Fans' Choice for Journal Star Boys Soccer Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes and what the Journal Star fans' choice actually is

The Fans' Choice for Journal Star Boys Soccer Player of the Year is a readers' poll, not an editorial award. The Journal Star, the daily newspaper serving the Peoria, Illinois area at pjstar.com, asks its audience to pick a fans' choice honoree for high school boys soccer, and the balloting happens on Crowdsignal, the service behind poll.fm. The 2025 ballot carried the address poll.fm/15930167 and was titled as the fans' choice for that year's player of the year.

Who the ballot is for matters as much as what it asks. The nominees are high school boys soccer players from communities around Peoria, including Morton, Dunlap and Metamora, and the supporters doing the voting are the same readers who follow the newspaper's athlete of the week coverage through the fall. That makes the audience local by design: a nominee's support comes from his school community, his club network and the families that read the Journal Star's sports section, not from a national fanbase.

The organizer is also careful to separate this poll from its own editorial work. In its coverage the Journal Star states that the fans' vote has no bearing on who will be selected the Journal Star Player of the Year or make the annual All-Area team. In other words, the fans' choice is a popularity reading of the audience, published beside the newspaper's official selections rather than feeding into them.

The dated record: which editions ran and when the window falls

Confirmed edition years for this fans' choice are 2023, 2025 and 2026. The 2025 ballot is the one whose full page survives, titled as the fans' choice for the 2025 Journal Star boys soccer player of the year and now marked closed. For 2026 the organizer's own coverage asks readers to make a fans' choice for the preseason boys soccer player of the year, which shows the series continuing into that season.

The window is anchored to August. The confirmed 2025 edition ran during that month, which fits the preseason timing the Journal Star describes for its 2026 edition, and Illinois high school boys soccer begins its competitive year in late summer. The ballot page leaves the exact open and close days unstated in any given cycle, and no nomination round schedule appears either; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two more gaps sit beside the dates. The 2026 preseason edition listed eleven players on the ballot, but the organizer has not published a standing rule about how many nominees a season carries, and no per-reader vote limit or eligibility text appears anywhere on the ballot page. The one boundary the Journal Star does state is the boundary of the award itself: this vote is unofficial and does not touch the Player of the Year selection or the All-Area team.

How a supporter votes in the Journal Star boys soccer poll today

Voting takes little effort, which is why the newspaper can run it season after season with minimal friction. A supporter opens the current ballot on Crowdsignal, reads the list of nominees for boys soccer player of the year, selects one, and submits. There is no form to fill out beyond that choice, and the ballot page shows no sign of a login or account requirement. The 2025 ballot at poll.fm/15930167 worked exactly this way before it closed.

Each nominee on the ballot is identified with his school community, so a supporter scanning the list can find the player tied to Peoria, Morton, Dunlap, Metamora or another Peoria-area town. The 2026 preseason edition carried eleven nominees. Because the roster is rebuilt every season, the names a supporter sees in August will not match the names from a prior year, and the only list that counts is the one on the live ballot.

After a poll closes, Crowdsignal turns the ballot page into a results display. The closed 2025 ballot shows the final share of support each leading nominee received, which is how the newspaper's audience sees where the fans' choice landed. A supporter who arrives at a closed ballot has missed that cycle's window and should look for the current season's story on pjstar.com, which carries the fresh poll address each August.

How this ballot sits beside its Illinois neighbours

Illinois has a crowded field of publisher-run fan votes, and this one is distinguishable by its cadence and its subject. The Herald-News Joliet Athlete of the Week and the Herald & Review Illinois Player of the Week are weekly series tied to a single sport or rotating sports, while the Daily Chronicle DeKalb County Athlete of the Week is bound to one county. The Journal Star's fans' choice is a once-a-season honor for one sport, boys soccer, decided in a single August window.

The closest structural cousins are the year-end honors: the Illinois SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year and the football class honors at Class 1A and Class 4A. Those are statewide ballots run by a different publisher, whereas this fans' choice draws its nominee pool and its voters from the Journal Star's own Peoria-area readership. A Peoria-area soccer family has a different, smaller and more personal electorate here than on a statewide ballot.

What makes this one different in practice is the organizer's honesty about its weight. The Journal Star says outright that the fans' vote does not influence the official Player of the Year or the All-Area team, so supporters are competing for a readers' honor, not a line on a college resume. That framing shapes how a school community campaigns: the prize is the visible show of local support on a closed ballot that everyone in town can read.

Strengthening support in the Journal Star fans' choice

Because this is a single August window with a Peoria-area electorate, timing and reach matter more than anything clever. The ballot lists eleven or so nominees tied to specific school communities, so the campaigns that move the needle are the ones that reach an entire roster's families early: a team group chat, the school's soccer booster channel, and a post from the club program the player plays for in the offseason. Ask people to open the poll.fm link from the Journal Star's own story so they land on the live ballot rather than a closed prior year.

The organizer's published position gives the boundary. The Journal Star states the fans' vote has no bearing on the official Player of the Year or the All-Area team, and it has printed no rules text beyond that, so there is no published endorsement of outside vote services either. A campaign built on real local supporters is the only kind this ballot's design rewards, since the closed results are public and a nominee's standing is read by the same community that voted. For a broader playbook, see our guide on getting more votes.