounding school communities rather than across a whole metro area.

Because it is a newspaper promotion rather than a standalone contest site, the Gazette controls who is nominated and when each edition closes, while Crowdsignal only hosts the voting form and the results display.

The dated record for this ballot

Editions of the Chillicothe Gazette Athlete of the Week are confirmed for 2022 and 2025. The 2025 season was calibrated from 10 ballots dated between March and November of that year, and the overall timing span attached to the program runs from August through March, which matches a school-year sports calendar. The recurrence marking is annual, with 2026 as the next expected year.

The dated fact the Gazette publishes most clearly is the voting window: the poll runs from 6 a.m. Monday to 5 p.m. Friday. That schedule came from the paper's own promotion copy and matches the dated phrase printed on the poll pages themselves. What no page carries in advance is the exact Monday each new ballot opens, so supporters checking for a fresh edition should confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The closed sample ballot shows what an edition looks like at the end: 12,830 total votes, with the leading finisher at 60%, worth 7,761 votes, and the remaining nominees trailing at 32%, 6%, 1% and 1%. Crowdsignal leaves those final tallies visible after closing, so past results are readable even when a new edition has not started.

The Gazette has not published a season slate naming which award slots run beyond each edition's own nominee list; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How to vote in the Chillicothe Gazette poll

Supporters vote on the Crowdsignal page itself. Open poll.fm/16230684, read the roster of nominated athletes, click the circle beside the name you support, and submit. There is no login, no write-in box and no separate nomination round published on the ballot; the form is a single selection followed by a submit action. If the page you reach shows a results bar marked closed, that edition has ended and the next one has not opened yet.

The rhythm is the part supporters most often get wrong. The published window runs 6 a.m. Monday to 5 p.m. Friday, so an edition lives for five weekdays and is gone by the weekend. The Gazette's stated rule on volume is that fans can vote as often as allowed, which means return visits across the window are permitted under the paper's terms instead of being blocked to a single attempt.

Because each edition replaces the previous poll at the same series, the roster changes from edition to edition, and the Gazette has not published which sports or schools feed any given week's list. That makes the live page the only reliable source for who is on the ballot in the edition currently open.

Nothing about the vote requires an account with the Gazette or with Crowdsignal, and no purchase is involved in casting a vote. The organizer's costs sit with the paper, not the reader.

How this ballot sits beside its Ohio neighbours

Ohio runs a dense set of newspaper and station athlete votes, and this one is the smallest market among the confirmed group. The Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week, the Dayton Daily News High School Athlete of the Week and the Dayton High School Football Player of the Week all serve metro regions, and the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote is a television station's seasonal award rather than a paper's recurring poll.

The practical difference for a supporter is competition density. A Chillicothe edition draws its votes from a single small city and its surrounding school communities, so a motivated family or team can move the results bar in a way that is far harder in a Cincinnati or Columbus ballot with vastly more readers. The trade-off is information: the bigger papers publish more support material around their polls, while the Gazette's ballot page is spare, listing only the nominees and the closed results.

Platform-wise the metro papers' votes and this one share Crowdsignal (poll.fm) hosting, so the voting action feels identical everywhere: pick a name, submit, return as often as the publisher permits. What varies is who is nominated and how long each edition stays open, both of which are set by each paper rather than by the platform.

Strengthening support in a small-market poll

This ballot rewards the two things its organizer has already permitted: the 6 a.m. Monday to 5 p.m. Friday window and the stated allowance that fans can vote as often as allowed. A supporter campaign therefore runs on repeat visits across all five days, not a single burst. Set reminders around school pickup times and evening schedules, because Friday's 5 p.m. close ends the edition whether the leader has noticed or not.

Community channels matter more in a market this size. Team group chats, booster pages and family networks in Chillicothe can deliver far more repeat voters than the same effort in a metro ballot. The Gazette has not published any rule beyond its voting-frequency line, so there is no published penalty structure to cite for outside help; what is certain is the window and the allowance. For a fuller picture of legitimate growth tactics, see our guide covering extra online votes, and for the legal position on purchased support see is buying votes legal. Anyone weighing paid support for a poll like this can review the buy award votes overview before deciding, since a small roster and a five-day window change the arithmetic compared with month-long contests.