Hunter Smith, our 2016 Athlete Supreme. (John Fisken photos)
Runner-up Lauren Grove at work on the soccer field.
Smith checks the base runner (and the vote count).
Return your voting finger to its upright position.
If you can…
The past 100 hours have seen an unprecedented explosion of fervor — mixed with a little screaming, whining, pleading, snarkiness and good-old-fashioned trash talking — here on Coupeville Sports.
This is the fourth time I’ve celebrated the end of the school sports year by holding a winner-take-all poll for the Athlete Supreme.
But year #4 made years #1-3 look downright quaint.
We topped out a bit over 15,000 votes last year, when CJ Smith joined Nick Streubel (2013) and Amanda Fabrizi (2014) in claiming a title that exists only in our minds.
This year?
123,908 votes cast in 100 hours, with Wolf sophomore Hunter Smith riding an explosion of votes in the final 36 hours to upend junior Lauren Grove and make it back-to-back wins for his family.
At one point Tuesday, the two were separated by three votes, than the Smith mafia (I kid, I kid) kicked it to another gear and it was done, man.
Hunter finished with an uncanny 28,440 votes.
Grove (23,286), freshman Lindsey Roberts (15,496), senior Makana Stone (12,962) and sophomore Julian Welling (12,098) rounded out the top five in our 20-athlete field.
To those who played along, thanks.
And to those like laid-back Lathom Kelley and feisty McKenzie Bailey, who couldn’t have cared less about my silly poll, you know you’re still on my A-list.
Maybe even more so now.
The poll, kicked off Saturday afternoon, was a knock-down, drag-out affair, with early front-runners taken down hard in the second half by athletes with extremely deep benches of family and friends who voted in a frenzy.
By the time we got to the final 24 hours, it was firmly a two-person race between three-sport stars, both of whom are standout athletes and better people.
Nerves got frazzled, charges of voter fraud were launched more than once (I, for one, never saw any, but if people found a way to bend the system, hey, let’s give credit where credit is due) and everyone got worked into a froth for an award that exists … only in our minds.
Will I go back to one-person, one-vote next year? We’ll see. I have 12 months to ponder it all.
For now, a bow in the direction of Hunter Smith, our 2016 Athlete Supreme.
And now we can all return to our normal lives and some of you can go stick your thumbs in a bucket of ice.
