El Paso Times Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the El Paso Times Athlete of the Week?

The El Paso Times Athlete of the Week is a free weekly fan-vote poll hosted at elpasotimes.com each week of the UIL Texas high school sports calendar. The El Paso Times — a Gannett regional daily within the USA TODAY Network — operates the poll to spotlight standout prep performers across El Paso County, the Borderland, and West Texas. The sports desk selects nominees from coach and community submissions; readers then vote freely to determine the winner, with the highest vote total at poll close deciding the recognition.

• Published at elpasotimes.com, which serves El Paso County, the Borderland region, and surrounding West Texas communities.
• Organised by the El Paso Times (Gannett / USA TODAY Network) — the same network that runs Athlete of the Week polls at dozens of regional papers nationwide.
• Covers all three UIL sports seasons — fall, winter, and spring — across all UIL-sanctioned sports within each season.
• Vote cap is one vote per hour per device; no email address, account, or subscription required.
• Winners receive published recognition at elpasotimes.com and across El Paso Times social media channels — a credentialled, searchable third-party record of athletic achievement.
• El Paso's high school athletics landscape spans 14 public high schools across UIL 6A and 5A classifications, with Districts 1-6A and 2-6A among the most competitive in Region 1.

A win earns the athlete a published mention in the El Paso Times — a Gannett paper with deep Borderland community reach — that persists as a searchable record and regularly surfaces in college recruiting profiles.

Which El Paso–Borderland schools and UIL districts compete in this poll?

The El Paso Times draws nominees from public high schools across El Paso County, all competing under UIL Region 1 governance. El Paso's 14 comprehensive public high schools divide into UIL District 1-6A and District 2-6A at the largest classification, plus District 1-5A and District 2-5A for the mid-tier programmes. The table below maps El Paso's powerhouse programmes by sport, district, and area of the city.

El Paso's UIL geography creates meaningful intra-city rivalries that drive poll engagement. The east-side corridor — Eastwood, Montwood, El Dorado, Pebble Hills — contains some of El Paso's densest residential neighbourhoods and largest family networks. The west-side schools (Americas, Coronado) draw from established El Paso communities with multigenerational school-pride traditions. Socorro ISD schools (Socorro, Del Valle, Eastlake) serve the rapidly growing far-east portion of the county and bring newer but highly motivated parent communities into each voting window.

How does El Paso Times Athlete of the Week voting work?

The poll is hosted inside the High School Sports section at elpasotimes.com and costs nothing to enter — no El Paso Times subscription, no user account, and no personal data of any kind. The Gannett poll widget loads with each nominee's name, school, and sport listed alongside a running vote count that updates in near-real time throughout the window.

One vote per device per hour is the enforced cap. Every connected device in a household — a smartphone, a tablet, a desktop — registers as an independent voting surface. A family with four devices can cast four votes in the opening hour, another four in the second hour, and so on across the full two-to-three-day window. The cap resets automatically; no extra confirmation or log-in step is required when the cooldown expires.

Polls typically open Monday or Tuesday after the El Paso Times sports desk processes weekend game results, then close Thursday or Friday afternoon. The exact close time is displayed on the widget itself — always verify it there, because the Times adjusts for UIL playoff schedules and holidays without a separate announcement. For a broader explanation of how Gannett newspaper fan polls like this one function mechanically, see our guide to online contest voting.

The poll works on all current mobile browsers (iOS Safari, Android Chrome) and desktop browsers without any app download or special configuration. Supporters outside El Paso — family in other Texas cities, relatives in Ciudad Juárez or New Mexico — can vote just as effectively as local supporters, which matters in a Borderland market with extensive cross-border and interstate family networks.

How is the winner chosen, and what does a nomination involve?

The El Paso Times Athlete of the Week winner is determined entirely by fan vote total — whichever nominee has accumulated the most votes when the poll closes is named that week's recipient. There is no editorial scoring adjustment, no panel weighting, and no tie-breaking mechanism beyond the final count.

The nomination pathway

1. Submission: coaches, parents, and school athletic staff submit outstanding performance highlights to the El Paso Times sports desk by email. Submissions typically cover Friday-night or Saturday results and should include the athlete's name, school, sport, statistical summary, and a brief note on context (playoff stakes, rival opponent, personal milestone).
2. Editorial selection: the sports desk reviews all submissions and builds the weekly ballot by editorial judgement. Not every submission earns a spot — the desk prioritises performances that are genuinely outstanding within the week's UIL competitive landscape across both 6A districts and the 5A field.
3. Public poll: the ballot goes live at elpasotimes.com, typically Monday or Tuesday. Any reader — anywhere — can vote freely until the close time shown on the widget.
4. Announcement: once closed, the El Paso Times publishes the winner at elpasotimes.com, on its social channels, and in its sports coverage for the week. The recognition is attributed to the El Paso Times and is a searchable, permanent record.

Because the award carries the El Paso Times masthead — a Gannett paper read across West Texas and the Borderland — a win is a credentialled third-party recognition that college coaches and recruiters can independently verify, unlike a school's own social media posts.

How do you build a winning vote campaign for El Paso Times Athlete of the Week?

Every El Paso Times Athlete of the Week vote campaign comes down to one equation: devices voting × hours in the window = total votes. The most effective campaigns maximise both variables simultaneously — they activate multiple organised networks in the first few hours rather than waiting for a late push. The El Paso market has specific community structures that respond particularly well to certain outreach approaches. For a full general playbook, see our how-to voting guide; the El Paso–specific breakdown is below.

Two El Paso–specific patterns stand out. First, WhatsApp chains are the primary communication channel for many El Paso school families, particularly in communities with strong ties to Ciudad Juárez. A single WhatsApp message sent by an athlete's parent into a team or school group can propagate into dozens of sub-chains across both sides of the border within minutes — an unusually fast network activation compared to SMS or email-first markets. Second, east-side El Paso has seen rapid residential growth, and the newer campus communities (Pebble Hills, Eastlake) have digitally active parent populations concentrated on Facebook neighbourhood groups who respond quickly to local school-pride posts.

When every organic network has been activated and the nominee is still trailing, some families and booster groups turn to a paid real-voter promotion service. If that route is taken, use a service delivering paced, genuine votes matched to the hourly cap — not a rapid-fire bot injection. Our sports fan poll votes service is designed around cap-matched delivery for exactly this type of newspaper fan poll.

What are the rules, and can you buy votes for El Paso Times Athlete of the Week?

The El Paso Times Athlete of the Week is a reader-engagement poll with no cash prize and no Texas prize-promotion law framework — it sits outside formal sweepstakes regulation. The relevant restrictions are those of the Gannett poll platform itself, which primarily prohibit automated scripts and bots that circumvent the hourly cap. For a balanced, broader treatment of the legality of buying votes in online polls, the buy-votes guide covers the full landscape; the notes below are specific to this poll.

The meaningful practical distinction is between two categories of activity:

• Automated bot scripts — high-frequency requests from the same device fingerprint or IP block, ignoring the one-hour cooldown. These violate platform terms, produce detectable traffic anomalies, and result in vote removal.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — genuine voters casting one vote per hour from their own devices via their own connections, reached through a paid channel rather than a personal one. Structurally, this is equivalent to a booster email reaching a larger audience — it is fans voting, via a different distribution mechanism.

Whether the second category satisfies the spirit of any specific poll terms is a judgement each entrant must make individually after reading the current official page. In a no-prize newspaper fan poll, the risk is reputational rather than legal — athletes and families should weigh the recognition value of a win honestly against that context.

El Paso Times Athlete of the Week voting timeline — UIL season calendar

The poll follows the UIL Texas high school sports calendar, which governs all El Paso County public schools. UIL divides the athletic year into fall, winter, and spring seasons; the El Paso Times poll runs a new ballot each week throughout each active season, pausing during summer. The competitive intensity and typical vote totals shift substantially between seasons.

Within each week the voting window opens Monday or Tuesday — after the sports desk reviews Friday and Saturday results — and closes Thursday or Friday afternoon. The exact close time is visible on the poll widget at elpasotimes.com; never assume a fixed hour, as the Times adjusts for holiday weeks and UIL tournament scheduling.

Fall is consistently the most competitive season for this poll. October weeks featuring east-side 6A intra-city football matchups produce the highest vote totals of the year. Spring track weeks, by contrast, can be decided with a few hundred votes when booster networks are less coordinated. The same nomination and voting principles apply year-round, but the mobilisation effort required scales directly with the competitive level of that specific week's ballot.

For context on how El Paso Times polling fits into the broader Texas prep sports recognition landscape, visit the Texas contest guide. For all US regional contest guides, the USA hub covers every available market.