The Caller-Times High School Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Caller-Times Athlete of the Week vote is

The Caller-Times High School Athlete of the Week, a weekly award ballot from the Caller-Times newspaper in Texas, recognises high school athletes across the sports its readers follow. Unlike a season-end honour such as Dave Campbell's Texas Football Quarterback of the Year, this programme names a new set of nominees every week during the school year, and the winner is decided entirely by public vote, with no panel involved.

Crowdsignal, operating at poll.fm, carries the voting, the same balloting platform behind a number of newspaper athlete-of-the-week series. The ballot link for this programme is https://poll.fm/16119110, which carries the newest ballot in the weekly series. The current page shows the poll as closed, together with the final percentage each nominee reached, which is how every finished week in the series is presented.

The ballot draws nominees from Texas high school programmes. Schools named on recent ballots include Orange Grove, Sinton, Agua Dulce, Calallen, Alice and Flour Bluff, appearing across football and volleyball among other sports. The programme belongs to the sport vertical and is one of several Texas high school votes covered on this site.

The dated history of the Caller-Times weekly ballot

The programme has a long confirmed history for a weekly series: seasons are confirmed for every year from 2019 through 2025, seven straight, and the next season is expected in 2026. That span makes it one of the longer-running high school athlete votes among the Texas programmes covered here, older as a confirmed series than the ballots from DFW Star Local Media and other newer entrants.

Within each season the rhythm is fixed and weekly. Voting takes place from Tuesday to Friday, concluding at 2 p.m. every Friday, so each ballot lives for roughly four days. Nominations must be submitted by 5 p.m. on Monday, sent by email to [email protected], through a message to the Caller-Times on Facebook, or on X @CallerSports. The season itself spans September through May, matching the Texas high school sports calendar.

What the newspaper has not published is a roster of award categories beyond the weekly athlete honour, and no ceiling on repeat voting and no eligibility text appears with the ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The exact calendar dates of each upcoming weekly ballot are likewise not posted ahead of the week, so supporters learn the nominee list only when the new ballot opens on Tuesday.

How a supporter votes on the Caller-Times ballot today

Nothing about this ballot is complicated. A supporter loads the current poll.fm address, reads the weekly nominee list, selects one athlete, and presses the vote button. No written entry, photo or essay is involved; the entire action is a single selection on a single-choice poll. Because the link serves the newest ballot of the series, arriving midweek puts a supporter straight onto the live vote.

Timing matters more than on most ballots. The window opens Tuesday and shuts at 2 p.m. Friday, so a vote cast Saturday lands on a closed poll showing final percentages. The most recent ballot, poll 16119110, shows exactly that state: the poll closed, with the leading football nominee having drawn 43 percent of the vote and the full final shares listed beside each nominee's school and sport.

Between Friday afternoon and the next Tuesday opening there is nothing to vote on, which is why weekly supporters treat Tuesday as the day to check the Caller-Times sports section. The newspaper does not publish next week's ballot date or nominee list in advance, and no separate nomination form is hosted on poll.fm; nominations go to the sports desk by the Monday 5 p.m. deadline through the email, Facebook and X channels named above.

How this ballot sits beside its Texas neighbours

Texas has an unusually deep bench of high school athlete votes, and this one stands apart from its neighbours in publisher, geography and cadence. The Austin American-Statesman Athlete of the Week is a different newspaper's series aimed at the Austin market, while this ballot is the Caller-Times' own weekly honour drawing nominees from schools such as Orange Grove, Sinton, Agua Dulce, Calallen, Alice and Flour Bluff.

Football-only programmes form another neighbouring group. The CenTex High School Football Player of the Week, the Dallas / North Texas High School Football Player of the Week and the East Texas High School Football Player of the Week each restrict nominees to football players in their own regions. The Caller-Times ballot is broader, mixing football and volleyball nominees on the same weekly poll, and its season stretches September through May rather than following only the football calendar.

The DFW Star Local Media High School Athlete of the Week is the closest structural cousin, a weekly all-sports athlete vote from a publisher group, but it answers to a different newsroom and a different market. A supporter following Texas high school sports can hold standing in several of these ballots at once, since each reports to its own publisher and keeps its own weekly schedule.

Strengthening support within the Caller-Times weekly window

This ballot rewards early movement more than most, because the window is only Tuesday to Friday with a 2 p.m. Friday close. A nominee's school community that shares the poll.fm link on Tuesday morning has the full four-day window to gather votes, while the same link shared Thursday night reaches only a fraction of the available time. Nominations close at 5 p.m. Monday, so the people around a nominee also know the week is coming before the ballot even opens.

The Caller-Times has not published any statement on outside help or purchased votes for this poll, so no organiser rule can be quoted either way here. What is certain is the mechanic: one selection per ballot visit on a Crowdsignal poll, a fresh ballot every Tuesday, and a final percentage display once the poll closes. Any supporter weighing a purchased-vote option should read the general service page at buy award votes and weigh it against the organiser's silence on the subject.

Because the series is weekly rather than a single season-end vote, momentum compounds differently: a school that rallies reliably every Tuesday builds a habit its supporters repeat across the whole September-to-May season, which no one-week push can replace.