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

A season-capping honor, not another weekly athlete poll

Most fan ballots an Illinois reader runs into are weekly rhythm programs: the Herald-News Joliet Athlete of the Week and the Herald & Review Illinois Player of the Week reset every few days, and the Daily Chronicle runs a DeKalb County edition on the same beat. The Fans' Choice for Journal Star Volleyball Player of the Year works differently. It is a single season-capping honor for one sport, volleyball, run by the Journal Star, an Illinois newspaper publishing at pjstar.com, and it asks one question per edition: which player deserves the paper's fan-voted player of the year honor.

The host platform is Crowdsignal's poll.fm service, the same polling host behind many newspaper fan votes, with the 2025 ballot living at https://poll.fm/15903968. Because the honor caps a season rather than filling a week, its ballot names volleyball players from a spread of central Illinois schools rather than a rotating nominee slate, and the schools on the 2025 list, Dunlap, Washington, Illini Bluffs, Limestone, Midland and Brimfield among them, read as a regional coverage area rather than a single city's league.

Dated facts behind the Journal Star volleyball honor

Two editions of this award are confirmed: 2022 and 2025. The 2025 ballot carries the title "Fans' choice for 2025 Journal Star volleyball player of the year (Poll Closed)", which fixes both the year and the fact that voting has ended on that address. The 2025 window fell in August, with the poll opening and closing inside that month, and the program is marked annual with a next edition expected in 2026.

The visible result spread from the closed 2025 poll shows the Midland entry leading at 26 percent and the Brimfield entry at 19 percent, with the rest of the field behind them. That partial tally is the only figure attached to the program; no total vote count is printed anywhere with it.

Several facts sit outside the printed page. The Journal Star publishes no exact start or finish date for the volleyball poll, only the August month; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The paper also prints no category slate beyond the lone player of the year honor, no rule on repeat voting by a single supporter and no eligibility policy, and no separate nomination round dates appear for the 2025 edition. Those gaps are worth re-checking each cycle because a single-ballot honor can change shape between seasons without notice.

How a supporter votes on the Journal Star volleyball ballot

The mechanic is about as plain as public voting gets. A supporter opens the poll address on poll.fm, reads the answer list, selects one volleyball player of the year nominee and submits. No written entry, no bracket and no multi-stage round appears on the 2025 ballot, and no account step is described with it. The answer list identifies each nominee by name and school, and the schools named on the 2025 poll include Dunlap, Washington, Illini Bluffs, Limestone, Midland and Brimfield, with Illini Bluffs carrying two entries on the list.

One practical point matters today: the 2025 ballot is closed, so a selection made on that address now registers nothing. A supporter who wants to influence the current honor needs the live poll for the in-progress season, which the Journal Star posts under its volleyball coverage when the paper opens the vote. Editions ran in 2022 and 2025, so the poll address is not guaranteed to be the same one each season.

Because the ballot is a single-selection public poll, a school community's reach is the real lever. The get more votes online guide covers outreach that fits a plain public poll like this one, and the honor-specific options are summarized at buy award votes for readers weighing support beyond their own circle.

Where this ballot sits among Illinois fan votes

Within the Illinois fan-vote market this honor occupies a narrow lane. The Daily Chronicle DeKalb County Athlete of the Week and the two weekly programs linked above recycle nominees on a short cycle across many sports. The Illinois SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year and the two SI football class awards, Class 1A and Class 4A, are season-capping honors like this one but cover different sports and publishers. The Journal Star's volleyball honor stands alone in the set as the one capping girls volleyball with a fan vote.

Two contrasts follow from that. First, the nominee pool is fixed at the season's end rather than refreshed weekly, so a school's window to rally support is short and lands in August for the 2025 shape of the program. Second, the ballot is single-question: there is no category slate to split attention, so every vote on the poll goes to the one player of the year honor.

The coverage footprint also differs. The schools on the 2025 list, Dunlap, Washington, Illini Bluffs, Limestone, Midland and Brimfield, sit inside the Journal Star's Illinois coverage area, which makes this a regional paper's honor rather than a statewide one like the SI programs. A supporter comparing options in the state should match the honor to the sport and the paper first, then to the timing.

Pushing support for a Journal Star volleyball nominee

Because this ballot is one question with a fixed nominee list, support work is a turnout problem, not a persuasion problem. The people who will vote for a Dunlap, Washington, Illini Bluffs, Limestone, Midland or Brimfield nominee already exist around the school; the task is getting them to the poll while it is open. The 2025 window sat inside August, so the practical push lands in the weeks right after the volleyball season ends, when the paper posts the poll.

The Journal Star's ballot page prints no stated policy on organized vote drives, paid support or voting software for this honor, so the poll text itself is the only rule a supporter can point to. In print, outreach is neither restricted nor endorsed; nothing published restricts it, and nothing published blesses it. The safest reading is that votes the poll registers count and anything the poll rejects does not.

For readers weighing paid support, the honest framing is that Crowdsignal hosts this honor as a poll costing nothing to enter, with no printed vote cap, and the organizer's silence on outside help means the risk sits with the supporter, not with the paper. The votes guide and the award votes page cover the options without promising an outcome.