Cellcom Press-Gazette High School Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What this ballot is, and how it differs from its Wisconsin neighbours

Among the athlete-of-the-week ballots that cover Wisconsin high school sports, this one belongs to the Green Bay Press-Gazette rather than to any of the state's other daily papers. The program carries the Cellcom name as its title sponsor, and the publisher stages each round as a reader-driven poll on Crowdsignal, the balloting service behind poll.fm. The voting address for the current ballot is https://poll.fm/15401709.

The market it serves is the Green Bay publication's high school sports coverage area. Recent ballots have drawn nominees from schools in Marinette, Wrightstown, De Pere, Denmark, Pulaski and Seymour, which gives the program a footprint stretching well beyond Green Bay itself. That reach is part of what separates it from the Appleton Post-Crescent Cellcom Athlete of the Week, a similarly named franchise serving Appleton's own market, and from the Green Bay Press-Gazette Cellcom Athlete of the Week, which is listed separately with a distinct ballot and route of its own.

The vertical is sport, the balloting is open to any reader, and the contest type is an award whose winner comes entirely from reader picks. Multiple editions are confirmed, which places the program among the established annual athlete-of-the-week series in the state rather than among the newer launches. The table below gathers the identifying facts a reader needs first.

The dated history of the program, and what the publisher leaves unpublished

The edition years confirmed for this program are 2023, 2024 and 2025, and the recurrence is annual: the publisher stages the series each school year rather than as a one-off. Within a season the program runs as a weekly sequence of ballots. The season stretches from October through April, matching the high school sports calendar across fall, winter and early spring.

The ballot currently sitting at the voting address is marked closed. Its close was dated precisely: in the publisher's own wording, voting for the high school athlete of the week was open until 3 p.m. on Saturday, January 31. That round's final tally showed the leading nominee at 48 percent with 414 votes, and the nearest challenger at 23 percent with 202 votes.

As for what is missing, the publisher has not printed when the next weekly round opens after the January 31 close, nor the ceiling on votes from a single supporter; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Nomination timing is likewise absent from what the publisher posts alongside the vote, so a school or family hoping to see an athlete nominated has no published calendar to work from either.

How a supporter casts a vote on the live ballot

Casting a pick takes place on the Crowdsignal ballot behind the poll.fm address. A supporter opens the voting address, https://poll.fm/15401709, and finds the round's nominees listed as poll answers: high school athletes identified by name and school, drawn from the schools the paper covers. The supporter selects one nominee and submits the poll, and the running tally updates as votes arrive.

That is the whole mechanic on the ballot itself. The voting page shows only the poll, with no bracket and no multi-category slate to work through; each round asks for a single choice among the listed athletes. Because each round is weekly and short, the timing of a pick matters more than on a month-long ballot: support delivered after a round's close simply waits for the next one.

The voting page prints no rule about repeat visits, logins or per-device limits, and the publisher posts no eligibility text alongside the vote. Anyone hoping to vote several times within one round has nothing published to go on in either direction. The practical reading is that the poll behaves as a standard Crowdsignal public vote: one selection per submission, with results shown as percentages and raw counts once the round ends.

Where this program sits among Wisconsin's other athlete-of-the-week votes

This ballot does not stand alone in Wisconsin. The state carries a cluster of publisher-run athlete-of-the-week votes, and each is its own program answering to a separate organizer, ballot and page here. The closest names are easy to confuse with this one. The Green Bay Press-Gazette Cellcom Athlete of the Week shares the publisher and the sponsor but is listed separately, and the Appleton Post-Crescent Cellcom Athlete of the Week carries the same sponsor into a different publisher's market.

Beyond those, the Bound Wisconsin Basketball Player of the Week narrows to a single sport, while the La Crosse Tribune Supernova Athlete of the Week, the Racine Journal Times Athlete of the Week (Supernova) and the Oshkosh / Fond du Lac Athlete of the Week each tie their rounds to a different city's paper.

What makes this program distinct within that set is the combination of the Green Bay Press-Gazette masthead, the Cellcom title sponsorship and a coverage area whose recent ballots reached schools well beyond the city limits. A supporter following Wisconsin high school sports across publishers will meet several of these ballots in one season, and the votes cast on one never carry over to another.

Strengthening support for a nominee inside a weekly window

Because each round closes quickly, support for a nominee has to arrive inside a window of days, not weeks. The actions that fit that rhythm are simple: share the poll.fm ballot link directly with families and teammates, post it where the school community already gathers, and ask for a pick while the round is still open. The publisher posts no statement on purchased or automated support beside its vote, which leaves the organizer's own rules as the first stop before weighing outside help. The general guidance in our votes guide at how to get more votes online works through that territory. For the broader question of paid support for awards like this one, see buy award votes. Whatever route a supporter takes, the round's own close date governs the outcome: a vote that lands after the poll closes helps no nominee.