Alaska High School Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Alaska High School Athlete of the Week?

Alaska High School Athlete of the Week polls are published by High School on SI — the prep-sports digital platform of Sports Illustrated, built on the SBLive network — at si.com/high-school/alaska throughout the ASAA sports calendar. The platform covers all 219 ASAA member schools spanning the state's 4A, 3A, 2A, and 1A classifications, from Anchorage metro powerhouses to rural Southwest, Southeast, and Interior Alaska programmes.

• Polls run at si.com/high-school/alaska — free, no account or email required; anyone can vote from any device.
• High School on SI operates in all 50 states; the Alaska edition covers every ASAA-sanctioned sport across three seasonal windows.
• Nominations are submitted by coaches, athletic directors, parents, and readers; the SI editorial team curates each weekly ballot.
• Voting is unlimited manual votes per person — the platform prohibits only automated scripts, macros, and bot traffic.
• Winners are announced on the si.com/high-school/alaska landing page and across SI's social channels, giving Alaska prep athletes national-platform visibility.
• ASAA sanctions 29 educational activities at 219 member schools enrolling more than 35,000 students statewide.

For a prep athlete in Alaska — where most high school sports receive limited national media attention — an SI-published recognition carries genuine recruiting value, surfacing in Google searches that college coaches and recruiters routinely run on prospects.

Which Alaska schools compete in the Athlete of the Week poll?

Every school among ASAA's 219 member institutions is eligible to have an athlete nominated. In practice, the most active nominating communities are concentrated in the Anchorage School District's Cook Inlet Conference schools, the Mat-Su Valley's Railbelt programmes, the Fairbanks Northern Lights Conference, and Southeast Alaska's Southeast Conference. The table below shows the schools most frequently represented.

Alaska's ASAA uses a size-based classification system. The 4A tier covers the largest Anchorage-area schools — South, West, Dimond, Bartlett, Service, East, and Colony — which together serve the state's most concentrated population base. The 3A tier brings in Mat-Su Valley programmes (Wasilla, Palmer, Chugiak) alongside Fairbanks schools (West Valley, Lathrop) and regional hubs like Juneau-Douglas and Kodiak.

Smaller 2A and 1A schools — including Thunder Mountain in Juneau, Seward, Homer, Craig, and dozens of bush-Alaska communities — are fully eligible and have produced notable nominees in cross-country skiing, wrestling, and basketball. The sheer geographic spread of Alaska's ASAA member schools, from Ketchikan in the Southeast Panhandle to Unalaska on the Aleutian Chain, gives this statewide poll a breadth unmatched by any other state-level prep contest in the country.

How does the Alaska Athlete of the Week vote actually work?

The poll lives at si.com/high-school/alaska and operates entirely through the SBLive-powered High School on SI voting widget. No Sports Illustrated subscription, no SBLive account, and no personal data entry are required — any visitor can reach the page and cast a vote immediately.

Unlike some regional newspaper polls that enforce a one-vote-per-hour cap, the High School on SI format allows unlimited manual votes per person — the only restriction is on automated behaviour. SI's stated rules prohibit voting bots, automated scripts, macros, and any software that submits votes faster than a human can. Violations detected by the platform result in vote removal from that nominee's total. For a broader explanation of how online poll voting works mechanically, see our complete guide to online contest voting.

Each nominee's live vote total is displayed on the widget throughout the open window, updating in near-real-time. Supporters can monitor the standings at any point and decide whether to push harder before the Sunday 11:59 pm Pacific close. Results are published the following Monday on the Alaska section of si.com.

What does "unlimited manual votes" mean in practice?

It means every click counts — there is no cooldown period preventing a supporter from voting multiple times in quick succession by hand. A family member spending five minutes voting manually on a phone can accumulate dozens of votes. A well-coordinated campaign that puts the direct poll link in front of hundreds of supporters — each clicking multiple times — can generate vote totals in the thousands from genuine human activity alone.

How is the Alaska High School Athlete of the Week winner chosen?

The outcome is determined entirely by fan vote total. High School on SI's editorial team controls only the nomination stage — selecting which athletes appear on the ballot based on performance submissions. Once the poll opens, no editorial panel can override the result: the highest vote count wins when Sunday's deadline passes.

1. Nomination: coaches, parents, athletic directors, and readers submit performance highlights — stat lines, game context, conference standing — via the nomination form on si.com or by emailing the SI high school team. Submissions typically cover the prior week's competitions.
2. Ballot curation: the SI sports desk reviews submissions and selects nominees by editorial judgement. Not every submission earns a ballot slot; athletes who appear are already acknowledged as having had an exceptional performance week.
3. Open poll: the ballot goes live, usually by Monday or Tuesday, and stays open through Sunday at 11:59 pm Pacific. Live totals are public from the moment voting opens.
4. Winner announced: the athlete with the highest vote count at close is named Alaska High School Athlete of the Week on si.com. The recognition appears on the Alaska state section and is shared across SI's social channels.

Because SI is a national brand, a win is permanently indexed on si.com — an authoritative domain that surfaces in recruiting searches long after the poll closes. That searchability is the primary value for Alaska athletes, many of whom compete in markets that national recruiting services monitor infrequently.

Building vote totals for your Alaska Athlete of the Week nominee

Alaska's unlimited-manual-vote format rewards campaigns that can put a large number of real human supporters in front of the direct poll link. The tactics that work best differ from hourly-cap polls — here, volume of engaged humans and speed of mobilisation matter more than sustained multi-device rotation. For a full strategic breakdown of online contest vote campaigns, read our detailed guide; the Alaska-specific breakdown below covers what actually moves the needle in this state's market.

Two Alaska-specific dynamics shape vote campaigns here. First, Anchorage's concentrated population means ASD school communities — South, West, Dimond, Bartlett, Service, East — can mobilise hundreds of parents and alumni within a single school's Facebook or group-chat network. Second, Mat-Su Valley schools like Colony and Wasilla have tightly-knit community followings that punch above their enrollment size in vote campaigns, because the valley's strong sports culture generates high per-capita social-media engagement around prep athletics.

For Fairbanks (West Valley, Lathrop), Juneau (Juneau-Douglas, Thunder Mountain), and Southwest programmes (Kodiak), community reach is narrower but more concentrated — a single coordinated push through a school's official social channels and booster club email list can be decisive when the opponent field is also from a smaller market.

When all organic networks have been reached and a nominee is still trailing a well-organised urban programme, some campaigns use paid vote promotion services to reach additional real supporters. If you take that route, choose a service that delivers genuine, manually-cast votes and complies with the SI prohibition on automated scripts. Our sports fan poll service is designed for exactly this scenario.

What are the rules — and can you buy votes for this poll?

High School on SI states its rules clearly on every voting page: automated scripts, macros, bots, and any non-human voting mechanism are prohibited and subject to vote removal. The poll has no cash prize, no formal prize-promotion law framework, and no ASAA regulatory involvement — it is a reader-engagement feature operated by a national media company.

There is a practical distinction that matters for how you evaluate external services:

• Automated scripts and bots — software that submits votes faster than a human can, from the same device fingerprint or spoofed IP range. These violate SI's stated terms, generate detectable traffic signatures, and result in vote removal.
• Paid outreach to real human supporters — real people casting manual votes within the rules using their own devices. This is structurally identical to a booster-club email generating 500 additional human voters: it is fans voting, reached through a different channel.

Whether paid outreach to real voters satisfies the spirit of SI's contest terms is a judgement each family, coach, and booster club must make after reading the current official poll page. For a balanced discussion of the broader legality landscape across online voting contests, see our full guide. The risk profile here — a media brand's fan poll with no prize and no state regulatory framework — is reputational rather than legal.

Alaska Athlete of the Week season timeline and ASAA sports calendar

High School on SI publishes Alaska athlete polls throughout the three ASAA-recognised sports seasons. The table below maps the ASAA calendar to SI's Alaska voting windows and highlights which sports and school regions are typically most active in each period.

Alaska's extreme geography shapes the seasonal rhythm in ways that differ from the lower 48. Many rural and bush-Alaska schools — 2A and 1A programmes in communities like Bethel, Nome, Dillingham, and Craig — travel by plane to compete. Championship events are typically held in Anchorage or Fairbanks, giving those host cities' communities a turnout advantage in vote campaigns tied to post-season timing.

Winter is the most competitive season for nomination volume from rural Alaska. Wrestling and cross-country skiing produce disproportionately strong nominees from smaller schools — Seward, Kodiak, Juneau-Douglas, and various Southeast Panhandle programmes have all produced state-championship-calibre winter athletes who earn SI nomination consideration.

For an overview of all fan-vote and recognition contests anchored in Alaska, visit our Alaska contest guide hub. For the full US contest index, see the USA contest guide index.