Vermont Varsity Insider Boys Athlete of the Week (Fall Football): How Voting Works & How to Win

Why the fall ballot reads differently than the rest of the Vermont boys poll

Football only runs one season. That single fact reshapes the whole Vermont Varsity Insider boys ballot for about ten weeks a year. Outside of fall, the boys poll pulls nominees from basketball, hockey, skiing, baseball, and track — a rotating cast across four divisions and a dozen different sports. Once August arrives, the fall ballot narrows to one sport and a smaller, more predictable set of programs: VPA football, Divisions I through IV, full stop.

St. Johnsbury Academy, Burlington High School, Essex High School, and Middlebury Union High School are the names that keep showing up. Each sits in a different corner of the state: the Northeast Kingdom, Chittenden County, Essex Junction, and Addison County, and each runs a football program with enough weekly output to land a nominee more often than a school fielding a smaller roster. That geographic spread matters more here than it does on the general boys ballot, because a fall voter isn't choosing among a dozen sports; they're choosing among four or five football programs whose fans already know each other's mascots.

St. Johnsbury draws day and boarding students from across the Northeast Kingdom, which gives its football program a wider first-day reach than its hometown's population alone would suggest. Burlington and Essex sit close enough to share a media market and, some weeks, a schedule. Middlebury pulls from Addison County's smaller towns, a different kind of network than the other three but no less organized once a ballot goes live. For how this fits into the rest of Vermont's fan-vote landscape, the year-round boys Athlete of the Week guide covers the winter and spring windows this fall ballot doesn't touch.

What the four-division football structure actually means for a fall nominee

Divisions I through IV. That's the full scope, and it's one tier shallower than VPA basketball's split but wide enough that a Division IV program with a few dozen players can land a nominee on the same weekly ballot as a Division I school with three times the roster size. Enrollment sorts teams into a division. It doesn't sort who wins a Tuesday-to-Wednesday fan vote.

What that division spread means in practice: a Division III or Division IV program from a town without St. Johnsbury's boarding-school reach isn't shut out of the fall ballot just because its roster is thinner. It shows up when its football team plays well enough for a nomination. The vote count afterward is a separate contest, decided by who clicks, not by class size. Whether a small-school nominee has actually outpolled one of the four recurring names isn't part of the public record here; Burlington Free Press doesn't keep an archived leaderboard past the current week. The Vermont contest hub lists the rest of the state's active fan votes if the football window isn't what a reader is searching for.

How the fall football window runs, week to week

The mechanics carry over from the rest of the franchise. Same publisher, same Gannett widget, same free access; the only thing that changes for the fall ballot is the sport feeding it. A new article goes up on burlingtonfreepress.com's High School Sports page during the football season, the poll widget sits inside it, and readers pick a nominee with one click. No email, no login, and the running total is visible the moment a vote lands.

Because football is a once-a-week sport by rule (Friday or Saturday night, rarely more), the fall ballot has a rhythm the winter basketball window doesn't share. A strong Friday performance becomes Monday's nomination pool, and the vote closes a few days later. Exact close timing shifts by week; checking the live article rather than assuming a fixed day is the safer habit, since Gannett's publishing schedule moves around bye weeks and playoff scheduling.

The uncapped widget means one household with three devices, each voting repeatedly through the window, adds up. So does a booster list of two hundred families who each vote once. Neither approach is against the rules; the difference is just how fast the total climbs and how much coordination it takes to sustain it across several days rather than one evening.

Building fall support around the four recurring programs

St. Johnsbury's advantage in a fall push isn't raw hometown size — it's the boarding-school alumni network, spread well past the Northeast Kingdom, that can be reached with a single email blast. Burlington and Essex sit close enough that a shared media market means local coverage of one program's win often reaches the other town's fans too, which cuts both ways when the two schools land nominees in the same week. Middlebury runs on a tighter, more localized network (Addison County families who already follow the team closely rather than a wide alumni base), and that kind of network moves fast once a link starts circulating, even if it tops out sooner.

None of the four programs wins by default. A Division IV school outside this recurring group, with a booster list a fraction of the size, has structurally the same shot at a strong showing if its network reaches the poll early and returns through the window; the uncapped widget rewards speed and reach over program size. What's confirmed is only the pattern of which schools tend to land nominees in the fall, not which one wins any specific week.

Once a program's organic reach runs dry before the window closes, some boosters bring in paid vote support to widen the pool of real voters. Fan poll vote support spreads delivery out so it reads like ordinary traffic rather than a spike, a meaningful distinction on an uncapped widget, since Gannett's terms target scripted, bot-driven submissions rather than real supporters who found the ballot through an outside push. Checking the live poll page before hiring any outside service beats assuming last season's terms still hold, since Gannett updates them from time to time.

Getting a football nominee onto the fall ballot

The Burlington Free Press sports desk builds each week's fall ballot from submissions, typically a coach, a parent, or a school's athletic contact flagging a standout performance. A submission with the athlete's school, position, game date, stat line, and opponent gives the desk what it needs without a follow-up email. A bare name with no context is the kind of submission that gets passed over when the desk is weighing a full week of football across four divisions.

Editorial judgment decides the final field, and not every strong Friday performance makes the cut. Once the ballot posts, the fall football window runs on the same short timeline as the rest of the franchise — vote, share, and check back before the article's close.

There's no cash prize attached to a fall win. The value is a dated, searchable Gannett credit that a Division III or Division IV athlete, in particular, might not otherwise pick up outside their hometown paper. General background on how ballots like this one work across the country lives at the online contest voting guide, and the legality overview covers how the practice is treated across different contest types. For everything else happening in Vermont right now, the Vermont contest hub has the full slate, and the national fan-vote index lines this fall ballot up against the Gannett and SBLive football polls other states run.