The Peoria Journal Star Preseason High School Girl Soccer Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Peoria Journal Star preseason girls soccer poll is, and who runs it

Most fan-voted high school awards in Illinois are weekly rhythm ballots: a paper names an athlete of the week, readers vote for a few days, and the cycle restarts. The Peoria Journal Star Preseason High School Girl Soccer Player of the Year works differently. It is a single preseason question, published by the Peoria Journal Star, asking readers to name the fans' choice for preseason player of the year in girls high school soccer before the season begins. That preseason framing is the program's defining trait: the award is settled before a single match is played, which makes it a prediction poll rather than a reward for a week's performance.

The organizer is the Peoria Journal Star, the daily newspaper serving the Peoria, Illinois market. The ballot is a Crowdsignal page, and the 2026 edition sits at poll.fm/16801608. The nominee list draws on the paper's high school soccer coverage across the Peoria area: the 2026 ballot pairs players with schools including Peoria Notre Dame, Washington and Morton, and Dunlap sits inside the coverage area the paper's soccer reporting reaches. Every nominee plays for a Peoria-area high school, so this reference describes the field by school, sport and season and never names the players themselves.

The dated history of the Peoria Journal Star preseason soccer poll

Two editions of this poll are confirmed: 2023 and 2026. The 2026 ballot carries the question "Who is the 2026 Peoria Journal Star preseason high school girl soccer player of the year?" and is now marked Poll Closed on poll.fm. The paper's own coverage of the 2026 edition states that the polling opportunity would remain open until noon on Tuesday, April 7, and the voting period sat in March, matching the preseason slot the award occupies in the paper's soccer calendar. The recurrence pattern points to a next expected edition in 2027.

Several details sit outside that history. The Journal Star's coverage prints a closing time for the 2026 window but no opening date, no nomination round dates and no per-supporter voting rule; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The ballot is also a single-question format, so there is no category roster to publish in the way a multi-category awards program would carry. Readers who want the precise shape of the next window should treat the paper's high school girls soccer coverage as the announcement point, since that is where the 2026 edition was promoted before the poll.fm ballot went live.

How a supporter votes in the Peoria Journal Star preseason soccer poll

The mechanic is deliberately plain. During a live window, a supporter loads the poll.fm page the Journal Star links from its soccer coverage, reads the single question the paper has posed for that preseason, and picks one nominee from the list. Every option pairs a player with her high school, so the Peoria Notre Dame, Washington, Morton and Dunlap entries are easy to tell apart even though the ballot does not print photographs or statistics beside each name. After the selection is made, the supporter presses the vote control and the page logs the choice and shows the running tally.

Two practical notes follow from that format. First, because the ballot is a single preseason question rather than a weekly series, there is no return visit to make: anyone hoping to vote again must wait for the next edition, which the confirmed years place in 2027. Second, the 2026 ballot is closed, so anyone opening poll.fm/16801608 today sees the final standings rather than a live form. The action that matters now is following the Peoria Journal Star's high school girls soccer coverage so the next preseason ballot is not missed, since the paper announces each edition through its own sports desk before the poll goes live.

How this ballot sits beside its Illinois neighbours

Within Illinois, this page's closest neighbours are the weekly athlete ballots and the Sports Illustrated-style player of the year awards. The Herald-News Joliet Athlete of the Week and the Herald & Review Illinois Player of the Week both run on a weekly rhythm, resetting with each new edition, while the Daily Chronicle DeKalb County Athlete of the Week ties its ballot to a single county. The Peoria Journal Star's preseason soccer poll shares the newsroom-published, public-vote format with all of them but differs in timing and scope: it is a preseason award, it covers girls soccer only, and it settles the question in a single window rather than across a season.

The football and basketball awards sit further away. 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 boys programs organized by sport and classification. The Peoria Journal Star poll is the girls soccer counterpart in this set: a preseason, single-question, fans' choice award for one sport, published through the poll.fm platform and anchored to the Peoria market rather than to a statewide classification system.

Strengthening support in a short preseason window

Because this ballot asks a single preseason question and the 2026 window ran through March before closing at noon on Tuesday, April 7, support has to be organized quickly. The most effective move inside the poll's own mechanics is to circulate the Peoria Journal Star's story link, since that is where the paper sends readers to the poll.fm ballot, and to reach the school communities at Peoria Notre Dame, Washington, Morton and Dunlap while the window is still open. A closed poll cannot be voted in, so timing matters more than volume.

No published rule from the Peoria Journal Star addresses outside help or automated voting for this preseason award, which means supporters should assume ordinary newsroom poll standards apply. Anything that inflates the tally without real people behind it puts a nominee's result at risk of being thrown out by the organizer. The practical guidance in how to get more votes online stays inside those lines, and readers weighing paid support can review the legal position at is buying votes legal before acting.