Ruden Report Team of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Ruden Report Team of the Week and who runs it?

The Ruden Report covers school sports across Fairfield County, Connecticut, and its Team of the Week ballot turns that beat coverage into a recurring reader honor. Round by round, the publication nominates a shortlist of area squads, posts them on a Crowdsignal ballot, and lets readers decide which team earns the weekly title. The franchise wears its sponsor's name openly, appearing on the organizer's own posts as the Ruden Report-Fairfield County Bank Team of the Week, and the poll entries carry Dave Ruden's byline.

The balloting itself takes place off the outlet's domain: each round runs on a Crowdsignal widget reached via poll.fm, and this week's address is https://poll.fm/17516296. Because the format is a public fan vote, the outcome rests entirely on how many people click through and back a nominee, which is why organized school communities tend to dominate each round.

Structurally this is a best-of style honor rather than a single-elimination bracket. Instead of one champion crowned at a fixed finale, recognition lands round after round across the school year, and a squad that falls short this week can reappear on a later ballot with the count reset to zero. For a contestant or a parent, that shape changes the planning completely: every fresh ballot is a new, self-contained sprint rather than one long cumulative race.

Which seasons are confirmed, and when do rounds run?

Six straight seasons of the ballot are confirmed, opening in 2021 and continuing without a break to 2026. Activity inside those years clusters into two blocks, January through May and September through November, which tracks a school calendar that opens in early autumn and winds down before summer. In practice that makes the Team of the Week a cold-weather and spring fixture, with the summer months quiet.

The ballot page prints no opening or closing date for the round in progress. A supporter who wants to time a final-day push therefore reads the deadline off the live widget, or off the matching announcement post on the publisher's site where each new poll is introduced. Beyond the team slate itself, no category list appears anywhere on the ballot: it asks one question and lists the nominated squads underneath, with no side awards attached.

Nothing has been posted yet about the 2027 round schedule, although the series has returned for every cycle since its earliest confirmed one. Treat each new announcement as its own event rather than assuming a fixed opening day.

How do you vote on the current Team of the Week ballot?

Taking part is free and needs nothing beyond a browser. Open https://poll.fm/17516296, read the nominated squads for the round, select the choice beside the team you back, and press the Vote button. A View Results link on the same widget shows the standing tally, so a campaign can measure the gap to the leader without leaving the page.

The nominee slate changes from round to round, and the current field spans football, boys soccer, girls soccer, boys cross country, girls cross country, field hockey, golf and a combined swimming and diving entry. That spread matters for anyone reading the ballot: a weekly honor here is not confined to one sport or one gender, so a fall squad, a winter swim program and a spring golf side can all surface inside the same stretch of season. Larger-enrollment programs and smaller ones sit side by side on the same list, which keeps every round genuinely open rather than pre-sorted by school size.

One rule gap deserves attention before anyone builds a plan. Neither the ballot page nor the organizer's posts spell out a per-person cap, an eligibility standard or a repeat-vote allowance; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Because every round is a standalone poll, momentum does not carry over either: a squad that won last week starts the next ballot level with the rest of the field. The simplest thing a backer can do for a nominee remains passing along the widget address itself, since every extra click enters through the same door.

How does this ballot compare with other Connecticut fan votes?

Connecticut readers have several public votes to choose from, and the Team of the Week occupies a distinct lane among them. Citywide and statewide best-of programs such as Best of Connecticut and CommunityVotes Bridgeport ask voters to crown favorite local businesses and services across wide category lists. This ballot instead honors athletic squads, and it refreshes round after round rather than running one long seasonal cycle.

Regional publishers run comparable honors in their own territories: the Hartford Courant backs reader ballots for Best of Hartford and Best of New Haven, Moffly Media stakes out the shoreline with Best of the Gold Coast, and West Hartford carries its own town-level version. None of those duplicates what The Ruden Report does in Fairfield County, where the nominated field is made up of named school programs rather than merchant categories.

For a nominee's backers, the practical difference comes down to turnout math. A town-wide best-of ballot splits attention across dozens of categories, while a single-question team poll concentrates every click on one head-to-head field, so a smaller school can compete on even footing whenever its community shows up together.

How can a squad's backers build bigger vote totals this season?

Every fresh ballot resets the field, so a backing campaign has to move fast inside a short window instead of grinding through a long one. The moves that matter are local: point teammates, parents and alumni at the exact widget address, agree on a night when the whole roster fires at once, and watch the View Results tally to see whether the gap is closing. The Ruden Report publishes no stated position on outside assistance, so read the organizer's own announcements before leaning on any paid help. For a fuller playbook that transfers to any public fan poll, work through how to earn more votes online and adapt the steps to a single-question school ballot like this one.