Fan's Choice for Journal Star Girls Basketball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who runs the Journal Star fan's choice vote and where the ballot lives

Run by the Journal Star, an Illinois newspaper whose web home is pjstar.com, this Fan's Choice award hands the girls basketball decision to readers rather than editors. The program lives inside the paper's girls basketball desk and asks its audience to name the season's top player from the nominated field. The paper's own story marks the current edition as "the second consecutive year" it has invited readers to select the fan's choice.

The ballot itself is carried on Crowdsignal at poll.fm, the polling service that hosts a family of Illinois newsroom reader votes. The voting URL for this program is https://poll.fm/15108929, and that page is the newest ballot of the series, carrying the current season's title. Because each edition occupies its own poll address, the paper's newest girls basketball story stays the safest entry point, and stale links from 2023 or 2025 will land on a closed result instead of an open vote.

The program is a public vote in the truest sense: any reader can open the ballot, the mechanics are a plain selection and submit, and the organizer sells nothing on the page. That shape, a publisher award decided partly by its own audience, is why this page exists as a reference rather than an entry form.

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

Two years stand as confirmed editions for the program: 2023 and 2025. The 2025 poll page carries the title "Fan's choice for 2025 Journal Star girls basketball player of the year" with a Poll Closed status, which is how a finished edition of a poll.fm series presents itself. The current cycle continues the pattern, and the paper's story announcing it frames the vote as the second consecutive year of reader participation.

The one hard date on the current window comes from the organizer's coverage: "You can cast your vote in the poll provided below, which will remain open until noon on Wednesday, March 4." That noon close on March 4 is the deadline supporters should plan around, and it places the live window inside the February stretch that matches the poll.fm series' timing.

Before that deadline, the organizer prints nothing else. Neither an opening day for the live window nor a nomination round shows up among the Journal Star's published pages; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The organizer is equally quiet on structure beyond the close time. Published pages set out no eligibility rule, no statement on how frequently one supporter may cast, and no description of a nomination stage, so the noon deadline is the sole rule anyone can point to. On the finished 2025 ballot, the visible tally had a leading nominee at 45 percent, which shows the poll reports percentages publicly as votes land.

For planning purposes the shape is simple: a February window, a noon close on March 4, and a result that feeds the paper's closing basketball story.

How a supporter votes on the poll.fm ballot today

Voting here takes seconds. A supporter loads the season's poll.fm page, reads the answer options, taps the nominee they want and submits. No form to fill in, no category to work through and no purchase of any kind sits on the organizer's side. The poll asks a single question, the girls basketball honor, and every answer option pairs a player with her Illinois school.

The host platform matters for how the vote feels. Crowdsignal's poll.fm pages load fast on phones, which is where most of this audience arrives after a share from a teammate or a family group chat, and the submit action registers immediately. Once votes land, the poll reports a percentage tally, as the closed 2025 ballot showed with its 45 percent leader. Supporters following the race can reopen the page to see where their player stands.

Two practical points follow from the mechanic. First, because the ballot is one question with one submit, all the value of a support push comes from reaching more distinct people before the noon March 4 close, not from repeat clicking. Second, because each edition occupies its own poll.fm address, a link saved last season points at a closed result, so always re-enter through the Journal Star's current story. Whether the platform allows repeat voting from the same person goes unstated on published pages, and the organizer prints no rule either way.

How this ballot sits beside the other Illinois reader votes

Across Illinois, publishers operate a whole family of fan ballots, and this one holds a distinct slot in that set. Most of the neighbours are weekly recognition polls: the Herald-News Joliet Athlete of the Week, the Herald & Review Illinois Player of the Week and the Daily Chronicle DeKalb County Athlete of the Week all reset on short cycles and honour a rotating field. The Illinois SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year, the Illinois SI Football Class 1A Player of the Year and the Illinois SI Football Class 4A Player of the Year are the seasonal cousins on the boys and football side.

The Journal Star's fan's choice belongs with the seasonal group rather than the weekly one. It runs once per girls basketball season, it crowns a single player by reader choice, and it feeds the paper's culminating coverage instead of a weekly recap. That gives it a different support rhythm: a campaign has the whole February window to build, and the noon March 4 close is the only deadline that matters, where a weekly ballot demands fresh pushes every few days.

It is also the only girls basketball reader award in this Illinois set, which concentrates attention. Nominated players come from high schools across the state's smaller towns as well as larger programs, and their communities rally around a ballot that names the whole season's best rather than one week's performance.

Strengthening support in this ballot honestly

Because this ballot asks a single question with a fixed noon March 4 close, effective support is a distribution problem: surface the poll.fm address to as many genuine supporters as possible ahead of the deadline. The levers that fit this program are local ones, a team's group chats, the school's parent network, youth basketball programs in the nominee's town, and a push timed well before the close rather than in its final hour. The organizer's published pages carry no stated policy on outside help for this poll, which is a real gap a supporter should weigh rather than ignore.

That silence cuts both ways. Nothing published welcomes purchased support, and nothing published forbids it, so the risk of any paid push lands on the nominee if the organizer objects later. For readers who want to understand what such services claim and what they cannot promise, the award votes page lays out the general picture without the hype, and this page deliberately makes no promise on the organizer's behalf.