Who is the Chillicothe Gazette H.S. Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Chillicothe Gazette Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

Unlike the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week, which draws nominees from across the Columbus market, the poll asks a narrower question: who is the Chillicothe Gazette H.S. Athlete of the Week. It is a public-vote feature of a much larger statewide family of Ohio polls, but it belongs to The Chillicothe Gazette, the daily newspaper serving Chillicothe, Ohio, and the surrounding Ross County readership.

The vote runs on Crowdsignal, the polling platform better known by its poll.fm addresses. Each round produces one ballot page with a short list of area high school athletes. Readers pick one nominee and submit, and the platform displays a live tally of percentages and raw vote totals. When the round ends, the ballot is marked closed and the final standings stay published.

The most recent closed ballot is typical of the format. Seven nominees appeared on the list, and the vote split sharply: the leader finished at 52% on 2,381 votes, the runner-up at 39% on 1,781, and the remaining nominees shared single-digit shares of the total.

Facts at a glance

The dated history of this Ohio poll

Confirmed editions of the poll ran in 2022, 2025 and 2026. That history marks the Athlete of the Week as a recurring feature of the Gazette's sports coverage rather than a one-off promotion, even though it is a far smaller operation than big-city Ohio ballots such as the Cincinnati Enquirer vote.

The weekly rhythm is what the assignment shows. Ballots across those seasons have fallen between April and September, which tracks the spring and fall high school sports calendar in Ohio. Two separate seasons have been observed across the 2025 and 2026 ballots, meaning the paper has restarted the series more than once rather than running a single continuous vote.

What the ballot does not publish is a calendar of future rounds. No exact voting window dates, no nomination deadlines and no platform round dates are printed for the next cycle. The newest poll.fm address in the series is the live ballot, and whether voting is open on any given day can only be seen by loading that page. Each closed poll keeps its results visible, so the round just ended is also the most reliable pointer to how recently the series was active.

How a supporter votes on the current ballot

The mechanic is as plain as public voting gets. A supporter opens the current poll.fm ballot, reads the nominee list, selects one athlete and presses the vote button. No account, login or payment is asked for on the ballot page. Once the selection is submitted, the platform switches to a results view showing every nominee's percentage alongside the raw count.

Because the results appear immediately, supporters can watch a race move in real time. On the last closed ballot, the leader's 52% share translated to 2,381 votes against 1,781 for the second-place nominee, a margin that late pushers would need to close.

Weekly series like this one reward repeat attention rather than a single effort. A fresh poll with new nominees replaces the closed one, so an athlete or family that wants to win a given week needs to concentrate support inside that round's window. General tactics that transfer to this format are covered in our votes guide, and questions about the legitimacy of paid help are addressed on our legality page.

The ballot itself imposes no visible steps beyond the single selection, so the whole contest reduces to how many distinct supporters a nominee can bring to the page before the paper closes the poll.

How this ballot sits beside its Ohio neighbours

Ohio runs more high school athlete of the week votes than almost any other state, and the Gazette's version is the small-market end of that spectrum. The Columbus Dispatch and Cincinnati Enquirer ballots draw from major metros, while the Akron-area vote and the Dayton Daily News poll sit in between. All of them share the same underlying shape, a newspaper brand, a Crowdsignal or similar ballot, and a weekly pick-one vote.

What distinguishes Chillicothe is scale and consequence. With a nominee field of seven and totals in the low thousands of votes, a concentrated push by a single school community can visibly swing the standings in a way it cannot on a metro ballot drawing tens of thousands of participants. Specialized ballots such as the Dayton football player of the week and the Fox 8 FNTD player of the year vote narrow further by sport or season, while the Gazette poll stays general across its high school athletes.

For supporters deciding where to spend effort, the practical difference is simple. Local attention goes further here, the results are transparent, and each week is a fresh race with its own small field.