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

What is the Vermont Varsity Insider Athlete of the Week?

The Vermont Varsity Insider Athlete of the Week — presented by Delta Dental of Vermont — is a free weekly fan poll published at burlingtonfreepress.com each week of the Vermont high school sports calendar. The Burlington Free Press sports desk, part of Gannett's USA TODAY Network, curates nominees each week based on standout performances submitted by coaches and school contacts across all Vermont Principals' Association (VPA) member schools. Readers statewide then vote to crown a winner, with separate boys and girls ballots running simultaneously.

• Presented by Delta Dental of Vermont, the state's largest dental benefits provider, which has sponsored Vermont prep athletics for years.
• Published at burlingtonfreepress.com — Vermont's most-read digital sports platform, covering all 75 VPA member high schools across the state.
• Covers all three VPA high school sports seasons — fall, winter, and spring — across all sanctioned sports.
• No per-voter cap — unlike many Gannett polls in other states, this Vermont poll accepts unlimited votes per visitor until it closes.
• Winners are announced on burlingtonfreepress.com and across the Free Press social media channels; results feed into the Vermont Varsity Insider coverage brand.
• Boys and girls polls are published and tracked separately each week, doubling the recognition opportunities for Vermont student-athletes.

Because there is no per-voter cap, a well-organised campaign from any VPA school can generate competitive vote totals entirely through sustained organic outreach — but it also means the margin between a well-mobilised school and a passive nominee can be very large, very quickly.

Which Vermont high schools appear in this poll?

The Burlington Free Press draws nominees from all Vermont Principals' Association member schools, spanning D-I (largest enrolment), D-II (mid-size), and D-III (smallest) classifications across every corner of the state. The table below lists representative schools by VPA division and home city.

Vermont's VPA divisions are determined by school enrolment. Division I covers the state's largest public and independent schools — Burlington, South Burlington, Champlain Valley Union, Essex, and St. Johnsbury Academy (an independent school) compete here and are typically the most active sources of poll nominees. Division II covers mid-size schools like Rutland, Mount Mansfield, BFA-St. Albans, and Brattleboro, which serve smaller cities and regional centres spread across the state. Division III covers smaller rural schools, where exceptional individual athletes still earn ballot spots when their performances stand out statewide.

St. Johnsbury Academy, a private independent school, participates in VPA athletics and is one of the state's most decorated programmes — its athletes appear frequently on both boys and girls ballots. Champlain Valley Union in Hinesburg has established itself as one of Vermont's most consistently competitive D-I programmes across multiple sports, with strong booster and alumni networks in the densely populated Chittenden County corridor that spans Burlington south through Shelburne and Hinesburg.

How does Vermont Varsity Insider Athlete of the Week voting work?

The poll is hosted inside the High School Sports section at burlingtonfreepress.com and is fully free to use — no subscription, no account, and no email address required. The Gannett poll widget displays each nominee's name, school, and sport alongside a running vote count visible to all visitors in near-real-time. For background on how online newspaper fan polls operate in general, see our guide to online contest voting.

There is no per-vote cap on this poll — unlike many newspaper athlete polls that enforce a one-vote-per-hour cooldown, the Vermont Varsity Insider poll accepts unlimited votes per visitor per session. This means vote totals can climb steeply when a school's network is actively engaged, and campaigns are decided less by hourly patience and more by the raw size of the mobilised audience.

Polls typically open mid-week — often Monday or Tuesday — and close Wednesday at 9 p.m. The exact open and close time is confirmed on the current poll article at burlingtonfreepress.com; always verify before launching a campaign, as timing occasionally shifts around holidays and VPA tournament weeks.

The polls are accessible from any device — desktop, phone, or tablet — without a Vermont IP address or Gannett subscription. Family members, alumni living out of state, and any supporter who follows the direct link can vote as freely as local fans.

How is the Vermont Varsity Insider winner chosen?

The winner is determined entirely by vote total when the poll closes — no editorial panel, no weighted scoring. The Burlington Free Press sports desk controls only the nomination stage, not the outcome.

1. Nomination: coaches, parents, and school athletic contacts submit performance highlights to the Burlington Free Press sports desk. Submissions should include the athlete's name, school, sport, statistical summary, and brief game context.
2. Ballot curation: the sports desk selects nominees by editorial judgement from the submitted pool. Not every submission earns a ballot spot — the desk prioritises performances that stand out across the full weekly statewide field.
3. Open poll: separate boys and girls ballots go live at burlingtonfreepress.com, typically Monday or Tuesday, with unlimited voting until Wednesday at 9 p.m.
4. Winner announced: after the poll closes, the Burlington Free Press publishes both winners on burlingtonfreepress.com and across its social channels as part of the Vermont Varsity Insider coverage brand.

Recognition is reputational — there is no cash prize. A Burlington Free Press win produces a published, searchable Gannett byline that carries weight in recruiting correspondence and college coach outreach across Vermont and New England.

How do you get more votes for a Vermont Varsity Insider Athlete of the Week nominee?

Because this poll has no per-voter cap, total volume is the only variable. The direct poll link — not the athlete's name alone — needs to reach as many real supporters as possible before Wednesday at 9 p.m. For the full tactical framework for unlimited-cap polls, see our vote-getting how-to guide; the Vermont-specific priorities below reflect what works in this market.

Vermont's small state geography works in both directions. Statewide alumni networks — particularly from St. Johnsbury Academy, which draws students from across the Northeast Kingdom and beyond — span a wider geographic and social graph than a typical small-city school. At the same time, every Vermont school community is genuinely small: the full parent community of a D-I Vermont school may be only 600–800 families. In an unlimited-cap poll, raw organisation rather than community size determines the outcome.

When organic networks have been fully activated and the margin remains close, some families and booster clubs use a paid promotion service to reach additional real voters. For polls with no cap, delivery pacing matters less than total volume — but always confirm the current poll terms at burlingtonfreepress.com before using any external service. Our sports fan poll votes service can be calibrated to match the poll's structure.

What are the rules — and can you buy votes for this poll?

The Vermont Varsity Insider poll is a reader-engagement recognition feature with no cash prize and no Vermont prize-promotion law framework. The practical restrictions are Gannett's poll platform terms, which typically prohibit automated scripts and bots that artificially inflate vote counts. For a broader overview of the legality landscape across US online polls, see our full buy-votes guide.

Two types of activity are meaningfully different in how platforms treat them:

• Automated scripts or bots — rapid programmatic vote submissions from the same fingerprint that ignore normal session behaviour. These violate standard platform terms and produce detectable traffic patterns that result in vote removal.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people casting genuine votes from their own devices. Structurally this is the same as a booster club email reaching five hundred additional families — it is human fans voting, reached through a different channel.

Whether paid real-voter outreach satisfies the spirit of the contest's current terms is a judgement each entrant must make independently after reading the live poll page. Given that no prize is attached and the poll is an audience-engagement product, the risk exposure is reputational rather than legal — weigh it honestly against the recognition value of a Vermont Varsity Insider win.

Vermont Varsity Insider Athlete of the Week season timeline

The poll runs throughout all three VPA-recognised high school sports seasons. Vermont's northern climate compresses the fall and spring outdoor seasons relative to southern states, while the winter season — dominated by skiing, hockey, and basketball — reflects the state's athletic identity most distinctly. The table below maps the programme to the VPA calendar.

The winter season is the most competitive period for this poll. Vermont's skiing tradition — the state produces nationally competitive alpine and Nordic racers from schools like Middlebury Union, Burke Mountain Academy, and others — adds a sport category absent from almost every other state's athlete-of-the-week format. Basketball at Champlain Valley Union, Rice Memorial, and Essex draws strong community engagement in February, historically producing the winter's highest vote totals.

Spring votes are typically decided with smaller totals as parent energy is distributed across baseball, softball, and track simultaneously and school-year fatigue sets in. A well-organised spring campaign from even a D-II or D-III school can compete effectively against D-I nominees if the network is activated on day one.

For all Vermont-specific contest and voting guides, see our Vermont contest hub. For the full US index, visit our USA contest directory.