Herald-Times Girls Athlete of the Week poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who runs the Herald-Times Girls Athlete of the Week poll

This girls athlete ballot is a weekly high school sports feature published by The Herald-Times, an Indiana newspaper whose sports desk covers girls athletics across its coverage area. Each week during the season the paper nominates a short list of standout performers, mostly from spring sports such as softball and track, and hands the choice to its readers.

The vote runs on Crowdsignal, the poll.fm service, and the ballot for this program sits at https://poll.fm/15499268. Readers see the nominee list printed on the page, pick one entry and submit it, and the running tally stays visible while the poll is open. No account requirement appears anywhere on the ballot, so a supporter with an ordinary browser can take part.

For quick orientation, the program's fixed details are gathered in this table.

Because the paper publishes a fresh ballot for each week of the season, the entry a reader sees at that address changes as one week's poll closes and the next opens.

The dated facts for this Indiana girls athlete ballot

Two seasons are confirmed for the program, 2024 and 2025, which is what qualifies it as a recurring feature of the paper's sports coverage rather than a promotion that ran once.

The ballot at the voting URL is titled Herald-Times Girls Athlete of the Week poll for May 12-17 and carries a Poll Closed marker. Its final tally shows a girls track relay entry on top with 54 percent of 4,293 votes, and a softball entry in second with 32 percent of 2,502 votes. Both dates in the title fall in May, and the paper's athlete of the week voting lands in that month across the seasons on file.

Several details are not printed anywhere on the ballot page. The Herald-Times has not published the exact open and close times, the nomination process that builds each week's list, or any rule about how often a single reader may vote; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Nothing on the closed page announces when the next poll goes up, so supporters who want to vote in the following week's round need to watch the paper's sports coverage rather than the closed ballot itself.

How a supporter votes in the Herald-Times girls poll today

Casting a ballot takes seconds. A supporter loads the poll.fm page, reads the week's nominee list, clicks the button beside one athlete or relay, and presses the vote control. The page then shows where each entry stands in the tally. There is no form to fill in and no payment step of any kind on the ballot.

Timing matters more than technique. Each weekly poll stays open for a few days, and the May 12-17 edition already displays Poll Closed, so a vote cast on that address now lands nowhere. When the paper posts the following week's ballot, the same Crowdsignal address carries the new list and the count starts again from zero.

The nominees are high school girls from area schools in softball, track and whatever else the spring schedule puts in play, and the paper writes up the candidates in its sports section before the poll goes live. A supporter who wants context on the field should read that coverage first, then vote.

Because the ballot does not print a per-reader limit, the practical advice is to vote once, share the link, and let teammates and family do the same rather than guessing at repeat-vote rules the page never states.

Where this ballot sits among Indiana athlete of the week votes

The Herald-Times girls poll is one of several reader-vote sports programs for Indiana. The closest neighbour is the Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week, a broader ballot from the same publisher family that covers boys and girls candidates together rather than a girls-only list.

Statewide company includes the Indiana High School Football Player of the Week, a fall-season vote, plus the Indiana SI boys basketball award and the Indiana SI football awards at the 3A and 4A levels, which are season-ending honours rather than weekly polls. The Evansville Courier & Press Football Player of the Year runs in that same award format under a different newspaper.

What separates this program is the combination of a girls-only nominee list, a weekly rhythm through the spring sports season, and a newspaper ballot hosted on Crowdsignal rather than a season-ending award. A reader who follows Indiana high school sports can move between these ballots as the calendar turns from fall football to winter basketball to spring track and softball, and each page carries its own voting steps and rules.

Building support for a Herald-Times girls athlete nominee

Because the mechanic is a single public click on a poll.fm ballot, support for a nominee comes down to how many people the candidate's community can move inside a window of a few days. Teammates, families, student sections and school social media accounts are the natural channels, and the paper's own write-up of each week's field gives sharers a ready-made link to post.

The ballot page publishes no statement from The Herald-Times about outside voting help, so the organizer's rules are the first thing to read before anyone weighs paid support. Our votes guide explains how public polls like this one work and what tends to move a tally honestly. See how to get more votes online for tactics that fit a short weekly window, and buy award votes for how award-style ballots differ from open reader polls.