Gadsden Times Boys Basketball Fan Vote Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Gadsden Times boys basketball fan vote is and who runs it

The Gadsden Times Boys Basketball Fan Vote Player of the Year honors one high school boys basketball season with a reader-decided award. The organizer is The Gadsden Times, the daily newspaper serving Gadsden and northeast Alabama, and the ballot lives at https://poll.fm/16792619 on poll.fm, Crowdsignal's polling host, the service many regional papers rely on for reader-driven honors.

The award sits inside the newspaper's high school basketball coverage. It is not a single-school contest: the 2026 ballot drew nominees from programs across the Gadsden area, including Glencoe, Guntersville, Sand Rock, Boaz, Albertville, Southside, Ashville, Jacksonville, Piedmont and Westbrook Christian. That spread is the point of the honor. A player of the year title only means something when the whole coverage area competes for it, and the newspaper's readership spans all of those communities.

The shape of the ballot is a straightforward public poll. A supporter opens the page, sees the nominee list with each player's school and town, picks one player and submits. There is no nomination round described on the ballot and no bracket structure; it is one list and one choice, which keeps the barrier to participation as low as a newspaper fan vote can be.

The dated record for this player of the year ballot

Confirmed editions of this Gadsden Times fan vote fall in 2023 and 2026. Runs in both those years make the ballot a recurring March-season fixture for the newspaper rather than a one-off promotion, and 2026 is the most recent confirmed edition rather than the only one The Gadsden Times has held.

The 2026 voting window sat entirely in March. The newspaper's own high school basketball coverage stated that voting would remain open until Tuesday, March 31 at noon CT, which gives the edition a firm closing point even though the opening day was not stated with the same precision. A March window fits the rhythm of Alabama high school basketball, where the fan vote lands as season play winds down and year-end honors are being decided.

Two facts stay off the organizer's ballot page: the category list and any rule on how often one supporter may vote; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The 2026 ballot page presents a single player of the year list rather than a multi-category form, but the newspaper has not printed a standing rules text that would carry over from one edition to the next.

For supporters planning around the next cycle, the practical takeaway is the closing pattern: a late-March deadline at noon Central time, announced through the newspaper's sports coverage once the ballot is live.

How a supporter votes on the Gadsden Times ballot today

Casting a vote on the Gadsden Times boys basketball ballot takes three actions. A supporter loads the poll.fm ballot for this player of the year vote, reads the nominee list, and each entry carries the player's school and town so a voter from Glencoe or Albertville can find their own program's nominee at a glance. Marking the circle next to a name and pressing the submit control logs the choice, and the page confirms it immediately.

No account, login or email step is described on the ballot. That is typical of Crowdsignal-hosted newspaper polls, where the publisher wants the widest possible participation from readers who will never register for anything. The trade-off is that the organizer's anti-manipulation options are limited to whatever settings the poll itself carries, and The Gadsden Times has not printed those settings anywhere a supporter can read them in advance.

One timing detail matters more than any other: the 2026 ballot is closed. The page now displays results rather than a live voting form, because the stated deadline of Tuesday, March 31 at noon CT has passed. A supporter arriving today can study the nominee list and the format, but an actual vote waits for the newspaper to publish the next edition's ballot, which per the annual pattern would arrive during the 2027 season's close.

When that ballot goes live, the same three actions apply: open the page, pick one player, submit. Nothing about the format has changed between the confirmed editions in the material available.

How this ballot sits beside its Alabama siblings

The Alabama high school sports ballot family that this program belongs to is larger than one award, and the contrast is the fastest way to understand what makes this one different. The statewide side of the family includes the Alabama High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week and the season-long Alabama High School Boys Basketball Player of the Year, both of which draw from programs across the whole state.

This Gadsden Times ballot is the local counterpart. Its coverage area is the newspaper's own readership around Gadsden, and its nominee list reflects that: programs from Boaz to Sand Rock to Piedmont, the schools a Gadsden-area sports reader actually follows. A statewide ballot can carry a nominee a local supporter has never seen play; this one cannot.

The same publisher pattern repeats across other sports. The market carries the Alabama High School Baseball Player of the Week, the football player of the week and football player of the year ballots, plus the girls basketball player of the week. Each is a separate program with its own ballot, its own window and its own organizer decisions, so a vote cast on one ballot never counts toward a sibling program.

What distinguishes the Gadsden Times award within that family is its shape: a single end-of-season honor for one sport in one coverage area, rather than a weekly rotation of honorees.

Strengthening support for a Gadsden Times fan vote nominee

Building support for a nominee here works the way the newspaper's own coverage implies: by reaching the communities behind the nominee list. A player from Glencoe or Southside has a town behind them, and the most effective campaigns for a ballot like this one run through those local networks, team families and school communities, timed to the March window before the noon CT deadline closes it.

The organizer's published position is thin. The Gadsden Times has never put out a rules text for this fan vote, so there is no stated allowance for or prohibition on organized voting pushes, purchased votes or automation. That silence cuts both ways: nothing grants permission, and nothing on the ballot page promises that results will stand unreviewed. A newspaper retains editorial control over an award it publishes, whatever the poll counter says.

Because the ballot is a single-selection public vote with no login step, the honest mechanics of support are simple: more people, reached earlier, voting once the ballot opens. The tactics that fit that shape are gathered on the get more votes online guide, which covers outreach that works on newspaper-run polls of this kind.