South Dakota High School Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Argus Leader South Dakota High School Athlete of the Week?

The Argus Leader Athlete of the Week is a statewide free fan vote published at argusleader.com each week of the South Dakota High School Activities Association (SDHSAA) sports calendar. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader — a Gannett regional daily in the USA TODAY Network — selects nominees drawn from Class AA, A, and B programmes across every corner of South Dakota, from the Sioux Falls metro to Rapid City and from Aberdeen to Yankton. ArgusLeader.com readers then decide the winner by popular vote, with the poll closing each Friday at 11:59 p.m.

• Administered by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, South Dakota's largest daily newspaper and digital news platform (Gannett / USA TODAY Network).
• Covers all three SDHSAA athletic seasons — fall, winter, and spring — and all sanctioned sports within each season.
• Open to athletes from SDHSAA Class AA, Class A, and Class B schools, meaning the ballot can include both large Sioux Falls metro schools and smaller rural programmes.
• Voting is free at argusleader.com — no Argus Leader subscription, no account, no personal data required.
• The poll closes every Friday at 11:59 p.m., with a new ballot opening the following week once nominees are confirmed.
• Winners are announced on argusleader.com and across the Argus Leader's social media channels; recognition appears in the paper's prep sports coverage.

A win earns a named, searchable mention in the Argus Leader — the dominant statewide prep sports outlet — which frequently surfaces in recruiting profiles and college coach correspondence across the Great Plains region.

Which South Dakota schools compete in this poll?

The Argus Leader draws nominees from SDHSAA-member schools across all three classification tiers. Class AA schools — the largest by enrollment — produce the most frequent nominees given their larger athletic programmes and booster networks, but Class A and B athletes appear regularly, especially during state championship weeks when small-school performances stand out. The table below covers the 15 schools most commonly represented in Class AA, the classification covering South Dakota's largest communities.

The Sioux Falls metro generates the heaviest vote totals in this poll. Four Class AA schools — Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, and O'Gorman — are within the same city, and their combined alumni and parent communities represent a concentrated social-media network that few rural programmes can match in raw voter count. Harrisburg and Brandon Valley, fast-growing suburban communities just south and west of Sioux Falls, add further depth to the eastern SD bloc.

Rapid City Stevens and Rapid City Central provide the strongest western competition. The two schools share a city of roughly 80,000 and have produced consistent SDHSAA state champions in football, basketball, and track. Aberdeen Central anchors the northeast, while Pierre and Mitchell represent the rural central corridor. Tea Area, despite being a small community, competes as a Class AA school due to enrollment thresholds and has become a regular source of nominees in recent years.

Class A and B athletes on the ballot

While Class AA programmes dominate the nominee pool, the Argus Leader regularly includes Class A and B athletes — particularly during SDHSAA state tournament weeks in November (football), March (basketball/wrestling), and May (track and field). A rural Class B athlete who posts a standout state-meet performance can appear alongside Class AA competitors on the same ballot, making the poll a genuinely statewide recognition tool rather than a Sioux Falls metro feature.

How does the Argus Leader Athlete of the Week vote work?

The poll is hosted inside the High School Sports section at argusleader.com and requires no subscription, account, or personal data to participate. The Gannett poll widget lists each nominee with their name, school, sport, and a brief performance note; readers click to vote and can see the live running tally throughout the window. For a plain-language primer on how online newspaper fan polls function in general, see our online contest voting guide.

Voting closes each Friday at 11:59 p.m. Central Time. The poll window typically opens mid-week after the Argus Leader sports desk reviews weekend and early-week results and confirms the nominee list. Once live, the ballot is accessible from any web browser — desktop, mobile, or tablet — and from outside South Dakota, meaning family members and supporters in other states can vote just as easily as local readers.

The Gannett widget enforces a device-based cap, consistent with the platform's standard used across all USA TODAY Network Athlete of the Week polls. Returning to the same poll page on a different device — a phone versus a laptop, for example — allows an additional vote. The hourly or session cap resets on the same device after a cooldown period.

How is the winner selected, and what do they receive?

The Argus Leader Athlete of the Week winner is determined entirely by reader vote count — whichever nominee has the most votes when the Friday-night poll closes is named that week's winner. The sports desk controls only the nomination stage, not the outcome. There is no editorial panel score, no performance-weighting formula, and no tie-break mechanism beyond raw vote total.

1. Nomination: coaches, parents, athletic directors, and school contacts submit performance highlights to the Argus Leader sports desk via email or the contact method listed on the active poll page, typically covering Saturday through Tuesday results.
2. Ballot curation: the Argus Leader sports staff selects nominees from submissions by editorial judgement — notable performances across any SDHSAA sport are eligible; not every submission makes the ballot.
3. Open poll: the ballot goes live at argusleader.com mid-week, with the close time of Friday 11:59 p.m. displayed on the widget; any reader can vote freely throughout the window.
4. Announcement: the winner is published on argusleader.com and the Argus Leader's social channels after the poll closes; recognition appears in the paper's prep sports coverage that week.

There is no cash prize or physical award — the value is a published, branded mention in South Dakota's largest newspaper, which is indexed by search engines and frequently found by college coaches and recruiters searching a prospect's name. For athletes at smaller Class A or B schools who lack regional media coverage, an Argus Leader Athlete of the Week win can be one of the few externally searchable credentials on their recruiting profile.

Building votes for your South Dakota Athlete of the Week nominee

South Dakota's geography shapes how vote campaigns actually work here. The state has one dominant metro (Sioux Falls) with four competing AA schools, a secondary city (Rapid City) with two AA schools, and then a spread of smaller communities where tight-knit local networks — agriculture families, church communities, small-town social media groups — can mobilise quickly when a local athlete is on the ballot. The tactics that work best reflect that structure.

Two South Dakota-specific patterns stand out. First, Sioux Falls O'Gorman benefits from a concentrated Catholic community network — alumni, parish contacts, and the broader Sioux Falls Catholic school circle — that mirrors how high-performing GCL schools operate in Cincinnati. Second, rural Class A and B programmes often outperform larger schools on a per-capita vote basis because their entire town treats the recognition as community news; a single share by the local grocery store owner or school principal in a town of 800 reaches nearly the full voting-age population.

For a detailed walkthrough of general online poll vote-building strategy, visit our how-to guides. The South Dakota-specific edge is knowing that the Sioux Falls metro splits its energy across four AA schools — when only one of them has a nominee in a given week, that school's network has no competition from within the city and typically dominates the poll.

When organic networks have been fully activated and the nominee is still behind, some families and booster clubs use a paid real-voter promotion service. If you take that route, use a service that delivers paced votes matched to the poll's cooldown mechanics — rapid bulk injections that ignore the cap window get flagged and removed. Our sports fan poll votes service is built around this paced, cap-matched model.

Contest rules and the buy-votes question

The Argus Leader Athlete of the Week is a reader-engagement fan poll — there is no cash prize, no formal sweepstakes structure, and no South Dakota prize-promotion statute governing it. The applicable restrictions come from the Gannett poll platform's technical terms, which generally prohibit automated scripts and bot traffic that circumvent the device cap. For a comprehensive, balanced guide to legality across online polls, see our full buy-votes guide.

The meaningful practical line in polls like this one falls between two structurally different activities:

• Automated scripts or bots — rapid-fire requests ignoring the device cooldown, often from data-centre IP ranges. These violate standard Gannett platform terms, produce detectable traffic patterns, and result in vote removal.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people voting within the cap from their own devices and connections, reached through a service rather than a booster email. Structurally this is equivalent to a more efficient distribution of the same "go vote" message.

Whether that distinction satisfies the spirit of this specific poll's terms is a judgement for each athlete, family, and booster to make after reviewing the current official page. The risk in a newspaper fan poll with no prize is reputational — community perception — rather than legal.

When does Argus Leader Athlete of the Week voting open and close?

The Argus Leader Athlete of the Week poll runs throughout all three SDHSAA-recognised athletic seasons. Voting closes every Friday at 11:59 p.m., with each new ballot opening mid-week after the sports desk reviews the previous weekend's results and confirms nominees. The table below maps the programme to the SDHSAA sports calendar as it typically runs in South Dakota.

The voting window within each week is consistent: polls open mid-week after the sports desk reviews Monday and Tuesday results, then close Friday at 11:59 p.m. The exact open time varies — always check argusleader.com directly rather than assuming a fixed day, particularly around SDHSAA tournament weeks and holiday schedules when the Argus Leader may adjust the nomination and publishing timeline.

Fall is the most competitive season. October weeks featuring Sioux Falls inter-city football matchups — Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, and O'Gorman all competing simultaneously — produce the year's highest vote totals as four large community networks all have skin in the game simultaneously. Spring track weeks, particularly following the state meet at Howard Wood Field in Sioux Falls, can be decided with a few hundred votes when booster networks are less mobilised mid-week.

For context on other South Dakota online voting contests and recognition polls, see our South Dakota contest hub. For the full US contest directory, visit the USA contest guide index.