Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

The gap between a 3,158-vote week and a 12,600-vote week

Three windows, three very different results. April's softball poll closed tight: 36.2% of 3,158 votes. Three weeks later, baseball pulled 12,600 (four times the turnout) and still only handed the winner 43.3%. Then track flipped the pattern entirely: a mid-size 4,242-vote field, but a blowout 64.5% share. That is the actual shape of this poll, and it is worth sitting with before assuming any single week predicts the next. Nobody publishes a running average here. There is no season-long standings page. What exists is three data points from spring 2026, and they contradict the easy assumption that more votes means a closer race. Baseball's crowd was bigger, and the finish was closer than track's smaller one. So turnout size and margin size move independently. A school community chasing a nomination should plan for either outcome, not just the flashy five-figure week. A useful way to read this: the poll rewards whichever community shows up repeatedly over the multi-day window, since the Herald-Times has confirmed there is no per-person cap. A single school with one clear nominee and a tight-knit alumni network can out-return a bigger district that splits its attention across several sports that same week. That dynamic, more than raw enrollment, decided track's 64.5%. For a look at how this compares to IndyStar's statewide girls basketball poll, the turnout math runs on the same open-window logic.

What the record does and doesn't tell us

Here's the honest gap. The Herald-Times publishes each week's final tally in its own sports coverage, but it does not maintain a standalone archive of past winners. Anyone researching this poll before entering a nomination is working from whatever weeks happen to be indexed and dated on heraldtimesonline.com at the time. That's a real limit, not a minor caveat: a program running since the 2020s only has three confirmed 2026 data points documented here. IU Health presents the program; the Herald-Times' Gannett-owned sports desk builds the actual ballot from games it covers across Monroe County, Owen County, and Greene County. Confirmed 2026 windows:

Confirmed 2026 Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week results

Window	Sport	Total votes	Winning share
April 20-25	Softball	3,158	36.2%
May 4-9	Baseball	12,600	43.3%
May 11-16	Track and field	4,242	64.5%

Notice the program doesn't run one fixed weekly slot year-round. It follows each sport's own spring calendar, which is why the covered activity changes month to month rather than staying constant. For the statewide picture this regional program sits inside, the Indiana High School Athlete of the Week guide covers turnout patterns across the rest of the state, and the Indiana High School Player of the Year program covers the season-long counterpart to this weekly format.

How this differs from an SI-network poll, and what that means for turnout

Most Athlete of the Week programs nationally run through the Sports Illustrated / SBLive network, with a shared voting widget and shared rulebook across states. This one doesn't. It's a Gannett paper's own in-house poll, presented by a regional hospital system, covering one metro area rather than a whole state's classification ladder. That distinction matters for anyone comparing turnout numbers across programs. An SI-network statewide poll pulls from hundreds of schools and multiple classifications competing on one ballot; a single lopsided week there can reflect one huge school's fan base overwhelming a small one. Bloomington's ballot, by contrast, draws only from Monroe County city schools, Bloomington South, Bloomington North, Edgewood, plus neighboring Owen Valley and Eastern Greene. Fewer schools in the pool means a mobilized community here has an outsized shot at a five-figure baseball week or a 64.5% track blowout, regardless of enrollment size. No account, login, or subscription gates participation, and the organiser confirms there's no vote cap per person. Award-poll vote support is built for exactly this kind of open, uncapped multi-day window, where sustained return visits (not one big share) are what separates a 3,158-vote week from a 12,600-vote one. The real votes guide is worth reading alongside it for staying inside whatever rules the live ballot states that week, and get more votes online covers the same multi-day mobilization approach in general terms.

What this means for a Monroe County nomination

So what should a school community actually expect? Not a fixed number. Plan for a range: low thousands if the covered sport is niche that week, five figures if it's baseball or another high-interest sport pulling from a bigger roster pool. The track week is the reminder that a smaller crowd can still deliver a decisive, well-organised win, 64.5% on 4,242 votes beat baseball's 43.3% on triple the turnout. Because the ballot spans a Bloomington city school and a rural Owen or Greene County program in the same pool, the same principle that plays out in bigger state tournaments shows up here at a metro scale: a tight, coordinated network beats a bigger but distracted one. Browse the Indiana fan-vote hub for other in-state weekly polls running a similar format, or start with the buy votes online overview and the full USA fan-vote directory if this is the first program a school community has campaigned for.

Vote totals and winning percentages last confirmed for the April-May 2026 spring season; check heraldtimesonline.com for the current week's live ballot before voting.