HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week?

HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week is a free weekly fan poll published at highschoolot.com — North Carolina's largest dedicated high school sports platform — and presented by State Employees' Credit Union. The award names both a male and female winner from each of North Carolina's six regional area codes every week of the prep-sports calendar, giving Triangle-area schools and fans a community-specific vote separate from statewide player-of-the-year programmes.

• Organised by HighSchoolOT, the Capitol Broadcasting Company sports vertical that also powers WRAL's high school sports coverage, headquartered in Raleigh.
• Presented by State Employees' Credit Union (SECU), the largest credit union in North Carolina with assets exceeding $51 billion — a sponsor with broad recognition among NC public school families.
• Covers NCHSAA schools across all six NC area codes — the Triangle 919 area code is anchored by Wake, Durham, Johnston, Chatham, and Franklin counties.
• Both a male and female athlete are named each week, covering all high school sports — football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, lacrosse, track, swimming, wrestling, and more.
• Winners are also eligible for annual HighSchoolOT Honors, a separate fan-vote awards programme covering year-long and seasonal athlete and coach categories statewide.
• HighSchoolOT is distinct from statewide SI/SBLive or Charlotte Observer programmes: it is Triangle-rooted and WRAL-branded, drawing its largest audience from the greater Raleigh-Durham metro.

A HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week win is the Triangle's most widely read prep-sports recognition — search results for an athlete's name from any NC college coach or recruiter will surface WRAL/HighSchoolOT coverage prominently.

Which Triangle-area schools compete for HighSchoolOT's weekly poll?

The 919 area code ballot draws nominees from NCHSAA schools across Wake, Durham, Johnston, Chatham, and Franklin counties — covering both large suburban 7A/8A programmes and smaller 3A/4A schools in the outer Triangle. The NCHSAA realigned into eight classifications for 2025-29, placing the Triangle's largest schools into several new conferences; the table below maps key schools to their current 2025-29 conference and primary sports strength.

Triangle NC powerhouse programmes by sport

Wake County alone enrolls more than 160,000 students across its 39 high schools — making it the largest school district in North Carolina and one of the largest in the United States. That concentration of talent means the 919 AOTW ballot can include nominees from as many as eight distinct NCHSAA conferences in a single week.

How does HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week voting work?

The poll lives at highschoolot.com and costs nothing to participate in — no subscription, no WRAL account, no email confirmation. Capitol Broadcasting Company's poll widget loads within the Athlete of the Week section and shows each nominee's name, school, sport, and a performance summary alongside a running vote count. For a wider overview of how online newspaper-style fan polls operate, see our full guide to online contest voting.

Each device — a phone, tablet, laptop — registers as an independent voting surface under the per-device cap. A household with multiple connected devices can cast votes from each one during the window. The per-device cap resets on the platform's schedule; once it expires the page accepts a new submission automatically without additional login.

The poll widget surfaces the 919-area-code ballot separately from other NC area codes. If your athlete is based in Wake, Durham, Johnston, Chatham, or Franklin counties, they will appear on the 919 ballot — not the Charlotte-area 704 ballot or the 336 Piedmont Triad ballot. Voters can find the correct ballot by selecting the 919 area code on the poll navigation. For guidance on how the broader fan-vote process works step by step, see our how-to section.

How is the HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week winner chosen?

HighSchoolOT's sports desk curates the weekly nominee list — drawing on coach submissions, parent contacts, and the HighSchoolOT network of school reporters — but the winner is determined entirely by fan vote total. No editorial panel adjusts the outcome after the poll closes. The male and female nominees with the highest vote counts in their respective area-code ballots are named Athlete of the Week.

1. Performance submissions: coaches, parents, and school contacts submit stand-out stat lines and game highlights to the HighSchoolOT sports desk during and after the preceding week of competition.
2. Editorial ballot selection: the HighSchoolOT editorial team reviews submissions and selects a shortlist of nominees for each area code's male and female ballot — not every submission reaches the poll. Being nominated is itself a form of recognition.
3. Poll opens: ballots go live at highschoolot.com, typically at the start of the week, with each nominee's name, school, and sport displayed for the community to vote on freely.
4. Highest vote count wins: when the poll closes, the nominee with the most votes in their ballot is named Athlete of the Week and featured in HighSchoolOT and WRAL coverage — no override, no tiebreaker other than vote totals.

Winners are recognised across Capitol Broadcasting's full media footprint: highschoolot.com articles, WRAL-TV high school sports segments, WRAL Sports Fan digital and radio mentions, and HighSchoolOT social media channels. The cross-platform visibility — print-equivalent digital reach plus broadcast TV and radio — makes an AOTW win in the Triangle more visible than most regional newspaper-only awards.

Winners across all six area codes each season are also eligible for the annual HighSchoolOT Honors awards, where fan voting for statewide and regional categories opens each spring and closes in late June.

How do you get more votes in a HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week poll?

Vote totals for this poll are shaped by two factors: how many devices can reach the ballot, and how consistently supporters vote across the full window. The baseline move is always getting the direct poll link — specific to the 919 area-code ballot, not just the homepage — into the hands of every realistic supporter within the first hour the poll opens. For a complete strategic framework, read our online contest voting guide; the Triangle-specific patterns below are what actually determines outcomes in this market.

Tactics ranked by effort and Triangle-market fit

Two Triangle-specific dynamics consistently decide close polls. First, the large Cary-Apex-Morrisville corridor — covering Green Hope, Apex, Apex Friendship, and Panther Creek — has a high concentration of tech-sector families who are highly active on group chats and social media; a single share from a visible school-athletics account can reach thousands of parents within minutes. Second, Cardinal Gibbons' private Catholic school network combines an alumni base drawn from across the entire Triangle with a structured booster community, making it one of the most efficient vote-mobilisation machines in the 919 ballot pool regardless of sport.

When every organic network has been activated and the nominee is still trailing, some families and booster clubs use paid vote promotion to reach additional real voters. If you go that route, use a service built for paced, cap-matched delivery — rapid-fire vote injection that ignores the per-device cooldown gets detected and removed. Our sports fan poll votes service is designed specifically for this type of community fan poll.

Rules and the buy-votes question for HighSchoolOT polls

The HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week is a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize and no NC prize-promotion law structure. The relevant restrictions are the platform's own technical terms — chiefly the prohibition on automated tools that bypass the per-device voting cap. For a balanced, detailed treatment of what is and isn't permissible across online polls generally, see our full buy-votes guide; the notes below apply specifically to this programme.

The practical distinction that matters:

• Automated bot scripts — rapid, repeated requests from the same device fingerprint that ignore the cooldown window. These violate standard poll-platform terms, are detectable via traffic pattern analysis, and result in vote removal.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people casting genuine votes within the per-device cap from their own devices and networks. Structurally, this is indistinguishable from a booster email reaching several hundred additional families — real fans voting, via a different distribution channel.

Whether paid real-voter outreach satisfies the spirit of this specific poll's terms is a judgement each entrant must make by reading the current official page at highschoolot.com. The risk in a non-prize community fan poll is reputational rather than legal: community perception within the Triangle's close-knit school booster networks matters, and families should weigh that honestly against the recognition value of a win before pursuing paid promotion.

HighSchoolOT Athlete of the Week: voting timeline across the school year

HighSchoolOT runs the Athlete of the Week poll continuously through the NCHSAA school-year sports calendar — fall, winter, and spring — pausing only during summer when NCHSAA prohibits organised team practice for most sports. The table below maps the programme to the typical North Carolina prep-sports schedule.

Within each week, the voting window typically opens early in the week following the previous week's games and closes on Friday. The exact close time appears on the poll widget — verify it each week rather than assuming a fixed hour, as HighSchoolOT adjusts for NCHSAA tournament scheduling and holiday weeks without advance notice.

Fall is consistently the most competitive season for the 919 ballot. Triangle football — particularly matchups involving Cardinal Gibbons in the Triangle Six Conference and inter-conference rivalries between Cap 8A and Quad City Seven schools — generates the largest booster-network mobilisation of the year. Spring lacrosse and softball weeks often see decisive totals well under 500 when booster engagement is lower, meaning smaller networks can win outright if activated effectively.

For more context on North Carolina prep-sports recognition and voting contests, visit our North Carolina contest guide. For all US regional contest guides, see the USA contest index.