News Tribune Girls Athlete of the Week (Tacoma): How Voting Works & How to Win

A separate ballot, not a subset of the regular poll

Two Tacoma News Tribune polls exist under similar-sounding names, and mixing them up is the easiest way to miss a deadline. One is the paper's combined Athlete of the Week ballot, covering boys and girls together. The other is this one: a Girls Athlete of the Week poll built entirely from coach nominations, running on its own schedule at thenewstribune.com/sports/high-school/.

The coach-nomination structure is what sets it apart. A parent can't email the sports desk directly and get an athlete added. A teammate posting on social media doesn't put anyone on the ballot. The nomination has to come from the coach, covering basketball, soccer, track, volleyball, or swimming depending on the season, confirmed across multiple 2025 cycles from January through April. That's a filter most fan-vote polls don't apply.

Both News Tribune ballots share a Wednesday noon close. That's a coincidence of scheduling, not a shared countdown; they run as independent polls with independent nominee fields. An athlete could appear on the combined ballot, the girls ballot, both, or neither in the same week, and nothing about one poll's result touches the other's.

Five sports, one coach-driven pipeline

Basketball, soccer, track, volleyball, swimming. Confirmed cycles run from winter basketball through spring track and field, tracking whichever of the five sports has girls competing that week. A program without a coach willing to send an email doesn't get a nominee on the ballot, no matter how strong the athlete's season looks in the box score.

That pipeline reshapes who ends up competing for votes. Bellarmine Prep and Kennedy Catholic run structured athletic departments with staff used to media outreach, the kind of program where a coach sending a nomination email is routine. A smaller public program in Bethel or Sumner might have a coach juggling three other jobs who simply doesn't think to submit the paperwork some week, even with a standout performance on record. The gap isn't about talent. It's about which coaching staffs treat a nomination email as part of the job.

Once an athlete clears that first hurdle, the ballot becomes a normal South Sound turnout contest, the same Pierce and Thurston County map that shows up across the region's other polls: Tacoma Public Schools alongside Puyallup, Graham-Kapowsin, Gig Harbor, Tahoma, and programs as far south as Tumwater and Black Hills. Getting nominated and getting votes are two separate jobs, and the first one belongs entirely to a coach. The general approach to building turnout for an online contest still applies once a name is actually on the ballot.

Where this fits among the other South Sound and Washington polls

The combined Tacoma News Tribune Athlete of the Week is the closest sibling here, same paper, same Wednesday noon close, entirely separate ballot and nominee pool. Statewide, Washington's SI/SBLive Athlete of the Week poll runs on a different Monday close and pulls from every WIAA classification in the state, a broader field than this South Sound-only ballot covers.

For a coach weighing whether to bother with the nomination email, the case is straightforward: this is one of the only girls-specific fan-vote channels covering Pierce and Thurston County sports on a weekly basis. A standout week in girls soccer or track that might otherwise go unnoticed outside a school newsletter gets a public ballot and a real vote count once a coach sends the nomination in.

The full Washington contest hub lists every active poll in the state, part of the broader USA contest directory. General mechanics for building real turnout toward a published deadline are covered in the online vote-buying guide.