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

What is the KSHB 41 Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week?

The Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week is a free weekly prep sports recognition programme produced by KSHB 41, Scripps Media's NBC affiliate serving the Kansas City metro and greater Kansas region. Every week of the KSHSAA athletic calendar, the KSHB sports staff identifies stand-out performances from Kansas high school athletes, selects nominees, and opens a public fan vote at kshb.com. The winner receives on-air recognition during KSHB's sports broadcasts and a dedicated feature on the station's website.

• Presented by Hy-Vee, a regional employee-owned grocery chain headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa, with dozens of stores across Kansas and the KC metro.
• Administered by KSHB 41 (Scripps Media), Kansas City's NBC affiliate, which covers prep sports from the Kansas City suburbs west to Wichita and statewide through KSHSAA competition.
• Covers all six KSHSAA classification tiers — 6A through 1A — meaning athletes from small western Kansas towns compete alongside those from the state's largest suburban programmes.
• No subscription, account, or personal data is required to cast a vote; the poll is fully open to any visitor at kshb.com.
• Winners are featured in KSHB 41's evening sports segment and in a published article on kshb.com, creating a searchable third-party credential beyond a school's own social media.
• The award runs year-round, tracking all three KSHSAA sports seasons — fall, winter, and spring — with no off-season pause.

Past Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week recipients include athletes from Gardner Edgerton, Olathe South, Olathe Northwest, and Bishop Miege — schools whose alumni and booster networks span both sides of the Kansas–Missouri state line in Kansas City's south suburbs.

Which Kansas schools and KSHSAA classes compete in this poll?

Because KSHB 41 covers statewide Kansas prep sports, the Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week ballot draws nominees from all corners of the state — from the dense Eastern Kansas League suburbs ringing Kansas City to the South Central Kansas League schools in the Wichita metro and United Kansas Conference schools in the Flint Hills and central plains. Every one of the six KSHSAA classification tiers can appear in any given week's ballot.

The Eastern Kansas League (EKL) dominates the Kansas City south-suburban belt, running through Blue Valley North, Blue Valley Northwest, Mill Valley, and Olathe schools with enrolments above 1,500 students each. The Sunflower League anchors the KC-area public schools from Lawrence to Gardner Edgerton. In central and south-central Kansas, the United Kansas Conference covers Manhattan, and the South Central Kansas League brings in Wichita-area powerhouses like Derby — a school with multiple 6A football state titles — and Maize.

Smaller-classification schools from 4A, 3A, 2A, and 1A appear on the ballot when a performance is exceptional enough to earn a KSHB staff nomination. Bishop Miege's strong alumni base and Aquinas's booster network make both 4A schools recurrent contenders despite smaller student bodies.

How does the KSHB 41 Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week vote work?

The poll is published as a dedicated article or page within the High School section at kshb.com. Each week's nominees are listed with their name, school, sport, and a brief stat summary. Any visitor — in Kansas, out of state, or internationally — can open the page, select a nominee, and submit a vote. No subscription to KSHB's content, no email address, and no account creation is required.

Unlike hourly-cap newspaper polls, the KSHB Hy-Vee poll does not state a per-device voting limit within the window — the poll runs as a single open-window format until the close date displayed on the active page. For a broader overview of how online broadcast-TV station polls differ structurally from newspaper polls, see our complete guide to online contest voting.

Finding the active poll

Navigate to kshb.com, go to the Sports section, and select "High School" or "High School Athlete of the Week" from the local sports menu. A new poll article typically goes live at the start of each week, following the KSHB sports team's review of weekend game results. The headline will include the current week's date range and the nominees' names.

Voting on mobile vs desktop

The KSHB website and its embedded poll widget function on all standard desktop and mobile browsers — Safari on iOS, Chrome on Android, and others — with no dedicated app required. Votes cast from a mobile device count identically to those from a laptop or desktop computer.

How is the Kansas Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week winner determined?

The KSHB sports staff exercise editorial control at the nomination stage — identifying athletes whose recent performances warrant recognition across any KSHSAA sport and classification — but the outcome is determined by fan vote total. Once the poll opens at kshb.com, the nominee with the highest vote count when the window closes is named that week's Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week.

1. Performance submission: coaches, parents, school athletic contacts, or players themselves submit standout game or match results to the KSHB sports desk, typically through the station's contact channels or via social media tagging.
2. Nominee curation: KSHB sports journalists review submissions and select a ballot — usually three to six nominees — representing a range of sports and classification levels from across Kansas.
3. Poll published: the weekly ballot goes live at kshb.com with each nominee's stats and school, and voting opens to the general public at no cost.
4. Winner announced: when the poll closes, KSHB announces the winner on air during the evening sports segment and publishes a dedicated feature article at kshb.com. Hy-Vee's name appears in all recognition materials as presenting sponsor.

There is no editorial override after the poll opens — vote count alone determines the winner. A nominee from a 1A school with a tightly mobilised small-town community can outpoll a 6A athlete whose supporters are less organised, regardless of the objective strength of the performance.

Building votes for a KSHB Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week nominee in Kansas

Because this poll has no stated per-device hourly cap, the primary lever is the width of the network you reach rather than device-cycling strategy. Winning campaigns activate every community layer around the athlete — school, sport, faith community, neighbourhood — and reach them with a direct, low-friction message early in the voting window. For general tactics that apply to any online sports poll, visit our buy-votes guide; the Kansas-specific notes below cover what moves results in this state's geography.

Two Kansas-specific patterns consistently produce outsized results. First, the Eastern Kansas League suburban corridor — Blue Valley North, Blue Valley Northwest, Mill Valley, Olathe North — sits in the densest concentration of professional-family households in the state, where parents are active on school-community apps and neighbourhood platforms throughout the day. A well-timed mid-morning push reaches voters who are at desks with browsers open. Second, for nominees from smaller classifications (3A, 2A, 1A), the entire town is a potential voter — populations of 2,000–8,000 where a single share from the school principal's Facebook profile can reach a meaningful fraction of residents.

When organic reach has been fully tapped and the lead is still narrow, some families and booster groups use a paid vote promotion service to reach additional real-voter networks. If you take that route, choose a service that delivers votes paced across the window rather than in a sudden burst — a spike inconsistent with organic patterns draws scrutiny. Our sports poll votes service is structured around exactly this paced-delivery model.

Rules and the buy-votes question for the KSHB Hy-Vee poll

The KSHB 41 Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week is a reader-engagement fan poll run by a broadcast TV station, not a formal sweepstakes or prize competition under Kansas law. There is no cash award, no scholarship, and no formal contest framework regulated by the Kansas Attorney General's prize-promotion statute. The applicable restrictions come from the platform's own technical terms rather than any external legal framework. For a balanced, detailed look at legality across online polls, read our full guide.

The meaningful practical distinction is between two different types of activity:

• Automated scripting or bot traffic — high-volume rapid submissions from the same device fingerprint or IP block that produce an unnatural traffic pattern. These violate standard poll platform terms and are detectable; votes are typically removed from the counter.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people casting genuine votes from their own devices within the stated window. This is structurally the same as a booster club text reaching 300 additional parents, just delivered through a different channel.

Whether paid outreach to real voters satisfies the spirit of a particular poll's terms is a judgement each entrant must make by reading the current official page at kshb.com. The stakes in a broadcast-TV fan poll with no prize — reputational recognition on a regional station — are meaningful but modest. Families and coaches should weigh that context honestly against both the value of a win and the low practical risk profile of the format.

KSHSAA season timeline: when does the Kansas Athlete of the Week poll run?

The Hy-Vee Athlete of the Week programme tracks the KSHSAA sports calendar through all three competitive seasons. A new ballot appears at the start of most weeks throughout the school athletic year; the poll pauses over extended school breaks when no KSHSAA competition is scheduled. The table below maps each KSHSAA season to the poll's typical behaviour.

The voting window for each weekly poll closes on the date shown directly on the active poll page at kshb.com — always verify this rather than assuming a fixed day. KSHB adjusts the window around holidays, KSHSAA postseason scheduling, and station programming.

Fall football weeks — especially October contests involving Sunflower League and South Central Kansas League schools with large alumni networks — produce the highest vote totals of the year. Spring track weeks, by contrast, can be decided with a smaller, well-organised effort when broader community networks are less mobilised around an individual sport.

For a broader look at Kansas prep sports recognition contests and fan polls across the state, visit our Kansas contest guide. For all US high school athlete polls by state, see the USA contest guide index. To compare strategies for school sports polls generally, see our how-to guide for contest voting.