The Record's Flag Football Player of the Year Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

One year-end ballot beside a field of weekly honors

Most of the public votes tied to The Record on this site follow a weekly rhythm: a player of the week is named, the ballot closes, and a fresh one opens days later. The Record's Flag Football Player of the Year Poll works on the opposite schedule. It is one ballot, one award, and one season-long question: which California high school flag football player deserves the newspaper's player of the year title.

The organizer is The Record, a California newspaper whose domain is recordnet.com. Its flag football ballot sits on Crowdsignal at poll.fm, reachable at https://poll.fm/16211149. The vertical is high school sport, the format is a single-choice public vote, and the market is the state of California rather than any single town, with nominees drawn from programs across the state.

The 2025 ballot listed nominees across on-field roles, mixing quarterbacks, wide receivers, defensive backs and multi-position athletes, each identified with a school. That breadth is what separates a player of the year vote from a weekly honor: the field is season-wide, not one game's standout.

The dated record for this flag football poll

The confirmed edition years for The Record's flag football poll are 2023 and 2025. The 2025 edition is the one whose ballot sits at the poll.fm address, and its title there reads The Record's 2025 Flag Football Player of the Year Poll, marked closed. The voting window for that edition fell in October, opening and closing within the same month.

The final tally is posted on the closed ballot: the leading nominee finished with 53 percent of 163,388 votes cast, and the full order of finish appears beneath the poll title.

Several facts sit outside that page. The Record has not printed a category breakdown for the flag football ballot, and no eligibility notes accompany the nominee list. The exact day the 2025 window opened, the day it closed, and the equivalent dates for future editions are not stated anywhere on the ballot page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What the confirmed years do establish is shape: a single award ballot per season, timed to October, rather than a rolling series of weekly polls. Whether every future edition reuses the same poll.fm address is a detail The Record has not addressed in print.

How a supporter votes on this ballot

Casting a vote on The Record's flag football ballot takes only a minute. The supporter opens https://poll.fm/16211149 in any browser; reaching the poll itself involves no newspaper subscription. The page lists the nominees for the edition, each entry showing the player's role, such as quarterback or wide receiver, and her school.

To cast a vote on The Record's flag football ballot, a supporter selects the button beside one nominee and presses the vote button. Crowdsignal registers the choice and refreshes the percentage tally displayed beside each name, so the running result is visible on the same page as the ballot.

For the 2025 edition that sequence is now historical: the poll is marked closed, and the page shows the final tally instead of an active vote. A supporter arriving today reads the result rather than casting a choice.

For the next edition, the practical advice is to go to the ballot The Record publishes for that cycle rather than assuming this address carries over. The organizer has not said whether the 2026 flag football poll reuses the same poll.fm page, and the nominee list, the roles represented and any new rules will all be printed on whatever ballot the newspaper posts next.

How this ballot sits beside its California siblings

The Record's flag football poll is the only year-end player of the year ballot among its closest neighbours on this site. Five of the sibling programs are weekly honors: California High School Baseball Player of the Week, California High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week, California High School Football Player of the Week, California High School Girls Basketball Athlete of the Week, and California High School Softball Player of the Week.

Those five run on a rolling cadence, one ballot after another through a season. The flag football poll instead concentrates its whole vote into a single October window and closes with a posted final order of finish, which means a supporter has one chance per year rather than a fresh ballot every week.

The sixth sibling, the Fresno Bee Athlete of the Week, belongs to a different California publisher entirely, so it shares the state and the high school sport vertical but not the organizer. The flag football poll's identity rests on The Record's own masthead and its Crowdsignal ballot, and that combination is what a supporter should look for when telling this award apart from the weekly series around it.

Concentrating support in a single October window

Because The Record's flag football poll compresses its entire vote into one October ballot, support for a nominee has to be organized before the window opens rather than built gradually across a season. The practical moves are simple: share the poll.fm address directly with teammates, classmates and family, and ask each person to cast a choice early instead of waiting for a final-week push that a closed poll cannot accept.

The ballot page prints no rule from The Record about outside help or organized voting for the flag football poll, so the organizer's position on any method is not published. What is certain is the format: one single-choice public vote on Crowdsignal, with the running percentage tally visible to every visitor, which makes early and broad participation the visible difference between nominees.

Methods that suit a short, one-ballot format like this are covered in how to get more votes online, and award-style ballots specifically are treated at buying award votes.