The Oklahoman Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is The Oklahoman Athlete of the Week poll?

The Oklahoman Athlete of the Week is a free weekly fan-vote contest published at oklahoman.com — Oklahoma City's flagship daily newspaper, part of the Gannett / USA TODAY Network regional media group. Each week of the OSSAA prep sports calendar, The Oklahoman's sports desk assembles a shortlist of standout performers from the OKC metro and central Oklahoma; readers then vote publicly to decide the winner.

• Published at oklahoman.com, which reaches an estimated 400,000+ monthly digital readers across the Oklahoma City metro, Canadian County, Cleveland County, Pottawatomie County, and surrounding central Oklahoma communities.
• Gannett — owner of The Oklahoman since 2019 — runs the identical Athlete of the Week format at more than 200 regional papers through its USA TODAY Network; The Oklahoman is the largest Gannett property in the state.
• Covers all three OSSAA-sanctioned prep seasons: fall (August–November), winter (November–March), and spring (March–May/June).
• The vote cap is one vote per hour per device; no email address, subscription, or Gannett account is required to participate.
• Winners receive published recognition on oklahoman.com and across The Oklahoman's social media accounts; results frequently appear in the paper's weekend sports print edition.
• Unlike the statewide SBLive / High School on SI poll, this contest is anchored firmly to the OKC market — nominees are drawn from schools within The Oklahoman's primary circulation footprint rather than from Tulsa, eastern Oklahoma, or other regions.

Winning The Oklahoman Athlete of the Week earns a named, searchable byline in the largest daily newspaper in Oklahoma — a Gannett credential that college coaches and college admissions staff recognise when they search an athlete's name.

Which OKC-metro schools compete in The Oklahoman's poll?

The Oklahoman draws nominees primarily from OSSAA-member schools across the Oklahoma City metropolitan statistical area — a footprint that spans Oklahoma, Canadian, Cleveland, and Pottawatomie counties and includes some of the state's largest and most historically decorated prep programmes. Schools in OSSAA Class 6A-I dominate the ballot in football, basketball, and baseball seasons, while Class 5A private-school programmes — most notably Bishop McGuinness and Heritage Hall — are frequent nominees across nearly every sport.

The OKC metro's OSSAA landscape splits broadly into two social-mobilisation types. The Edmond corridor — Edmond Memorial, Edmond Santa Fe, Edmond North, Deer Creek — contains large professional-family suburban communities with high social-media engagement and well-funded booster clubs. Edmond is the fastest-growing suburb in the Oklahoma City MSA and its school districts collectively enrol more than 25,000 students.

The Catholic and independent private school tier — Bishop McGuinness and Heritage Hall — operates differently: smaller student bodies but extraordinarily tight multi-generational alumni networks and donor communities. Bishop McGuinness, for instance, draws from Catholic parishes across Oklahoma County and beyond; a single parent-group notification can reach hundreds of alumni from previous graduating classes within hours. For online fan polls, that alumni depth often converts to votes at rates well above what raw enrollment would predict.

How does voting for The Oklahoman Athlete of the Week work?

The poll appears in The Oklahoman's High School Sports section at oklahoman.com, embedded as a Gannett poll widget identical in function to polls run at other USA TODAY Network regional papers. No subscription to The Oklahoman, no Gannett account, and no email address are required — the widget loads for all visitors regardless of paywall status. For a general explanation of how USA TODAY Network newspaper polls operate, see our online contest voting guide.

The platform enforces one vote per hour per device. Each connected device in a household — a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop — registers as an independent voting surface under that cap. A family with four devices can cast four votes in hour one, four more in hour two, and so on across the full polling window. The hourly reset is automatic; no confirmation step is required after the cooldown expires.

The poll typically runs for two to three days, opening Monday or Tuesday and closing Thursday or Friday afternoon. The exact close time is displayed on the widget; check it each week before planning your vote campaign since The Oklahoman adjusts for OSSAA tournament weeks and holidays. Voting is accessible from any US state or country — out-of-state family and friends vote on the same footing as local supporters.

How is the winner of The Oklahoman Athlete of the Week decided?

The outcome is determined entirely by fan vote total at the moment the poll closes — no editorial panel weighting, no secondary tie-breaking mechanism, and no override. The Oklahoman sports desk exercises control only over the nomination stage: editors determine who appears on the ballot based on performance submissions and their own week-by-week coverage judgement. Once the poll is live, vote count alone decides the winner.

1. Performance submissions: coaches, parents, and athletic contacts share stats and game context with The Oklahoman sports desk, typically covering weekend results from Friday night and Saturday competition.
2. Editorial ballot curation: the sports desk selects nominees — generally three to seven athletes — representing a cross-section of sports and schools from that week's metro results. Appearing on the ballot is itself a form of recognition; not every submitted name earns a slot.
3. Fan poll opens: the ballot goes live at oklahoman.com, usually Monday or Tuesday morning, alongside a short write-up of each nominee's qualifying performance.
4. Poll closes and winner announced: the candidate with the highest vote total at close is named Athlete of the Week. The Oklahoman publishes the result on oklahoman.com and distributes it across the paper's social media accounts — Instagram, X/Twitter, and Facebook — where it regularly generates additional engagement from Oklahoma City-area sports fans.

There is no physical prize and no monetary award — the value is reputational: a published Gannett byline attached to the athlete's name, visible to any coach or college admissions reviewer who searches their name, in Oklahoma City's newspaper of record.

Building votes for an Oklahoman Athlete of the Week nominee

Every effective vote campaign for this poll operates on the same hourly-cap arithmetic: more devices voting more consistently across the window generates more votes. The first and highest-leverage action is always placing the direct poll link — not just a generic social post — in front of every realistic network. For a full tactical playbook on newspaper fan polls, see our how-to guide; the OKC-specific notes below cover what drives results in this particular market.

OKC-market vote tactics ranked by impact

Two OKC-specific patterns stand out. First, the Edmond corridor schools — Memorial, Santa Fe, North, and Deer Creek — compete in overlapping booster communities where parents are accustomed to mobilising for fundraising and school events; they translate that organisational infrastructure to fan polls faster than schools without that culture. A booster club email sent within two hours of poll open can generate hundreds of first-hour votes from engaged Edmond parents alone.

Second, Heritage Hall and Bishop McGuinness punch above their enrollment weight because their alumni networks are deep, geographically dispersed (former students living across the OKC metro and statewide), and socially cohesive. A single Instagram post from a current student or recent alumnus with strong followership can reach thousands of people who have an emotional connection to the school. That reach dynamic is difficult for larger public schools to replicate without a formal booster campaign.

When the organically reachable network has been fully mobilised and a nominee is still trailing, some families and booster programmes explore paid promotion that reaches additional real voters. If you use a paid service, prioritise one that delivers paced, cap-matched votes from real devices rather than rapid-fire automation — rushed injection patterns get flagged by the platform and removed from the tally. Our sports fan poll service is built around that paced delivery model. For a comprehensive overview of how poll promotion services work, see our full guide.

Poll rules and the question of buying votes

The Oklahoman Athlete of the Week is a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize and no Oklahoma sweepstakes-law framework. The restrictions that apply are the Gannett poll platform's own technical terms — primarily the prohibition on automated tools that circumvent the hourly cap. For a wider discussion of legality and fairness across online nomination polls, the buy-votes overview covers the full picture; the notes below are specific to this poll format.

There is a real and meaningful distinction between two categories of activity:

• Automated scripts and bot traffic — rapid-fire requests from the same device fingerprint or IP range that ignore the one-hour cooldown. These violate standard Gannett poll 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 the hourly cap. This is structurally identical to a booster club email that reaches 500 additional families — it is fans voting, reached through a paid rather than organic channel.

Whether the second category satisfies the spirit of any specific week's poll terms is a decision each family and booster programme must reach after reading the current official poll page at oklahoman.com. In a no-prize newspaper recognition poll like this one, the consequence of a dispute is reputational rather than legal. Athletes, parents, and school staff should weigh that honestly against the credential value of an Oklahoman byline.

When does The Oklahoman Athlete of the Week poll run?

The poll follows the OSSAA three-season school-year calendar, publishing a new ballot each week that competitive sports are in session. The table below maps the programme to Oklahoma's prep sports calendar, with notes on which schools and sports produce the most active nominee pools each period.

Within each week, the standard pattern is poll-open Monday or Tuesday after the sports desk reviews Friday and Saturday results, then poll-close Thursday or Friday afternoon. The exact close time is visible on the widget at oklahoman.com — The Oklahoman adjusts for OSSAA playoff scheduling and state and federal holidays, so always verify the close time for the specific week rather than assuming a fixed hour.

Fall is the poll's most competitive season. October football weeks involving high-enrollment Edmond schools or Carl Albert — which draws a tight Midwest City community with strong military-family ties from nearby Tinker Air Force Base — routinely generate the year's peak vote totals. Spring track and golf weeks, when booster networks are less formally mobilised, can be decided with far fewer votes and are the most accessible weeks for athletes from smaller programmes.

For the full landscape of Oklahoma high school fan polls — including the statewide SBLive / High School on SI contest that covers all 77 counties — visit the Oklahoma contest guide. For all US market polls, see the USA contest index.