Every week around this time I get a little soft-hearted, and I make no apologies for it. The Florida Power & Light PNJ Boys Athlete of the Week ballot is up, six nominees deep, and if you've got a minute you ought to go vote. This is my favorite corner of the sports calendar, when the Friday night lights are just warming up and nobody in the bleachers knows yet which of these kids ends up playing on Sundays, or never plays again after graduation and remembers it all forever anyway.

The deal is simple. The Pensacola News Journal, with FPL footing the bill, rounds up the best boys performances from the week in high school sports around the Panhandle and puts it to a fan vote. You vote, the kid gets a little ink, and his grandparents get to frame it. Don't tell me that doesn't matter. I've been covering sports long enough to know the clipping a mother saves means more to her than most trophy rooms ever will.

What I like about these weekly awards, and it's the same thing I liked about the Bloomfield Hills coach I wrote about earlier this month, is that they catch players before anybody has a narrative attached to them. No draft stock, no recruiting ranking clouding the picture. Just a kid who ran wild on a Thursday night or a pitcher who couldn't be touched, and a town that noticed.

This ballot closes at 11 a.m. Saturday, so if you're in the Pensacola area and you saw one of these performances live, go make it count before the clock runs out. And if you didn't, read the summaries and pick the performance that would've stopped you in your tracks. That's how I'd vote. Stats support the story, but a fourth-quarter run with the game on the line is the story.

Six names on a ballot. One of them gets the week. All of them get the memory. Go vote, then check back next week, because we do this all over again. Thank goodness for that.