Who should be The Star Press IU Health Female Athlete of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

A newspaper-backed readership award for Indiana girls high school sports

The Star Press IU Health Female Athlete of the Year hands readers a single question: which girl in Indiana prep sports deserves the year's honor? The organizer listed for the program is The Star Press IU Health, a joint banner that pairs a newspaper masthead with a health system sponsor. That structure is common among Indiana prep awards, where a local publisher supplies the audience and a sponsor supplies the platform.

The ballot itself lives on Crowdsignal, the polling platform behind the poll.fm domain. The confirmed address for this program is poll.fm/17183805, a single-question poll rather than a multi-category form. Readers who follow girls basketball, track, softball, volleyball or any other Indiana prep sport encounter the same format: a title naming the award and the school year, followed by a slate of nominees, each listed with the athlete and her school.

Because the vote is hosted on Crowdsignal, the experience is deliberately simple. There is no account requirement printed on the ballot, no nomination form to fill out, and no payment step. A reader arrives at the page, sees the question, and clicks a name. That accessibility is the point of a readership poll, since the organizer wants the widest possible participation from the community that already follows its sports coverage.

Which editions are confirmed and when the window falls

Two editions of this poll are confirmed: 2025 and 2026. The 2026 ballot frames its question around the 2025-26 school year, asking readers to name the Female Athlete of the Year for that completed season. Its status on the Crowdsignal page is now Poll Closed, which means the July window for that cycle has passed and the result stands. The 2025 edition preceded it under the same program name.

The voting month for the live cycle is July, established from the ballot's dated window. What the organizer has not printed anywhere alongside the ballot is the day-level calendar: no opening date, no closing deadline, and no nomination period. That gap, together with the exact round dates the platform may use, means readers planning a push for a nominee should confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The annual pattern rests on those two confirmed years. A poll that runs in July after each school year ends fits the rhythm of Indiana prep sports, crowning an athlete once spring seasons wrap. On that basis a next edition is expected in 2027, though the organizer has not announced one. When it appears it will almost certainly carry a new school-year title and a fresh nominee slate, replacing the closed 2025-26 question with the class of the following year. The poll.fm address above serves the latest ballot in the series.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot

The act of voting is direct on a Crowdsignal page. Head to the ballot at poll.fm, read the question naming the award and the school year, and scan the poll answers. Each answer pairs one nominee with her Indiana school. The supporter selects one name and submits, and the platform takes the choice immediately. After voting, the page displays the running share of results, so participants can see how their pick stands against the field.

There is no login, no form field, and no multi-step flow. That simplicity cuts both ways: it makes participation easy for any reader, and it means a nominee's total depends entirely on how many people she and her community can bring to the page during the open window. Because the 2025-26 ballot is marked Poll Closed, anyone visiting now sees the final result rather than a live form. A supporter who wants to act in the next cycle waits for the new question to post, typically tied to the July month.

The organizer publishes no printed rules on the ballot about how often one person may submit, whether votes from outside Indiana count, or how a nominee earns a place on the slate. Those gaps matter to anyone organizing support, since an assumption about the rules that is wrong can waste a whole push. Reading the live page before acting, rather than relying on word of mouth from a previous year, is the reliable habit for this and any poll.fm ballot. General support tactics that respect a ballot's terms are covered on the site's buy votes online page.

Where this ballot sits among Indiana vote programs

Indiana carries a dense cluster of public-vote sports awards, and this one is distinct in two ways. First, its organizer is a joint banner, The Star Press IU Health, rather than a single masthead. Second, it is a year-end honor for female athletes, where most sibling programs are weekly honors or football-specific awards. The comparison set on this site includes the Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week, a recurring weekly honor from a different publisher, and the Evansville Courier & Press Football Player of the Year, a year-end award on the boys side of a single sport.

The statewide entries round out the field: the Indiana High School Football Player of the Week, the Indiana SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year, and the classified football honors, the Indiana SI Football 3A Player of the Year and the Indiana SI Football 4A Player of the Year. Every one of these is a separate publisher with its own ballot, its own platform and its own rules. A vote cast on one carries no weight toward another.

What makes the Female Athlete of the Year different for a supporter is its once-a-year rhythm and its breadth across sports. A weekly honor rewards sustained campaigning through a season; a year-end poll like this one concentrates attention into a single July window covering the whole school year. Readers who follow multiple Indiana programs can participate in each on its own terms, since the mechanics stay similar even though the publishers and rules differ. For purchase options on any of these public ballots, see award vote support.