The Rockford Register Star Female Athlete of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Rockford Register Star Female Athlete of the Year is

The Female Athlete of the Year program from the Rockford Register Star lets readers decide a sports award by fan vote. The organizer is the daily newspaper serving Rockford, Illinois, whose masthead sits at rrstar.com. The program asks readers to choose one female athlete of the year from a slate of nominees drawn from high school sports in the paper's coverage area. It belongs to the sport vertical and to the award contest type, and the deciding mechanism is entirely a fan vote rather than a judges' panel or an editorial pick.

Crowdsignal carries the ballot, reached through the poll.fm address. The newspaper links to a plain poll page that holds the award question, the list of nominated athletes with their schools, and a submit button. There is no branded contest microsite around it, which is typical of newspaper awards that use a general-purpose polling tool instead of a dedicated contest platform.

The nominees on the 2025 ballot come from schools across the region the paper covers, including Rockford itself and nearby communities such as Belvidere, Byron, Stillman Valley, Freeport and Pecatonica. Because the ballot names high school athletes, this page deliberately describes the program by its publisher, its sport focus and its market, and leaves the individual nominees unnamed.

Facts at a glance

The dated record: editions, the June window and what is unpublished

Editions of this program are on file for 2023 and 2025. Those are the years the ballot is attested for, and the gap between them means the award should be treated as recurring rather than guaranteed on any fixed schedule. The paper's own recurrence pattern points at a next expected round in 2026, but nothing on the ballot page commits the Register Star to that date, so the spring sports season each year is when a new poll would plausibly appear.

The voting window falls in June. That month is the confirmed span for the live cycle, with the poll opening and closing inside it. The 2025 ballot at the program's voting URL is now marked closed, which is how Crowdsignal displays a finished poll while keeping the results visible.

What the newspaper has not printed is substantial. The exact opening and closing dates inside the June window, the roster of award categories beyond the single athlete ballot, any rule limiting repeat voting by a single supporter, and the dates of any platform-side rounds all go unstated on the poll page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. That gap matters most for a nominee's supporters, because a push planned against assumed dates or assumed rules can land outside the real window entirely.

For a family or athletic department planning around this award, the practical reading is simple: watch rrstar.com and the poll.fm ballot from late in the school year, treat June as the month the vote happens, and take every other detail from the live page when it appears.

How a supporter votes on the ballot today

Voting takes little effort. A supporter loads the current ballot at the program's voting URL on poll.fm, reads the question asking who the Rockford Register Star's Female Athlete of the Year should be, and sees the nominee list underneath. Each nominee appears by name with her school beside it, so a supporter can find the right athlete even where two schools field similar names.

The supporter selects the radio button next to her chosen athlete and submits. Crowdsignal then returns a results view showing the current tally, including the share of votes each nominee has drawn. That results screen is the only feedback the platform gives, and it is also how a supporter can see whether the poll is still open or has been marked closed at the end of the June window.

Three details of the mechanic deserve attention. The ballot asks one question only, so there is no ballot-stuffing across multiple categories the way a multi-category readers' contest allows. The poll requires no account creation on the face of the ballot, which keeps the friction low for school communities mobilizing quickly. And the voting URL always targets the newest ballot of the series, so a link saved from a previous year will land on the current edition when a new one goes live, or on the closed results page of the last one if the window has ended.

Whether the platform or the newspaper applies any repeat-vote limit, IP filtering or eligibility check is not printed on the poll page. A supporter planning a coordinated push should therefore check the instructions printed on the newest poll first, since any restriction Crowdsignal or the Register Star applies would be stated there rather than anywhere else.

How this ballot sits beside its Illinois neighbours

The Rockford Register Star's award is one of several Illinois fan-vote sports programs of the same general shape, and comparing them clarifies what makes this one distinct. The Herald-News Joliet Athlete of the Week and the Herald & Review Illinois Player of the Week are weekly reader polls run by other Illinois newspapers, resetting on a short cycle rather than crowning a single annual winner.

The Daily Chronicle DeKalb County Athlete of the Week follows the same weekly pattern for a county-level audience. At the statewide end, the Illinois SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year and the football awards for Class 1A and Class 4A are season-long player-of-the-year ballots organized by class.

Against those neighbours, the Register Star's program differs in three ways. It is a year-end award rather than a weekly series, so a nominee has a single window in June to mobilize support instead of a fresh chance every few days. It is female-only, where most of the sibling ballots cover boys or mixed fields. And it is anchored to one newspaper's Rockford-area coverage, so the nominee pool comes from the paper's own reporting rather than a statewide entry pool. A supporter following several of these programs should treat each ballot's rules as its own, because the publishers run them independently of one another.

Strengthening support for a nominee in this poll

Because this is a single June window with a simple click-and-submit ballot, effective support is about timing and reach. The nominee's natural base is her school: teammates, the athletic department's social accounts, family groups and local youth sports communities that already follow her season. Sharing the exact voting URL, rather than a search result or a screenshot, removes the step where potential supporters drop off.

The newspaper has published no statement on outside help, paid support or voting software for this ballot, and no per-supporter limit appears on the poll page itself. That silence cuts both ways: nothing authorizes aggressive tactics, and nothing forbids ordinary encouragement. The safe reading is that votes should come from real people who actually want to support the athlete, gathered before the poll closes inside its June window.

For a broader playbook that applies to public polls of this kind, including how to sequence outreach so support arrives steadily rather than in a single burst, see how to get more votes online. Whatever tactics a campaign adopts, the ballot page and the Register Star's own coverage remain the only authoritative statement of the rules for this specific award.