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

What is the Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week?

The Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week is a free statewide fan-vote poll hosted at the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Nevada Preps platform — the dominant high school sports coverage outlet for the state of Nevada. The Review-Journal, part of Lee Enterprises, publishes separate weekly ballots for boys and girls, drawing nominees from NIAA-sanctioned schools across both Southern and Northern Nevada.

• Operated by Nevada Preps, the Review-Journal's dedicated prep-sports vertical at reviewjournal.com/nevada-preps — the state's most widely read high school sports coverage.
• Two concurrent polls each week: one for boys athletes, one for girls athletes — each with its own ballot and its own winner.
• Nominees span all NIAA sports seasons — fall, winter, and spring — across all classified sport categories.
• Voting is open to anyone; no Review-Journal subscription, email address, or account is required.
• The poll closes every Thursday at noon, with the winners announced Friday on Nevada Preps and across the Review-Journal's social media channels.
• Coverage reaches fans statewide: from the Las Vegas metro's Clark County schools to Reno, Sparks, Carson City, and Elko.

A Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week win earns the recipient a published mention at reviewjournal.com — a searchable, permanent credential that frequently appears in recruiting correspondence and athlete bio pages across Nevada prep programmes.

Which Nevada schools compete in this poll?

The Nevada Preps ballot draws nominees from across the NIAA's full classification spectrum — Open Division and 5A schools in the south, 5A and 4A schools from Northern Nevada, and smaller-class schools from rural regions when athletes post standout statewide performances. The table below maps the primary feeder schools by NIAA classification and location.

Southern Nevada: Open Division and 5A landscape

The 10-team Southern Open Division — featuring Bishop Gorman, Liberty, Desert Pines, Arbor View, Faith Lutheran, Foothill, Las Vegas High, Shadow Ridge, Desert Oasis, and Green Valley — produces the highest volume of nominees. Bishop Gorman in particular is a nationally recognised programme across football, basketball, and track, with alumni networks and social followings that mobilise very effectively for online polls.

Southern 5A schools like Coronado and Centennial add depth across basketball, volleyball, and swimming, drawing from large Henderson and North Las Vegas family communities with active Facebook and Nextdoor groups. The Clark County School District (CCSD) is one of the five largest in the United States, giving Southern Nevada an enormous built-in audience compared to any single Northern Nevada school.

Northern Nevada: Reno-Sparks metro and rural schools

Northern Nevada's 5A programmes — Bishop Manogue, McQueen, Reed, Reno High, Spanish Springs, Damonte Ranch — compete under the NIAA's Northern sectional structure. Reno and Sparks schools draw on the Truckee Meadows metro's tight-knit sports community; Bishop Manogue in particular has strong Catholic alumni ties that mirror Bishop Gorman's mobilisation patterns in the south. Rural 4A, 3A, 2A, and 1A schools across Elko, Fallon, Carson City, and Winnemucca appear on ballots when individual athletes deliver exceptional statewide-calibre performances.

How does Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week voting work?

Each week's poll lives inside the Athletes of the Week section at reviewjournal.com/nevada-preps. The Nevada Preps sports desk assembles the ballot from performance submissions — typically covering weekend and Monday results — then publishes the poll early in the week. For a plain-language explanation of how online newspaper fan polls function in general, see our complete guide to online contest voting.

Voting is free and requires no Review-Journal subscription, no email address, and no account creation. The poll widget loads directly on the article page and displays each nominee's name, school, sport, and the performance that earned the nomination. Live running totals are visible to all visitors throughout the window, so any supporter can monitor standings at any point before Thursday's noon close.

The polls close at noon Pacific Time on Thursday. The close time is firm — votes cast after noon do not count, regardless of how close the standings are at the cutoff. Results are published on reviewjournal.com and across Nevada Preps social media channels on Friday.

Because boys and girls polls run concurrently each week, fans from the same school programme may be pushing two separate campaigns simultaneously. Device-level voting rules apply through the poll widget's standard enforcement mechanism. The polls are accessible from any browser on desktop or mobile, and from any geographic location — family and friends outside Nevada can vote just as easily as local fans in Las Vegas or Reno.

How is the Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week winner chosen?

The winner is the nominee with the highest vote count when the poll closes Thursday at noon — the fan total alone decides the outcome. The Nevada Preps sports desk controls only the nomination stage, not the result.

1. Performance submission: coaches, parents, athletic directors, and school contacts submit standout weekly performances to the Nevada Preps sports desk, typically covering weekend and Monday game results across all NIAA sports.
2. Editorial ballot: the desk curates the nominee list by its own editorial judgement. Appearing on the ballot is itself a mark of recognition — not every submission earns a spot.
3. Public vote opens: two polls (boys/girls) go live at reviewjournal.com/nevada-preps early in the week, open to any visitor without registration.
4. Poll closes Thursday noon: the nominee with the highest vote total at that moment is named the Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week. There is no editorial override or weighted scoring — pure fan vote count decides.

Winning earns a published recognition on Nevada Preps — a permanent, searchable record at one of Nevada's most widely read prep-sports platforms, regularly cited in recruiting profiles and local media follow-up stories.

How do you build vote totals for Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week?

Nevada's two-metro structure — Las Vegas in the south, Reno-Sparks in the north — and the Thursday-noon hard deadline shape everything about how vote campaigns play out here. The first and most effective action is placing the direct poll link in front of every realistic network before Wednesday evening. For a full how-to on online poll vote strategy, read our vote-getting guide; the notes below focus on what moves the needle specifically in Nevada.

Two Nevada-specific dynamics consistently determine outcomes. First, Bishop Gorman's national profile — it draws alumni living across the country who remain intensely engaged in Nevada prep sports and will vote in online polls from out-of-state. That national alumni reach gives Gorman athletes a structural vote-mobilisation advantage over comparable programmes. Second, the Thursday-noon close is earlier than many comparable state polls; campaigns that begin strong on Monday and coast through Wednesday frequently lose to programmes that activate their networks with a targeted Wednesday-night reminder the night before close.

When organic networks have been fully tapped and a nominee is still trailing mid-week, some families and booster groups supplement with paid vote promotion. If you explore that option, use a service that delivers paced, genuine-voter delivery matched to the poll's mechanics — not automated bot scripts, which platform detection removes from the tally. For broader context on how paid promotion works across online polls, see our guide.

Rules and the buy-votes question for Nevada Preps polls

The Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week is a free reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize, no formal sweepstakes structure, and no Nevada prize-promotion law framework. The operative restrictions are those of the poll platform — primarily prohibitions on automated tools that circumvent per-device voting controls. For a full, balanced discussion of legality across online fan polls, see our guide; the notes below are specific to this poll.

There is a meaningful distinction between two categories of external activity:

• Bot scripts or automated traffic — rapid-fire requests from the same device fingerprint or IP range that ignore per-device cooldowns. These violate standard poll platform terms, produce detectable traffic signatures, and result in vote removal.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people casting genuine votes from their own devices within standard poll mechanics. Structurally this mirrors a booster club email reaching several hundred additional families. Whether it satisfies the spirit of the contest's specific terms is a judgement each entrant must make after reading the current official poll page.

The risk in this format — a free newspaper reader poll with no prize and no regulatory framework — is reputational rather than legal. Athletes, families, and booster programmes should weigh that honestly against the recognition value of a published Nevada Preps win and the competitive context of any given week's ballot.

When does Nevada Preps Athlete of the Week voting open and close?

The NIAA calendar divides Nevada's school year into three formal sports seasons, and the Nevada Preps poll runs throughout all three. Each poll week opens early — typically Monday or Tuesday — after the sports desk reviews performances from the prior weekend and Monday results. The window closes every Thursday at noon Pacific Time without exception. Winners are announced Friday.

The Thursday-noon close is earlier in the week than many comparable state polls — Ohio, Texas, and California equivalents often close Friday afternoon or Saturday. This compressed window favours campaigns that start mobilising the moment the poll opens Monday or Tuesday and that include a dedicated Wednesday-night reminder before Thursday morning's final push.

Nomination timing matters too. The sports desk typically collects performances from the preceding Friday–Monday. Weekend tournament results, particularly in basketball and wrestling, are the highest-leverage nomination window: an athlete with a multi-game tournament weekend has the strongest submission case. For context on how Nevada's prep contest landscape connects to statewide Nevada voting contests and the broader USA contest guide, explore our hub pages.