The Herald Prep Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What The Herald Prep Athlete of the Week is and who runs it

Run by The Herald, the daily newspaper whose newsroom publishes heraldnet.com, The Herald Prep Athlete of the Week invites readers to vote for Washington high school athletes. Crowdsignal's poll.fm service hosts every ballot in the series, and the current one lives at poll.fm/17450786. The award belongs to the sport vertical and covers prep athletics across the paper's Washington coverage area; no single host city is attached to the series, so it is best described as a state-level prep honor with a local newspaper's reader base behind it.

A recent slate shows the shape of a typical week: football nominees from Monroe, Lake Stevens and Stanwood appeared alongside a Glacier Peak girls soccer nominee. Each ballot therefore mixes sports and genders on one list, and the reader's job is simply to pick a favorite and vote.

The dated record for the Herald's prep athlete series

Confirmed seasons of The Herald Prep Athlete of the Week run from 2018 through 2026, nine in all, gathered from weekly ballots across that span. That makes this one of the longer continuous prep vote series among Washington newspaper polls.

The live ballot right now is the Aug. 30-Sept. 5 window, carried on poll 17450786. The organizer's own ballot language states that voting closes at midnight Sunday, and a separate ballot page states that nominees must be submitted by 9 a.m. Monday, which is how one weekly cycle hands off to the next. The following window on the calendar is Sept. 6-12.

One fact the organizer has not printed in advance is the category roster for future weeks, meaning which sports will appear on a given slate; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. No per-reader vote limit is addressed on the ballot page either, so repeat support should follow whatever the live form instructs.

How a supporter votes on the Herald's prep ballot today

Voting asks little of the reader. To take part, open this week's poll.fm ballot, read the nominee list, select one athlete and submit the vote. No nomination step is required from ordinary readers: nominees are gathered separately, with submissions due by 9 a.m. Monday, and the reader vote then runs until midnight Sunday.

Because the slate changes weekly, anyone hoping to back a particular athlete needs to act inside that athlete's own window. A vote cast for last week's nominee does not carry into the next ballot, since each window is a separate poll with its own list.

Two practical points follow from the ballot itself. First, the poll.fm form names no account requirement, so the vote action is presented directly with the list. Second, The Herald has not printed a rule on how many times one reader may vote in a weekly window, so anyone planning repeat support should read the instructions on the live form rather than assume a limit either way.

How this ballot sits beside its Washington neighbours

Washington has a busy field of reader-voted prep and sports awards, and this page's siblings show the range. The Tacoma News Tribune Athlete of the Week is the closest structural cousin, a weekly newspaper ballot in the same sport vertical, while the News Tribune Girls Athlete of the Week (Tacoma) narrows the same weekly format to female athletes.

Other neighbours differ in scope. The Seattle Sports Star of the Year is a seasonal honor rather than a weekly poll, and the VarsityWA Basketball Athlete of the Week and VarsityWA Football Athlete of the Week are single-sport ballots under the VarsityWA banner. A broader Washington High School Football Player of the Week ballot also runs at state level.

What separates The Herald's entry is its publisher and its mix: one newspaper's coverage area, one combined slate spanning several sports each week, and a Monday-to-Sunday rhythm that repeats across a nine season run from 2018 through 2026.

Strengthening support inside a Monday-to-Sunday window

The decisive feature of this program is its pace. Each window is roughly a week long, the organizer states that voting closes at midnight Sunday, and the next slate is set once nominee submissions close at 9 a.m. Monday. A supporter backing a Monroe, Lake Stevens, Glacier Peak or Stanwood nominee therefore has one short window, not a month-long campaign, and the first days after the Monday slate posts are the cheapest time to gather votes.

Team channels are the natural amplifier here: a weekly high school ballot is shared through rosters, booster groups and school social accounts far more naturally than a once-a-year award. For tactics that suit a short public window, see how to get more votes online, and for what the rules picture looks like when outside help enters a public poll, see is buying votes legal.