Peoria Journal Star Girls High School Team of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Peoria Journal Star girls high school team of the year poll?

The Peoria Journal Star, the daily newspaper at the center of the Peoria-area market in Illinois, spent the summer of 2026 rolling out a series of reader polls celebrating the 2025-26 high school season. The paper framed the run as a slate of superlatives covering top teams, coaches, plus male and female athletes. The girls team of the year question was the second poll in that series, and it asked a single thing: which of six nominated squads deserved to be called the best girls team in the Peoria area.

The ballot lived on Crowdsignal, on a standalone poll page carrying the question, the six answer buttons and, once voting ended, the posted tally whose address appears in the table below. Filed under the best-of vertical, this poll needs no entry forms and no business categories; it is a straight reader choice among nominated teams, woven into the Journal Star's prep sports desk output instead of staged as an awards gala.

What does the dated history of this ballot show?

What the calendar and the tally reveal

Confirmed editions of the poll fall in 2025 and 2026. The 2026 ballot ran under the headline question, who is the 2025-26 Peoria-area girls high school team of the year, and stayed confined to June of that year, slotting in between the series' opener and the later athlete polls.

When the tally settled, the Journal Star's own summary read: "The Washington basketball team won the fans' choice for 2026 Journal Star Girls Team of the Year, winning a vote among six terrific teams across the 2025-26 school year." Three of the six nominees carried published figures:

Three things the posted material leaves open: neither the opening day nor the closing day of that June window was printed alongside the result, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Beyond the team question itself, the poll page sets out no additional category roster. And the winning team from the 2025 edition is not named anywhere next to the 2026 breakdown.

How does a supporter actually cast a choice in this poll?

Inside the ballot form

A supporter's path is short. The ballot opens on a single question with six selectable answers, covering the Dunlap, Tremont, Washington, Morton and Deer Creek-Mackinaw squads nominated across the 2025-26 season. Pick one, submit, done. Because the Journal Star limits the exercise to a single choice per person, it becomes a reach contest among the six communities rather than a stamina contest, and every distinct backer counts the same.

No sign-in step is described in the posted poll text, and the form loads like any ordinary web page whether the supporter arrives from a phone or a desktop computer. What the poll does not explain is whether the same browser can return for a second submission, so a campaign is safer planned around the printed rule than around testing its edges.

How does this ballot sit beside its Illinois neighbours?

Within the state's set of public ballots this program keeps company with a varied crowd: CommunityVotes Peoria IL operates in the same city, CommunityVotes Rockford serves Rockford to the north, Best of Chicago under the Chicago Reader covers the state's largest market, Sauk Valley Favorites runs out of Sterling, Chicago Style Weddings Best Of targets wedding businesses, and the BAGI-run Parade of Homes People's Choice vote rounds out the list.

The contrast with each of them is structural. Those programs are business best-of contests with multiple categories, nomination rounds and sponsor machinery built in. The Journal Star's poll is a single sports superlative produced by a newsroom's high school desk, decided by one reader choice per person inside a June window, with the result folded into the paper's summer storytelling instead of a banquet or a trophy night.

For a Peoria supporter that means the two local ballots rarely compete for the same click: CommunityVotes Peoria asks shoppers to crown favorite businesses, while the team of the year poll asks fans to settle a season-long argument about girls high school sport.

How can backers lift a team's total before the June tally closes?

Because the printed rule allows a single choice per person, the size of a team's backing network matters far more than any one supporter's persistence. The practical playbook for this ballot is therefore blunt: place the poll link where fresh people encounter it, which for a school community means team group chats, parent networks and the athletic department's own channels, and move early, since the June window leaves little runway between announcement and close.

Across the whole summer slate, the desk funnels participation through one front door: a story for a neighbouring Journal Star superlative told readers plainly to head to pjstar.com/sports to vote, and every question in the rollout then collects its answers on Crowdsignal until its deadline passes.

The Journal Star publishes no separate policy on purchased or coordinated support for this ballot; the only printed constraint is the one-choice-per-supporter rule. Supporters weighing outside help can read the outreach guide or compare award-vote services, then weigh either against whatever terms the live poll states that year.