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

What is the SBLive/SI Oregon High School Athlete of the Week?

The SBLive/SI Oregon High School Athlete of the Week is a free statewide fan poll hosted by High School on SI, the prep-sports digital division of Sports Illustrated. SBLive — the platform's predecessor — was founded in the Pacific Northwest specifically to cover Oregon and Washington high school athletics before it merged into the Sports Illustrated ecosystem, giving the Oregon edition deeper editorial roots here than most states in the network.

• Polls live at si.com/high-school/oregon/athlete-of-the-week — open to any fan, no account or subscription needed.
• Covers all three OSAA-sanctioned seasons (fall, winter, spring) and every classification from 6A down to 1A across the state.
• Nominations come from coaches, parents, and fans; the SBLive/SI Oregon editorial team makes the final ballot selections and announces the weekly poll.
• The voting rule is unlimited manual votes per person — the only prohibition is automated scripts, macros, and bots, which trigger immediate disqualification.
• Each poll closes Sunday at 11:59 pm Pacific time; the winner is published Monday at si.com and shared across the @sbliveor social channels.
• Nomination submissions are accepted by email and via social-media tagging; the editorial contact for Oregon is listed on the current poll page at si.com.

Which Oregon schools compete in this poll?

The SBLive/SI Oregon poll is statewide: any OSAA member school in any classification can receive a nomination. In practice, the ballot regularly features athletes from the Portland metro's largest programmes alongside standouts from mid-valley, southern Oregon, and eastern Oregon schools. The table below maps the schools most frequently in the nominee pool by classification and league.

The Portland metro schools — Central Catholic, Jesuit, and Mountainside in the Metro League; West Linn, Lake Oswego, Tigard, Sherwood, and Clackamas in the Three Rivers League — generate the most nominations simply because of population density and the depth of their athletic programmes. Central Catholic and Jesuit are among the most decorated programmes in OSAA history across multiple sports, with combined state championships in football, basketball, baseball, and soccer spanning decades.

Outside the metro, Eugene-area schools (Sheldon and South Eugene in the Southwest Conference) and Bend-area schools (Summit and Mountain View in the Intermountain Conference / Cascade Conference) produce consistent nominees, particularly in cross country, track and field, and basketball. The poll's statewide reach means a standout performance from a 2A school in eastern Oregon is just as eligible — those nominations often generate outsized community mobilisation relative to school size.

How does the SBLive/SI Oregon Athlete of the Week vote work?

The poll is published each week at si.com/high-school/oregon during the active OSAA season. Any visitor can cast a vote without logging in, creating an account, or paying anything — the widget loads with all nominees listed and updates totals live throughout the window. For a broader explanation of how fan-vote newspaper and sports-media polls function, see our online voting guide.

What is the vote cap?

Unlike hourly-cap polls at daily newspapers, the SBLive/SI model allows unlimited manual votes per person during the open window. The single binding constraint is the ban on automated tools: scripts, macros, bots, and any non-human vote generation are explicitly prohibited and result in disqualification of the entire entry. Human voters clicking or tapping at whatever pace they choose are within the rules.

The poll is accessible on all devices — desktop, phone, tablet — with no dedicated app required. Supporters outside Oregon, including out-of-state family and former classmates, can vote just as easily as local fans. The window runs from roughly Monday through Sunday at 11:59 pm Pacific; the exact open date each week depends on when the SBLive Oregon editorial team publishes the new poll article.

How to find the live poll

The fastest route is si.com/high-school/oregon — the Oregon landing page lists current polls prominently. Search results for "SBLive Oregon athlete of the week" also surface the current week's article directly. The @sbliveor Facebook page and Instagram account post each new poll link when it goes live, usually Monday morning, which is the quickest way to share the direct URL with your network before competing schools mobilise.

How is the Oregon Athlete of the Week winner decided?

The winner is determined entirely by fan vote count — the nominee with the highest total when the poll closes Sunday at 11:59 pm Pacific wins, with no editorial weighting, no panel override, and no tiebreaker other than raw numbers. The SBLive/SI editorial team controls only the nomination stage, not the outcome.

1. Nomination submitted: coaches, parents, athletic directors, and fans email or tag the SBLive Oregon team with the athlete's name, school, sport, and a brief performance summary from that week.
2. Ballot curated: the editorial team reviews all submissions and selects a weekly ballot — typically four to eight nominees — based on performance quality across different sports and classifications. Not every submission makes the ballot.
3. Poll published: the vote article goes live at si.com, usually Monday morning, with a brief description of each nominee's performance and the voting widget embedded.
4. Poll closes Sunday 11:59 pm PT: the nominee with the most fan votes is announced as Athlete of the Week on Monday via si.com and @sbliveor social channels.

There is no cash prize — the recognition is a published credential on a national Sports Illustrated platform, visible in any web search of the athlete's name, and a social media shout-out reaching the SBLive Oregon audience.

How do you build a winning vote total for this poll?

Because the SBLive/SI Oregon poll has no hourly cap — just a Sunday deadline — the competitive dynamic differs from newspaper polls. Every manual vote cast any time before 11:59 pm Sunday counts equally, so the race is about sustained, network-wide mobilisation across a full week rather than disciplined hourly push cycles. See our full voting guide and the how-to resource centre for general tactics; the Oregon-specific points below cover what actually moves the needle in this market.

Two Oregon-specific patterns consistently produce outsized totals. First, Central Catholic and Jesuit — both Portland metro Catholic schools — have multi-decade alumni networks and tight parish connections that reach far beyond the current student body. A single message in a Jesuit Crusaders parents' group can propagate through church, youth sports, and professional networks that span the entire metro area. Second, the tight geography of the Three Rivers League — West Linn, Lake Oswego, Tigard, Sherwood, and Clackamas are all within a 20-mile band — means a strong performance from any of those schools draws cross-community attention and often prompts friendly inter-school rivalry that boosts total vote counts for the nominated athlete.

What are the rules — and can you buy votes for SBLive/SI Oregon?

The SBLive/SI Oregon Athlete of the Week operates as a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize and no Oregon-law prize-promotion framework — the sole enforceable restrictions come from the poll platform's own terms. The core rule is clear: automated scripts, macros, and other non-human vote-generation tools are banned and result in disqualification. For the full balanced picture of online poll legality, see our detailed guide.

There is a meaningful practical difference between two types of activity:

• Automated bots and scripts — vote generation that bypasses human interaction. Explicitly prohibited; detectable through traffic-pattern analysis; penalty is disqualification of the athlete's entire entry. This is the activity SBLive/SI's rules target.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people who read the poll description and cast genuine manual votes from their own devices. Structurally identical to a booster-club email reaching more families — it is fans voting, via a different recruitment channel.

Whether paid real-voter outreach satisfies the spirit of the contest terms is a judgement each family or booster club must make after reading the current official poll article. The practical stakes in this format — a sports-media fan poll with no prize — are reputational, not legal. The risk falls on the nominated athlete if the vote is flagged; weigh that honestly before deciding.

When does the Oregon Athlete of the Week poll run — OSAA season by season?

The SBLive/SI Oregon poll follows the OSAA high school sports calendar, publishing a new vote each week that Oregon prep athletes are competing. The three-season structure means polls run from late August through late May, with a summer break when the OSAA calendar is inactive. The table below maps the poll's cadence to the Oregon sports year.

Fall is consistently the most contested season — October football weeks with Metro League and Three Rivers League rivalry matchups generate the highest vote totals of the year. Spring track weeks are where community mobilisation matters most relative to school size: a 4A or 5A school with a motivated parent network can easily out-vote a larger 6A programme that treats the poll casually.

For Oregon's broader contest landscape — including community recognition votes, mascot brackets, and school events — explore our Oregon contest hub. For all US guides, visit the USA contest index.