IndyStar Boys Basketball Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the IndyStar boys basketball weekly ballot covers

IndyStar, the Indiana publication behind this program, posts a weekly question during the high school boys basketball season asking readers to pick the top performer of that week. Anyone with the link can choose from a list of nominated players and their schools, and each week's list is drawn from that week's games.

The vote runs on Crowdsignal, the poll.fm service, and the current ballot address is https://poll.fm/15006064. That address carries the latest edition of the series; when a week ends, the poll is marked closed on the same page and a new question takes its place for the following week.

The program is a sport vertical award in the best-of shape: it recognizes individual players, not teams, businesses or places, and it resets on a weekly rhythm inside a season that repeats across years. The audience is the publisher's own readership plus the school communities behind each nominee, which is why vote totals on a single weekly ballot can run into the tens of thousands.

Everything a supporter needs in order to participate sits on the ballot itself: the dated question, the nominee list and the submit control. The publisher does the nominating, so supporters choose rather than enter, and no separate nomination form is part of the weekly flow.

Dated facts and confirmed seasons for the weekly poll

Four seasons are confirmed for the IndyStar boys basketball series: 2018, 2021, 2023 and 2025. That spread marks the program as a recurring winter fixture rather than a one-off, with a fresh ballot published most weeks while Indiana high school boys basketball is in season.

The latest confirmed ballot asked who the IndyStar boys basketball player of the week was for Jan. 27-Feb. 1 and now carries a poll closed label. On that ballot, the leading option finished with 44,705 votes, a 47 percent share of the tally shown in the results view, which gives a sense of the scale a single weekly question can reach.

Two other ballots in the same season carry dates as well. One covered Jan. 19-24, and for it IndyStar asked readers to submit votes by noon Friday for the top performer in high school boys basketball. An earlier one covered the week of Dec. 29-Jan. 3 and carried the same noon Friday cutoff, which shows the deadline pattern holding across the season rather than applying to a single poll.

What IndyStar has not printed on the ballot itself is a category list, a per-supporter vote cap, an eligibility rule or exact open and close timestamps for each weekly poll; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The weekly structure is clear from the dated questions, but the fine rules sit off the page, so the wording in front of the voter each week is the authority that matters.

How a supporter votes on the poll.fm ballot

Voting happens on Crowdsignal's poll.fm page for the series. A supporter opens the address, reads the week's question about the top boys basketball performer, and sees a list of player and school pairs nominated from Indiana high schools. The list is short enough to read in one pass, and each option names the player first and the school beside the name.

Selecting the option next to your chosen nominee marks the choice, and confirming it submits the vote. Once the choice is logged, the results view shows how every nominee stands, including the percentage share each option has drawn. A supporter who votes early in the week sees a different picture from one who votes near the cutoff, because the tally moves as more people participate.

Ballots in this series are short-lived by design. Each one covers a single week of games, and once that week's deadline passes the poll is marked closed, as the most recent confirmed edition now is. The closed page stays reachable, so the final standings remain visible after voting ends, but no further choices can be logged on it.

The ballot does not state whether a supporter needs an account or may vote more than once from the same device. Those rules sit with IndyStar and the platform rather than in any published text, so a supporter who wants certainty about repeat voting should read the wording on the live poll before casting a second choice.

How this ballot sits beside its Indiana neighbours

IndyStar's weekly basketball poll sits inside a wider Indiana set of fan-vote programs, and its closest neighbour in shape is the Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week. That is also a publisher-run weekly ballot, but it comes from a different publication and serves its own market rather than statewide boys basketball under one masthead.

Football runs on a parallel track. The Indiana High School Football Player of the Week mirrors the weekly rhythm during the fall season, while the Evansville Courier & Press Football Player of the Year crowns a season-end winner instead of a weekly one, so the two football programs differ from each other in cadence just as the basketball programs do.

Season-end awards also exist for basketball and for classified football. The Indiana SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year is the basketball counterpart at season's end, and the Indiana SI Football 3A Player of the Year and Indiana SI Football 4A Player of the Year split football by class.

What distinguishes the IndyStar ballot within this set is the combination it holds together: a single sport, boys basketball, a single weekly reset, statewide reach under one publisher, and a ballot that names individual players rather than teams or businesses. A supporter following Indiana high school sport across the year can move from the fall football weeklies to this winter series to the season-end awards without leaving the same fan-vote format.

Strengthening support inside a weekly window

Support in this poll has to land inside a seven-day window, because each IndyStar boys basketball ballot covers one week of games and closes at the Friday cutoff before the next list appears. That makes early sharing worth more than a late push: teammates, classmates and local fans who see the link on Monday can vote with days to spare, while a share on Friday morning competes with the deadline itself.

The practical playbook is short. Put the ballot link where the school community already gathers, name the nominee being backed so supporters know which option to select, and remind people before the cutoff rather than after. IndyStar publishes no stated rule in the ballot text about outside help or voting tools, so the floor for any push is the wording on the live poll that week.

For broader tactics that fit a public fan vote of this kind, see our votes guide, and for the award-vote context specifically see buy award votes. Neither changes what the ballot requires: one selection, inside the window, on the week's own question.