The Rockford Area Preseason Volleyball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Rockford Area Preseason Volleyball Player of the Year is

The Rockford Area Preseason Volleyball Player of the Year is a supporter poll organised by the Rockford Register Star, the daily newspaper serving Rockford, Illinois, under the rrstar.com masthead. It sits inside the paper's high school sports desk and asks readers to pick the standout volleyball player in the Rockford area before the fall season begins. Crowdsignal carries that poll at poll.fm, where the live ballot for the current edition sits at https://poll.fm/15960390.

The poll's nominees are individual high school volleyball players drawn from schools across the region. The ballot page groups each nominee with her school, and the communities represented on the ballot include Rockford itself, Pecatonica, Stockton, Durand, Auburn and Milledgeville. Every nominee on the list is a student athlete, so this reference page identifies the field by school and town only.

Readers who follow other Illinois fan ballots can compare it with the Herald-News Joliet Athlete of the Week, which runs on the same weekly-athlete model but in a different market.

The dated record for the volleyball Player of the Year poll

The 2023 and 2025 cycles are the confirmed editions of this program. The paper runs the poll annually, always as a preseason feature, so the voting window falls in August of each edition year. That August timing is what gives the program its name: it lands before Illinois high school volleyball season starts, when rosters and expectations are still fresh and fan interest is at its sharpest.

The dated anchor for the 2026 cycle comes from the Register Star itself, which printed that voting ends once Tuesday, Aug. 18, has run its course. That close date is the only day-level figure the organizer has published for this program. The start of the voting window, the nomination round if one exists before voting, and the platform's round-by-round dates have not been printed by the Register Star and are things a supporter should confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The ballot page as it now stands shows the poll in a closed state, with the vote count and the leading share of the ballot recorded on the poll.fm page for poll 15960390. On that ballot the Durand nominee led the field with 37 percent of the vote, a total of 20,816 votes, which shows how much scale a single Rockford-area community can drive when it organizes around one of its own players.

Everything else about timing, including when the next preseason ballot opens after the current one closes, follows the paper's own publishing rhythm rather than a published calendar, so each August the live ballot page is where readers should look first.

How a supporter votes in the preseason volleyball poll

Voting here takes little effort, which is typical of the Crowdsignal ballots the Register Star runs. A supporter opens the voting page at poll.fm, reads the nominee list, picks a name, and presses the vote control to register the choice. There is no fee, no registration form printed beside the ballot, and no indication that the poll requires an account, so the whole action fits inside a single browser visit.

The one structural detail worth knowing is that each preseason edition runs on its own poll. The ballot at poll 15960390 carries the current preseason question and, once the Register Star closes it, the page is retitled with a poll closed notice. A supporter arriving after the close sees the result rather than a live form, and the paper's next preseason volleyball poll appears at a new address under its volleyball coverage. That is why the live ballot, not an old link, is what should be shared during the August window.

The Register Star has not printed a voting limit for the volleyball ballot, so nobody outside the newsroom can state how often a single supporter may return to the form; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Eligibility criteria the paper applies to the nominee pool are likewise absent from what has been published.

For a reader comparing Illinois fan polls, the mechanics here are lighter than a nomination-plus-vote system such as the Herald & Review Illinois Player of the Week, because this ballot is a single-stage vote on a fixed nominee list.

Where this ballot sits among Illinois fan polls

The Rockford Area Preseason Volleyball Player of the Year belongs to a family of Illinois high school fan ballots, but each one answers to its own publisher in its own market. The closest neighbours are the statewide Illinois SI programs: 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. Those run under a different organizer, cover the whole state, and focus on basketball and football rather than volleyball.

The daily-paper athlete polls are the truer parallels. The Herald-News Joliet Athlete of the Week serves the Joliet market, and the Daily Chronicle DeKalb County Athlete of the Week serves DeKalb County, both in Illinois and both on the same sport vertical as this ballot.

What distinguishes the Rockford poll is its place in the calendar and its focus. It is a girls volleyball ballot, it is preseason rather than weekly, and its electorate is the Rockford Register Star's own readership spread across Rockford, Pecatonica, Stockton, Durand, Auburn and Milledgeville. A supporter who votes here is not voting in any of the sibling ballots, because each organizer counts its own poll separately and a vote on one poll.fm page carries no weight toward another publisher's program.

Strengthening support in the preseason volleyball poll

Because this is a single-stage August vote with no published per-day rule, the practical ways to help a nominee are speed and reach. Share the live ballot address as soon as the Register Star posts the preseason poll, point it at the school's own parent and student groups, and remind supporters in the final days before the printed close, which for the 2026 ballot landed as Tuesday, Aug. 18 ended. A community-sized push matters on a ballot where one school's base decided a 20,816-vote result. The methods that work in fan polls generally are gathered in our guide to getting more votes online. On outside help, the Register Star has stated no policy either permitting or restricting purchased support for this volleyball ballot, so a nominee's camp should weigh that silence for itself rather than assume the paper's rules match another publisher's.