Racine Journal Times Athlete of the Week (Supernova): How Voting Works & How to Win

A baseball line next to a track result. That's Supernova's whole trick.

In a June 2025 edition, the Racine Journal Times put a standout baseball performance on the same five-name ballot as a track and field result. No football-only field, no single-sport bracket. Whatever happened that week in Racine County sports, that's the field.

Supernova is the weekly athlete-of-the-week feature the Journal Times (a Gannett paper inside the USA TODAY Network Wisconsin group) runs at journaltimes.com/sports during the school sports calendar. Five athletes, five different games or meets, one vote. The judgment being asked of a reader isn't "who's your favorite" so much as "whose performance was the one." A statistical line, a specific meet result, a single game: that's what's on the ballot, not a season-long reputation.

Case, Horlick, Park, or one of the county schools: who actually gets a slot?

Racine Unified School District covers the city: Case, Horlick, Park. Outside city limits sit Union Grove, Waterford Union, Burlington, Racine County schools with their own leagues and rivalries. Supernova doesn't reserve seats for either group. It just takes whoever's week was the standout one.

So a city program and a county program can land on the same five-name list if both delivered, and a school with nothing notable that week simply doesn't show up, sometimes for several weeks running. There's no conference quota smoothing that out. Compare that to the statewide Wisconsin High School Athlete of the Week poll, which pulls from every WIAA member school in the state rather than one county's game log.

Supernova also isn't the Milwaukee paper's poll wearing a different name. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Athlete of the Week runs under the same Gannett ownership but as a fully separate ballot for a different metro entirely.

Editors pick five names. Readers pick the winner. That split matters.

Nomination is editorial. The Journal Times sports desk reviews that week's Racine-area games and meets and decides which five performances earn a spot in the article. Readers don't nominate, they vote, and only after the five names are already locked in.

One wrinkle: old Supernova articles don't disappear from journaltimes.com once their voting window closes. They just sit there, looking identical to the current week's post. Check the publish date before you vote for anything. And because the organiser hasn't published a per-vote cap the way some statewide polls do, don't assume a rule from three weeks ago still holds. The live poll page is the only source that matters this week.

A five-name field spanning three or four sports also changes what a share message needs to say. "Vote for our athlete" doesn't work when there are two baseball players, a sprinter, and a lineman on the same ballot; a supporter has to name both the athlete and the specific performance being judged. General online voting mechanics for open-ballot fan polls like this one are covered in the main guide, and readers comparing season-long honors rather than a single week can check the Wisconsin High School Player of the Year program.

Moving a county-level vote without a published total to chase

The Journal Times doesn't publish raw vote counts for Supernova, so a supporter is working somewhat blind compared to a poll that shows a running tally. What does work: reaching people who already know the nominee. Teammates. Classmates. Family. The booster or club network around whichever program had the standout week.

Naming the athlete and the exact performance in the outreach message isn't optional here: it's the only way a recipient scanning five names across three sports finds the right one fast. Real-vote outreach support exists for communities trying to convert that kind of organic local reach into a stronger weekly count, and the same approach applies across other social-driven fan-vote campaigns in Wisconsin and beyond.

For other Wisconsin newspaper fan-vote programs, see the Wisconsin contest guide.