VarsityWA Football Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Friday noon — the deadline most supporters miss

The most important thing about VarsityWA's Football Athlete of the Week poll is not who is nominated. It is when the ballot closes. Todd Milles posts the weekly vote typically on Monday after the weekend's results are in, and it closes Friday at noon Pacific. That is not the standard Washington fan-vote timeline — the SI statewide poll closes the following Monday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific, nearly four days later.

In practice, a VarsityWA campaign runs Tuesday through Thursday. By the time the Friday morning crowd is checking their phones, the window is hours from closing. Supporters who assume they have a long weekend to rally their community — the way they would for the SI poll — are working with a very different calendar and often find out after the fact. The weekly VarsityWA race is decided before most state fan-vote audiences assume it has even started.

That compressed window also changes what kind of mobilization works. A multi-day social media campaign, the kind that builds slowly through Friday and Saturday and crests Sunday, has no room here. What moves the VarsityWA needle is early activation: the group chat that goes out Monday night, the booster post that runs Tuesday, the push that reaches its audience before Wednesday. A community that organizes on Monday is two days ahead of one that waits for the weekend.

What four confirmed weeks reveal about the poll's character

Only four VarsityWA weekly winners are on the confirmed public record for 2025, and each one says something specific about how this ballot works.

Week 1 went to Blake Moser of Lake Stevens on a game-winning fifteen-yard touchdown pass with under a second left against Sumner — a 31–28 win on a moment that resonated across Washington football Twitter before the article was even posted. That kind of narrative hook concentrates votes fast.

Week 7 went to Gage Williams of Chiawana in Pasco. Williams won on the reader vote over nominees from western Washington, Puget Sound programs included. Chiawana is a 4A school in the Tri-Cities area of eastern Washington — a long drive from Seattle — and its community organized effectively enough to win a statewide ballot. Geography is not a barrier on a Substack poll; turnout is.

Week 8 went to Ta'a Malu of Annie Wright, a lineman. The confirmed stat line: a tackle for loss, two quarterback hurries, a fumble recovery, three pancake blocks, in a 20–0 win over Lynnwood. Annie Wright is a small private school in Tacoma with a co-ed football program. Malu's University of Washington commitment gave him a recognizable name beyond the immediate school community, and on a ten-nominee ballot a small, motivated voter pool can clear the field — as it did here, against skill-position nominees who typically draw more casual votes.

Week 12 went to Moser again: 342 passing yards and five touchdowns, 82 rushing yards and two more scores, in a 76–41 state quarterfinal over Moses Lake. That is a different kind of win than Week 1 — not a narrative moment but a statistical statement at the highest-stakes moment of the season, when Lake Stevens fans were already engaged and motivated. Winning twice on the same ten-nominee ballot in the same season is the clearest evidence in the record that a large, organized fan base with a specific player's narrative advantage can return to the poll and win again.

Ten nominees, all six classes — what that field actually looks like

VarsityWA holds the ballot to ten nominees per week. That is half the size of the SI statewide ballot, which ran twenty names in its confirmed Week 7 field. The practical effect is that no nominee is buried: all ten players are visible without scrolling past a long list, and a vote for any of them is a deliberate choice.

All six WIAA classifications — from 4A (enrollment above 1,201) down to 1B (enrollment below 104) — share the same ballot. The Week 7 field ranged from Chiawana (4A, Tri-Cities) to Tonasket (1B, Okanogan County, near the Canadian border). A school of nine hundred and one of sixty can both appear on the same ten-name list. The Substack poll counts reader votes, not enrollment.

That asymmetry is the defining structural fact for campaign planning. A 4A school with 2,000 students and a five-percent turnout rate produces 100 votes. A 1B school with 80 students and a sixty-percent turnout rate produces 48 — not 100, but not zero either. The ten-name concentrated field means those 48 votes are meaningful. On a twenty-name ballot they would be diluted. On a ten-name ballot they can be the margin.

The Washington state fan-vote guide collects the other polls running in Washington during the fall season; the full national directory is at /usa/. The how-to guide covers the weekly cadence for fan-vote campaigns — including why the early days of a short-window ballot matter more than the final hours.