The Beacon Sports staff announced on Monday afternoon its plans for the first “Athlete of the Year” tournament. The 17-athlete tournament will feature all of the previous athlete of the weeks in a seeded bracket format similar to the NCAA tournament.

The tournament will be broken into the same two categories as the typical athlete of the week segments, featured in every edition of The Beacon. 17 males and 17 females will participate in separate brackets, crowning one male and one female champion.

The athletes will be seeded by The Beacon Sports staff: Luke Modrovsky, Ben Mandell, Alex Kielar and Kirsten Peters.

The competition will be conducted using Twitter polls via @wilkesbeacon. The winner of each poll will advance to next round. You can vote by logging into your Twitter account here.

In the event of a tie, the higher seed will advance.

The link to the selection show is here.

For the full tournament bracket: Click here.

For coverage of the tournament, check out the following Twitter accounts:

Luke Modrovsky, Sports Editor — @LukeModrovsky

Ben Mandell, Asst. Sports Editor — @BenMandell55

Alex Kielar, Asst. Sports Editor — @alexkielar

Kirsten Peters, Staff Writer — @kirsterpetersss

Additional coverage will be provided through media partner WCLH 90.7 FM — Wilkes University radio through @WCLH_radio and @WCLHsports

The champion of both categories will be featured in a full page spread in the final edition of The Beacon on Apr. 16.

In the meantime, you can vote for this week’s athlete of the week here until Weds. Apr. 4 at 12:00 p.m.

Dates and times for the voting periods are as follows:

Bracket released: Weds. Apr. 4, 3:00 p.m.

Preliminary round: Thurs. Apr. 5, 8:00 p.m. – Fri. Apr. 6, 11:59 p.m.

First round: Sat. Apr. 7, 10:00 a.m. – Sun. Apr. 8, 11:59 p.m.

Quarterfinal round: Mon. Apr. 9, 10:00 a.m. – Mon. Apr. 9, 11:59 p.m.

Semifinal round: Tues. Apr. 10, 10:00 a.m. – Tues. Apr. 10, 11:59 p.m.

Championship round: Weds. Apr. 11, 10:00 a.m. – Weds. Apr. 11, 11:59 p.m.