Midland Reporter-Telegram Athletes of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Midland Reporter-Telegram's Athletes of the Week ballot actually confirms

The Midland Reporter-Telegram, the daily newspaper of Midland, Texas, publishes Athletes of the Week through the Second Street platform at midlandreportertelegram.secondstreetapp.com. Rather than one vote per year, the format posts a fresh ballot every week of the school sports calendar, and four separate seasons of that weekly pattern are now confirmed: 2023-24, 2024-25, 2025-26 and 2026-27.

The week currently live is Week 2 of the 2026-27 season, open September 7 through September 9, 2026, right after Week 1 closed on September 2. Past those specific dates, the page goes quiet on mechanics: no category list is printed, and no per-voter cap or one-per-day rule appears anywhere.

Treat that last row honestly rather than borrowing a rule from a different weekly ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle for whatever the current week actually allows.

Four seasons, one ballot every week

Midland Reporter-Telegram Athletes of the Week is not a single once-a-year contest; it is a weekly format that has now run through four full seasons, 2023-24 through 2026-27. Each season carries its own run of numbered weekly ballots rather than one vote covering an entire school year.

The current week, Week 2, is confirmed open September 7 through September 9, 2026. Week 1 of this same 2026-27 season already closed on September 2, which shows the pattern in practice: a short window, then the next numbered week takes its place on the identical web address.

Second Street's own listing for this market carries 253 promotions in total, spanning the weekly Athletes of the Week ballots alongside seasonal sweepstakes and the annual Midland Reporter-Telegram Readers' Choice poll. Confirm on the live ballot each cycle rather than assuming a rule posted under a different listing on that same account carries over to this specific week.

One Texas newspaper's weekly ballot, not a statewide poll

Texas runs several separate weekly athletics recognition ballots, and none of them share a nominee pool or a results page with the Midland Reporter-Telegram's own weekly vote.

A Midland-area athlete named on this ballot has won nothing toward any of the five programs above, and the reverse holds too. Typing a generic search for a Texas athlete-of-the-week poll has a real chance of landing on one of those other five ballots instead of Midland's own weekly vote, none of which help a Week 2 push.

Building support for a ballot that resets every week

A weekly format like this one does not hand supporters a long season to plan around; the realistic move is lining up who will actually visit midlandreportertelegram.secondstreetapp.com before September 9 and asking them again more than once inside that short window, rather than waiting on a longer runway that this format simply does not offer.

That stays true no matter which per-voter number this week eventually prints. What actually decides a three-day window like this one is real people returning to vote, not a clever workaround. Second Street's platform is built to notice traffic that does not behave like ordinary supporters clicking a link, and getting caught doing that on only a fourth-season series costs a nominee more standing than it would on a ballot with a decade behind it.

A strong Week 2 finish settles nothing about whatever Midland eventually decides at the close of a full season, a call that belongs to the newspaper alone. Is buying votes legal separates a supporter push that stays inside the rules from one that risks the whole nomination, useful reading before spending real effort on Week 3. Buying votes online covers what paid outside support for a straight-voting weekly ballot typically involves, and sports fan poll vote support is shaped specifically around a school-sports ballot like this one.