The Star Press East Central Indiana Preseason Softball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Star Press preseason softball award is and who runs it

The Star Press, the daily newspaper serving East Central Indiana, publishes this preseason honor for girls softball. Two traits separate it from the average reader award. It is regional, drawing its nominee field from schools inside the paper's own coverage area rather than from every softball program statewide. And it runs before the season: a preseason ballot asks readers to judge players ahead of the first pitch, unlike the end-of-year honors most publishers hand out once results are in.

Crowdsignal carries the vote. The platform behind the poll.fm addresses hosts the ballot at https://poll.fm/16804401, where it appears as a single question page: the award name, a nominee list giving each player's school, and a way to pick one. No separate nomination round shows on the ballot, and taking part requires no account.

The fixed facts

Because publisher, platform and ballot address stay fixed, treat them as the anchors. Everything time-sensitive, from the nominee list to the voting window, lives on the poll.fm page and changes with each edition.

The dated record: which editions ran and when the window falls

The award's confirmed years are 2022 and 2026. That pair is what makes the program annual rather than a one-off, and it also shows a visible history with a gap rather than an unbroken string of springs. The 2026 edition is the cycle whose ballot now occupies the poll.fm address, and it reads as finished: the page title marks the poll closed, so the result has been tallied and the window has passed.

March is where the 2026 window fell, which suits the preseason framing. Softball in Indiana begins in the spring, so a ballot naming a preseason player of the year naturally lands in the weeks before games start. The paper has printed no exact open and close dates, no per-reader voting rule and no eligibility text; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Nothing published describes future platform rounds either, so the timing of the next cycle can only be inferred from the season.

For a supporter planning ahead, the practical reading: the honor has run at least twice, the most recent cycle was a March ballot, and a 2027 edition should arrive if the paper repeats the format. The Star Press sports desk is where a fresh ballot link would surface first, ahead of the poll.fm page itself.

How a supporter votes on the ballot today

Public votes rarely come simpler than this one. A supporter opens the Crowdsignal page, reads the single question, and picks one nominee. Each name appears with a school affiliation, so a reader can find a specific player by scanning for her school. No login, no email verification and no separate nomination form sit between the choice and the submission; both happen on the same page.

Once a selection is made, the supporter submits it and Crowdsignal adds it to the running tally. Results display on the same address, which is why a closed poll still shows its outcome after the window ends. The 2026 ballot sits in exactly that state: the question remains visible, the nominee list remains up, and the poll is marked closed.

The ballot stays silent on repeat voting. Crowdsignal polls commonly carry some guard against one person voting many times, but the paper has published nothing specific for this honor, so the honest baseline is one submitted vote per supporter. A reader who wants to do more for a player should treat sharing the link, not re-voting, as the dependable lever, and should read the live page when the next cycle opens in case new instructions appear that were absent last time.

How this ballot sits beside its Indiana neighbours

Indiana readers meet a crowded field of high school sport polls, and this honor occupies a specific corner of it. The athlete of the week series from the Bloomington paper runs on a weekly rhythm across sports in its own market. The football player of the year ballot from the Evansville Courier & Press rewards a completed fall season in the state's southwest. The statewide football player of the week vote and the Indiana SI programs, covering boys basketball and football classifications such as 3A and 4A, operate at statewide scale.

Against that set, The Star Press award differs on three axes at once. It covers girls softball, where most neighbours follow football or basketball. It is preseason, where the others reward a week's or a season's completed performance. And it is regional, scoped to East Central Indiana, where the SI ballots pull nominees from across the whole state. For a supporter, those differences matter practically: a smaller, local nominee field means each vote carries more relative weight, and a preseason window means the push happens before results exist to campaign on. Anyone comparing Indiana ballots should match the award to the season first, because a March softball vote and a November football vote reward completely different timing.

Strengthening support for a nominee in this ballot

Because this is a one-click public vote on a small regional field, the effective play is reach, not repetition. Send the poll.fm link directly to people who already follow the school: teammates, parents, alumni groups and local softball communities. A preseason ballot adds a wrinkle, since players have no season results to point at yet, so the message that travels best is a simple name-and-school prompt rather than a stats pitch. The paper has published no rule about organized voting pushes for this honor, so keep the effort organic in shape and read the live ballot for instructions before each cycle. For tactics that transfer across ballots of this kind, see our guide to getting more votes online, and on the subject of paid support more broadly, our award votes page covers how publisher polls are usually treated.