VOTE NOW! Wichita Area Small School Defensive Player of the Year Presented by WSU Tech: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the small school defensive award is and who stands behind it

The VOTE NOW! Wichita Area Small School Defensive Player of the Year Presented by WSU Tech is a high school sport award decided by fans rather than by a judging panel. The program covers defensive performers at small high schools in and around Wichita, Kansas. The organizer is listed simply as Wichita Area, and WSU Tech is carried in the ballot heading as the presenting sponsor, which is where the "Presented by WSU Tech" part of the name comes from.

Hosting sits with Crowdsignal on the poll.fm domain, and the ballot address is https://poll.fm/16381386. The heading of the most recent edition also carries the poll number 16381386, which is how a supporter can tell this specific award apart from any other ballot running on the same platform at the same time of year.

Nominees on that edition came from small-town programs across the region. Schools tied to Wellington, Hutchinson, Derby, Cheney, Hesston and Garden Plain all supplied options, and every entry on the ballot pairs a player with the community he represents. That town-and-school pairing is what gives the poll its local pull: readers are not voting on an abstract list, they are voting on athletes they have watched on Friday nights.

The table below gathers the fixed points of the listing.

Edition years, the December window and what stays unpublished

The edition years attached to this program are 2023 and 2025, and that pair is the basis for treating the award as annual. Voting for the latest edition ran during December, and the ballot heading printed a close date of 12/17. December is therefore the month to watch, both because it held the confirmed voting phase and because the printed end date fell inside it.

Several points never appear in print. The heading gives an end date but never an opening day. There is no list of award categories beyond the defensive honor itself, no published rule on repeat submissions by a supporter, and no eligibility criteria for nominees; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Nothing on the ballot points to a published calendar of platform rounds either, so the shape of the cycle between the first vote and a final result has to be read off whatever the current page shows. The practical consequence is straightforward: the December close date in the heading is the only fixed point the organizer hands out, and every other scheduling detail stays unknown until the next ballot goes up. A school community that wants to organize support should therefore treat the printed end date as the deadline that actually matters, and treat everything before it as runway.

How a supporter casts a vote on the ballot

Casting a vote takes only a few moves. The supporter loads the ballot page, reads through the options, selects the button beside the defensive player he wants to back, and submits the form. The whole action happens on the Crowdsignal ballot itself, and a choice registers once the submission goes through. There is no separate judging round and no panel to convince; the tally is whatever the clicks add up to.

Because the latest edition closed, anyone reaching the ballot now sees the closed marker rather than an open form, which is the normal state between editions. When the next cycle arrives, the program's listing will point to the newest ballot in the series, since the address given here is the latest ballot of the series rather than a permanent home for every edition. That is worth remembering if the address changes between Decembers: the program listing, not a bookmark, is what stays current.

For anyone backing a particular nominee, the step that matters most is arriving before the heading's close date passes. The form no longer accepts entries once a poll closes, so a push that lands after the printed date has nowhere to go. Supporters who want a reminder of the full sequence can follow the voting steps listed on this page, which mirror the ballot in its current closed state and will describe the open state once a new cycle is up.

Where this ballot sits among Kansas fan-vote awards

Fan-voted high school sport honors are common across Kansas, and this defensive award stands among them with a deliberately narrow brief. The Catchy Awards Kansas High School Athletics program covers the sport statewide. The ESPN Wichita High School Athlete of the Week runs on a weekly rhythm inside the same media market. The Greater Wichita Sports Banquet Athlete of the Year takes a longer view of a whole year of performance.

Outside the Wichita market, the DiRenna Awards Kansas City Basketball Player of the Year serves the eastern corner of the state, while the Topeka Capital-Journal Athlete of the Week and the Topeka Capital-Journal High School Athlete of the Week cover the capital city on a weekly cycle.

What separates this ballot from all of them is its combination of scope and season: the small-school limitation, the defense-only focus, with WSU Tech attached as presenter, and a December landing instead of a week-to-week format. A nominee who fits this ballot may not fit the others, and vice versa, which is why supporters following an athlete across his career often end up touching several of these programs rather than a single one.

Strengthening support for a nominee on this ballot

The shape of this poll rewards early organization. Because the confirmed editions ran on a short December calendar with the close date printed right in the heading, a push that starts the week the ballot opens has far more room than a scramble at the end. The mechanic is plain: every supporter has to visit the ballot and submit a choice, so the work is getting each person there once.

On the subject of outside help, the organizer states no position anywhere on the ballot, which leaves school communities to set their own standards. The dependable play for a small-town program is the one its size favors: alumni groups, student sections, local businesses and family group chats, each asked directly and each given the ballot address. Tactics that travel well across fan ballots of this kind, including timing and reminder cadence, are laid out in our guide to getting more votes online.