MileSplit SC Boys Runner of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Runner of the Week ballot is and who runs it

MileSplit SC Boys Runner of the Week is a fan ballot that runs weekly for boys cross country in South Carolina high school racing. MileSplit SC, the state branch of the MileSplit network whose national site sits at milesplit.com, puts it up. The vote is carried on Crowdsignal's poll.fm platform, and the current ballot address is https://poll.fm/16059002. The program is filed under the best-of vertical and works on a public-vote mechanic: anyone who opens the ballot page can cast a vote for the runner they want to recognize, and results are displayed as percentages beside each nominee's description.

The ballot is aimed at the South Carolina cross country community: runners, coaches, families and fans who follow the fall racing season. Every weekly ballot names a short field of nominees described by what they did at a recent meet rather than by season statistics, and the reader picks one. Because the program is a fan vote rather than a judged award, the outcome depends entirely on how many people each nominee's school community can turn out while the poll is open.

The table underneath pulls the program's fixed details together. Everything else a supporter might want, from the nominee list for the current week to the closing moment of the live poll, sits on the ballot page itself.

The dated history of this weekly series

Two seasons are on file for this program, 2022 and 2025. That history marks it as a recurring fixture rather than a one-off: the ballot came back after a gap and qualified as annual on the basis of those two confirmed years, and a 2026 edition is the expectation. Within a season the program runs as a weekly series. The voting window falls across August and September, which matches the heart of the South Carolina cross country schedule, and every week produces a fresh ballot with a fresh nominee field and a fresh result.

The latest ballot in the run was titled for Sept. 22 and is now closed. On that ballot the leading nominee finished at 57 percent with 191 votes, the second at 19 percent with 63 votes, and the third at 16 percent with 55 votes. The nominees were described by their performances at named meets, including a weekend's fastest time, a fourth fastest time, a place at the adidas XC Challenge and a seventh at Hare & Hounds, alongside a write-in option that named a Lake Murray champion.

What the series does not publish in fixed form is its calendar. MileSplit SC has not printed standing open and close dates for each weekly ballot, and the platform's round dates for the series are not listed either; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Until that schedule appears, the start of each week of the season is the practical moment to look for a fresh poll.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot

Voting happens on the Crowdsignal ballot served through poll.fm. To take part, a supporter opens the ballot, works through the nominee descriptions, selects the option beside the runner they want to recognize and sends the vote in. The page then shows the running result as a percentage beside each choice, which is how the Sept. 22 result table was produced.

The published frequency rule reads "one vote per person per day", in MileSplit SC's own wording. That turns the daily return into the core mechanic of the series: a supporter who wants maximum impact votes once today, then comes back tomorrow and votes again, rather than trying to repeat a vote inside the same day. A closed poll, like the Sept. 22 ballot, no longer accepts votes at all, and the displayed result is final.

The ballot describes no login step. Beyond the named nominees, the Sept. 22 ballot carried an "Other" write-in option that let a supporter name a runner the ballot had not listed, which is how a Lake Murray champion appeared among the answers. Nominee descriptions are written after every week of racing, so a runner with a strong meet result who misses one ballot may well appear on the following week's.

Since the ballot is an open public vote, no account, payment or registration is involved. The whole action is a page open, a selection and a submit, which is why weekly turnout depends on schools and families remembering to come back each day the poll is open.

How this ballot sits beside South Carolina's other fan votes

Within South Carolina this ballot sits beside a set of reader-voted best-of programs run by other publishers. The statewide Best of South Carolina Awards, the BroadwayWorld South Carolina Awards for theatre, the Charleston City Paper's Best of Charleston, Charleston Magazine's Best Of, and two Columbia titles, Best of Columbia from Columbia Metropolitan and Free Times' Best of Columbia, all serve the same state with different verticals.

What separates the Runner of the Week from those programs is cadence and subject. The best-of titles run as annual city or state contests with business categories; this ballot is a weekly sports honor for individual high school athletes, decided entirely by fan votes during the fall season. Its audience is narrower, the cross country community, but its cycle is faster: a new ballot every week of the season rather than a single annual window.

That difference matters for a supporter. In an annual best-of contest a business campaigns for weeks; here a nominee's window is one week, so the push has to be concentrated among teammates, classmates and family while the poll is open. It also means the program's confirmed history describes seasons of weekly ballots rather than single standalone contests, and every week's result is its own complete outcome.

Strengthening support during a weekly window

Support in a weekly fan vote comes down to turning out a small community fast. The one-vote-per-day rule means a nominee's backers can multiply their impact simply by returning every day the ballot is open, and by asking teammates, parents and classmates to do the same. A link posted where the school community already gathers, a team group chat or a parent page, is worth more than a public plea nobody sees, because the window closes within the week.

MileSplit SC has not published a statement on voting software, automated votes or outside vote services, so a supporter weighing outside help has no organizer guidance to lean on. What is on the page is the ballot's own design: a plain public vote with a daily frequency rule and results shown openly as percentages. For a fuller treatment of methods that work in fan-voted contests, see how to get more votes online, and for award-style ballots generally see buy award votes.