The Bulletin Preseason Softball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What The Bulletin's preseason softball award is and who runs it

The Bulletin, the Connecticut newspaper at norwichbulletin.com, runs the Preseason Softball Player of the Year as a public-vote award. The programme belongs to the sport vertical and honours a high school softball player ahead of the Connecticut spring season, which is what the preseason label on the ballot refers to.

The vote lives on the Crowdsignal host poll.fm, under poll 15281644. That poll number is the confirmed ballot for the programme, and it is where a supporter both votes in a live edition and reads the results of a closed one. The 2025 ballot is currently marked closed, so the page shows standings rather than a vote control until The Bulletin publishes the next preseason edition.

Voting works as a plain public ballot: the page lists the nominees and the supporter selects one. There is no nomination round shown on the page and no bracket structure, which makes this ballot simpler to follow than multi-round contests a newspaper might run elsewhere.

Facts at a glance

Because the organiser is a newspaper rather than a chamber or a booster club, the award travels with the paper's editorial coverage of Connecticut softball, and the ballot is promoted to the same readership that follows the paper's preseason reporting each school year.

The dated record for the Connecticut softball ballot

Editions of The Bulletin Preseason Softball Player of the Year are confirmed for 2022 and 2025, and the programme counts as annual because of those two edition years. 2026 is the expected year for the next edition, though The Bulletin has not printed an announcement date for it.

The voting phase in the confirmed cycle falls between September and November. That window is the only timing fact attached to the programme, and it is broader than a single weekend, which matters for anyone planning a support push around a specific closing day.

The 2025 ballot closed with clear margins. The leading nominee finished at 52 percent on 20,798 votes, and the runner-up finished at 29 percent on 11,376 votes. Those figures come from the poll.fm results page for the closed edition, and they show a field wide enough that a five-point gap separated the top of the ballot from the rest of the Connecticut nominees.

The Bulletin has printed no exact open or close dates for the softball vote, and no per-supporter rule appears beside it; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The ballot page also publishes no category list for the award beyond its single honour, and no promotion schedule for the Connecticut market is published anywhere on the host platform.

For a nominee camp, the practical reading is this: the programme is real and recurring, the window is a September-to-November phase, and every date that matters for planning sits on the live poll rather than in any summary of it.

How a supporter votes in the preseason softball poll today

Voting takes three moves. A supporter opens poll.fm/15281644, reads the ballot heading to see whether the current preseason softball edition is open or closed, and, when it is open, selects a nominee and presses the vote control. Crowdsignal logs the choice immediately, and the running total on the page updates without any account step being shown.

Right now the step that matters is the check. The 2025 edition of The Bulletin's softball ballot is marked closed, so a supporter arriving today sees the final standings, with the leading nominee at 52 percent, instead of a live vote control. Arriving during a closed window and pressing nothing is the correct outcome; the same page reopens as a ballot when The Bulletin publishes the next preseason edition, expected in 2026.

Nominees on the confirmed 2025 ballot were connected to Killingly, Plainfield, Norwich Tech, Ellis Tech and NFA, which gives a sense of the paper's coverage footprint across eastern Connecticut softball programmes. A supporter backing a player from any of those communities follows the identical path: open the poll, select the name, submit.

Whether The Bulletin allows repeat voting on later days is nowhere on the poll, so a supporter planning a daily return should read whatever rules text the live poll carries before building a routine around it. The host platform enforces whatever limit the organiser has configured, and that configuration is visible on the poll itself rather than in any summary.

How this softball ballot sits beside its Connecticut neighbours

Connecticut readers have several public-vote programmes to choose from, and The Bulletin's preseason softball award stands alone in the group as the only ballot devoted to softball ahead of the spring season. The nearest neighbours are weekly honours rather than preseason awards, which changes how a supporter campaigns for them.

The sibling set includes the Connecticut Gatorade Football Player of the Year, a statewide football award, and the Connecticut High School Baseball Player of the Week, which refreshes on a weekly cycle during the baseball season.

Basketball and lacrosse follow the same weekly pattern: the Connecticut High School Basketball Player of the Week, the boys lacrosse and girls lacrosse honours, and the football player of the week round out the Connecticut sport ballots on this site.

What makes the softball programme different is its position in the calendar and its shape. A weekly honour asks supporters to return every week during a season, while this preseason ballot asks for a concentrated push inside a single September-to-November phase for a single award. The organiser is also a specific Connecticut newspaper, The Bulletin, rather than a national sponsor or a multi-sport network, so the ballot travels with the paper's own softball coverage and its reader base in the paper's home market.

Strengthening support for a nominee on this ballot

Support for a nominee on The Bulletin's preseason softball poll comes down to reach inside the communities the ballot draws from. The confirmed 2025 field pulled nominees from Killingly, Plainfield, Norwich Tech, Ellis Tech and NFA, so the audiences that actually convert are school softball rosters, family networks and local followers who already read The Bulletin's coverage at norwichbulletin.com.

Timing carries extra weight on this ballot compared with a weekly honour, because the whole vote happens inside a single phase between September and November. A push that starts after the poll closes, as the 2025 edition now has, earns nothing; a push planned for the first days of a live window collects supporters who can still return while the ballot runs.

The Bulletin has not published its position on outside help for the softball ballot, so a campaign should stay inside whatever rules the live poll prints. The votes guide sets out outreach that fits a newspaper-run public vote, and the award votes page explains the purchase options for ballots of this shape without promising any result, since no organiser guarantee exists here.