Caledonian-Record Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

A newspaper poll that crosses a state line every single week

Most small-town Athlete of the Week polls stop at a state border. The Caledonian-Record's doesn't. St. Johnsbury, Vermont is the paper's home base, but its actual readership sprawls across the Connecticut River into New Hampshire. So the weekly ballot pulls nominees from both sides at once. Same poll, same week, two states.

That's unusual. Structurally unusual, not just geographically. It means a St. Johnsbury Academy standout and a North Country, New Hampshire standout compete on identical footing, judged by one shared readership rather than two separate state athletic bodies. And it happens twice weekly, because boys and girls get their own ballots rather than one combined list, confirmed running every week of the 2025-26 season. Vermont's broader fan-vote landscape has plenty of single-state polls; this isn't one of them. For a general primer on how fan-vote contests like this one are typically structured, see how online voting contests work.

Seven Vermont schools, one very rural map

On the Vermont side, the nominee pool comes almost entirely from the Northeast Kingdom, the state's emptiest corner. Caledonia and Orleans counties, mostly. St. Johnsbury Academy, Lyndon Institute, and Danville High School anchor Caledonia; Lake Region, North Country Union, and Hazen Union sit in Orleans; Blue Mountain straddles the county line. Seven schools. No single dense town holding them together.

What that geography means in practice: a nominee's support base isn't sitting in one zip code waiting to be tapped. It's scattered across small towns connected by long drives and a shared school bus route more than a shared downtown. That changes how word travels compared to a poll built around one city. For a statewide alternative that isn't limited to this one region, the Vermont High School Athlete of the Week poll covers the whole state rather than just the Kingdom.

New Hampshire's North Country: the other half of the ballot

Cross the Connecticut River and the same ballot keeps going. New Hampshire's North Country supplies nominees every week, sitting alongside the Vermont Northeast Kingdom names on one program rather than two separate ones. Most newspaper athlete polls answer to a single state's school association. This one doesn't have to, because the Caledonian-Record's circulation was never bounded by a state line in the first place, it follows the river valley, not the map.

A useful read before organizing any push: is this week's field weighted toward Vermont, or toward New Hampshire? That balance shifts week to week and changes how wide a campaign needs to reach. Fans tracking more than one Vermont recognition program in parallel might also want the Vermont High School Player of the Year honor, which runs once per season rather than weekly.

One more distinction worth naming plainly: this is not the Vermont Varsity Insider poll. That one is run statewide by the Burlington Free Press and covers all VPA member schools. The Caledonian-Record's version is regional, bi-state, and answers to nobody but its own newsroom, two programs, two organisers, two different maps.

Running a campaign across two states and seven small towns

A single-city poll rewards concentration: flood one group chat, one Facebook page, done. This ballot doesn't work that way. Because the field is rural and split across a state line, the outreach that actually moves a result starts at the nominee's own school (classmates, team parents, the town's community page) and then radiates outward to whichever side of the river has the lighter turnout that week. Browse the full USA fan-vote directory to see how other regional papers structure comparable ballots.

Practical detail that trips people up: specify boys or girls when sharing the link, since both run simultaneously with separate nominee lists, and a mislabeled share just wastes clicks. Confirm the current week's close time directly on the live ballot at caledonianrecord.com/sports/athlete_of_the_week/ before pushing hard, a small regional paper can adjust its own rules without much notice, and the organiser hasn't published a fixed per-voter cap to plan around (readers weighing whether that kind of gap matters can start with is buying votes safe). Once a school's own network is tapped out, some campaigns turn to fan poll vote packages or broader real vote support as a supplement, not a replacement for the organic push. General mechanics of how these campaigns work are covered in how to get votes for an online contest.