Gadsden Times Fan Choice Boys Soccer Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in the Gadsden Times fan choice boys soccer ballot

Run by The Gadsden Times, the daily newspaper based in Gadsden, Alabama, this fan choice ballot lets readers decide the boys soccer Player of the Year across the paper's Northeast Alabama high school sports coverage. The honoree is chosen entirely by public vote rather than by a panel of editors, which is what the "fan choice" label signals.

The audience is the high school soccer community itself: players, classmates, families, and the fan bases of schools across the region. The 2026 nominee list alone draws from communities including Guntersville, Hokes Bluff, Collinsville, Glencoe, Boaz, Sylvania and Gadsden City, so the vote functions as a friendly competition between whole towns, not just between individual athletes. That is why the ballot travels fast on local social media each June, when the paper opens the round.

The voting itself happens on Crowdsignal, the polling platform served at poll.fm. The Gadsden Times publishes the ballot address alongside its announcement story, and supporters vote there without creating an account. The paper's own reporting around the 2026 round describes thirty-three nominees selected from All-Area nominations throughout the region, which gives a sense of scale: this is a single award covering an entire multi-county coverage area, not a small school-level poll.

For supporters, the practical picture is simple. One ballot, one pick per day, a June window, and a result the paper reports as part of its All-Area soccer honors. Everything a voter needs sits on the poll.fm page during the live round.

The dated timeline for this boys soccer fan vote

Three editions of the program are confirmed: 2023, 2025 and 2026. The 2023 round is the earliest ballot the platform shows for this program, the paper skipped a published edition in 2024, and the vote returned in 2025 and again in 2026. That pattern makes the fan choice award a recurring but not unbroken feature of The Gadsden Times soccer calendar, and the paper treats each round as its own announcement rather than promising a fixed schedule years ahead.

The 2026 window is the best documented. The paper's announcement story tells readers to cast a ballot before June 10, and states plainly that voting closes on Wednesday, June 10, at noon CT, with participants able to vote once each day. The ballot page itself, however, prints no opening date for the round, so the day voting begins in any given cycle is a detail supporters confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What the organizer has not published is a standing rulebook for the award: the ballot page carries no category roster, since the program honors a single player-of-the-year title, no stated eligibility criteria, and no figure for any prize attached to winning; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The thirty-three nominee count for 2026 is the one hard number the announcement gives, drawn from All-Area nominations throughout Northeast Alabama.

Recurrence beyond 2026 is likewise a matter of watching the paper. The program has run in three separate years, each round anchored to early June, and the next edition would be announced in The Gadsden Times sports section the same way the 2026 round was.

How a supporter votes in the Gadsden Times soccer poll today

Voting takes place as a plain public poll on a Crowdsignal form. To take part, load poll.fm/17070030, scan the list of nominated players with their schools printed beside each name, select one, and submit the form. No login is required on the ballot page, and the submission takes seconds.

The daily rule is the part that matters most for anyone following a nominee. The Gadsden Times states that participants can vote once each day, which means a single visit is not the whole job: a supporter who wants to move a player up the board returns the next day and votes again, and the paper's June 10 noon CT close marks the last day that counts in the 2026 round.

The ballot itself is a single question. Unlike some newspaper fan votes that carry several categories on one form, this program honors one thing, the boys soccer Player of the Year, and the thirty-three nominees for 2026 are all contenders for that single title. The schools represented range across the coverage area, from Guntersville and Hokes Bluff to Collinsville, Coosa Christian, Glencoe, Boaz, Sylvania and Gadsden City.

Because the form is hosted on poll.fm rather than on the newspaper's own domain, supporters sometimes look for the link again after losing it. The reliable path is the paper's announcement story, which carries the ballot address, or the poll.fm URL directly. Once the round closes, the page is marked as a closed poll and the result stands until the paper opens the next edition.

How this ballot sits beside other Alabama high school votes

The Gadsden Times fan choice soccer vote is one of several public ballots covering Alabama high school sports, and it is the only one in the group devoted to boys soccer player of the year. Its neighbours on this site include the Alabama High School Football Player of the Year ballot, the Alabama High School Boys Basketball Player of the Year, and weekly player-of-the-week votes for baseball, football, boys basketball and girls basketball.

Two differences stand out. First, the cadence: the weekly programs run through their seasons with a fresh ballot each week, while this soccer award is a single end-of-season vote each June. Second, the publisher: the weekly programs answer to their own organizers, while this ballot belongs to The Gadsden Times and reflects that paper's All-Area nomination process across Northeast Alabama.

The calendar is what a supporter actually feels. A soccer family in Gadsden, Guntersville or Hokes Bluff has one concentrated window in early summer, closing June 10 at noon CT in the 2026 cycle, with a once-each-day rule. Families following the football or basketball ballots deal with rolling weekly deadlines instead. Knowing which shape a program follows is what tells a supporter how much daily effort a campaign takes.

The towns on the nominee list also show the ballot's reach. Collinsville, Boaz, Glencoe, Sylvania, Coosa Christian and Gadsden City all appear among the 2026 options, so the vote is genuinely regional rather than a single-school affair, and each community's turnout can decide the outcome.

Strengthening support within the Gadsden Times daily vote

Because the paper caps each person at one vote per day, the arithmetic of this ballot rewards consistency over bursts. A nominee with a hundred daily supporters who return every day through June 10 will outrank a larger group that votes once and forgets. The first practical step for any campaign is therefore a daily reminder loop: a team group chat, a school booster page or a family thread that posts the poll.fm link each morning until the noon CT close on June 10.

The second step is reach across the coverage area. The 2026 ballot draws thirty-three nominees from All-Area nominations throughout Northeast Alabama, so a player's home community, Guntersville, Hokes Bluff, Collinsville or wherever the school sits, is the natural base, and each person there can vote daily. Asking once rarely converts everyone; the supporters who move totals are the ones who ask again politely and make the link easy to find.

On outside help, the organizer's published rule is the once-each-day limit, and the paper has not printed any further statement about purchased or automated votes on its ballot page. What is true of the ballot itself is that Crowdsignal tallies what is submitted and the paper controls its own result. For a fuller treatment of outreach methods that work inside a daily-limit public vote, see our votes guide, and for the service options behind that discussion, the buying votes page covers the market in general terms.