The SB Tribune IHSAA Girls Basketball Preseason Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What this poll is and who runs it

The SB Tribune IHSAA Girls Basketball Preseason Player of the Year hands a preseason honor to readers. The South Bend Tribune's IHSAA coverage desk posts the ballot, which asks a single question, who deserves the preseason player of the year honor in Indiana high school girls basketball, and lets readers answer by clicking a candidate's name. Crowdsignal, the poll.fm service, hosts the ballot, and the live address is https://poll.fm/14586789.

The 2024 edition compiled 21 candidates from 16 schools across the South Bend Tribune coverage area, "organized alphabetically by school and then by first name," as the Tribune's own story put it. That makes the ballot a cross-section of the whole coverage area rather than a single school or conference, and it is why supporters across the region, not just a single fan base, have a reason to vote.

Because the nominees are high school athletes, this page discusses the poll by school, season and format without profiling any individual player. Readers who want the full name list will find it printed on the ballot itself, and the Tribune's sports story accompanying the poll names each candidate with her school.

Facts at a glance

The calendar: what ran, what closed and what is not published

The poll's edition history is short but real. Confirmed editions ran in 2022 and 2024, which is what qualifies the program as an annual feature of the Tribune's preseason coverage rather than a single experiment. The most recent ballot, poll 14586789, carried a November 2024 voting window and now displays a closed status, so the 2024 edition has finished and no votes can be cast on it today.

What the Tribune has not printed is the fine print around the calendar. The next preseason ballot's open and close dates appear nowhere in print; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. No nomination round dates appear anywhere on the ballot page either, and the Tribune has not said which season the poll returns in. Readers planning around a future preseason should treat the Tribune's sports section and the poll.fm address as the two places a new ballot would surface.

Two details are worth separating. The November timing is attached to the 2024 edition specifically; it is not a published rule that every edition opens in November. And the closed status applies to poll 14586789 alone; a new edition would run on a fresh poll number, carrying a fresh window and a fresh candidate list.

How a supporter votes on the Tribune's ballot

Voting mechanics on the SB Tribune preseason ballot are about as simple as public polls get. When an edition is live, a supporter opens the poll.fm address, reads the candidate list, clicks the button beside a player's name and submits. The Tribune's published rules line for this series says voters can participate an unlimited number of times, so anyone backing one candidate can return and repeat the click without hitting a stated cap.

That unlimited rule is the only voting rule the Tribune's coverage spells out. The SB Tribune ballot page states no account requirement, and it does not describe any device or residency restriction, so a reader outside the coverage area who wants to support a candidate faces no published bar. Whether a future edition changes the mechanic, for example by adding a daily limit or a login, is something the Tribune would announce with the ballot itself.

Right now the practical answer for a supporter is to wait for the next edition. The 2024 ballot is closed, and votes cast on a closed poll do nothing. When the Tribune posts a new preseason poll, the same click-and-submit pattern applies, and the candidate list will name the players up for the honor that season.

Where this poll sits among Indiana's other public votes

Indiana readers meet this poll alongside several other public-vote programs, and each belongs to a different publisher. The Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week runs a weekly honor out of Bloomington. The Evansville Courier & Press Football Player of the Year covers football in the Evansville market. The Indiana High School Football Player of the Week is a statewide football honor, while the Indiana SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year is the boys-side counterpart to this girls basketball poll. The Indiana SI Football 3A Player of the Year and Indiana SI Football 4A Player of the Year split football honors by class.

What separates the SB Tribune poll from all of them is timing and focus. It is a preseason poll, meaning it runs before the girls basketball season gets underway, and it is tied to the South Bend Tribune's coverage area rather than to a statewide or national list. A reader in the coverage area votes on candidates they will watch all winter; a reader following the SI programs votes on classification-wide fields.

For anyone weighing where their effort matters most, the practical difference is the calendar. A preseason poll concentrates attention in the weeks before the season, while weekly athlete-of-the-week ballots recur through the year.

Strengthening support within the Tribune's rules

Supporters who want a candidate to win this poll have a single published fact working in their favor: the Tribune states that voters can participate an unlimited number of times. That means the honest grassroots playbook, sharing the poll.fm link with family, teammates, classmates and the school community, can be repeated as often as people are willing to click. A team that mobilizes its own network before the preseason window closes is using the rules exactly as written.

For broader tactics that work across public polls, see our votes guide at how to get more votes online. Readers weighing paid vote packages against the organizer's rules should read is buying votes legal and the award votes overview before deciding anything. What no outside help changes is the Tribune's control of the ballot: the publisher runs the poll on its own platform and decides what counts.