Monroe News-Star High School Team of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Monroe News-Star High School Team of the Year?

The Monroe News-Star, a daily newspaper publishing from Monroe, Louisiana, closes out the high school year by putting a single question to its audience: which team deserves the paper's Team of the Year designation. The 2025-26 ballot ran under the headline "Who is the Monroe News-Star's team of the year for 2025-26?" and drew its nominees from the squads the paper covered during that school year.

The vote itself runs through Crowdsignal, the service whose public ballots appear under poll.fm addresses, and the newspaper's form sits at https://poll.fm/17118948. The format is deliberately narrow next to multi-category community awards: one question, a fixed list of nominated programs and a running tally beside each option. Because the vote belongs to one publisher's coverage rather than a regional chamber or media group, the nominee pool shifts with whatever the paper's reporters highlighted between fall and spring.

Quick facts

When has the Monroe News-Star held the Team of the Year vote, and what did the 2025-26 ballot show?

The newspaper's team vote is an annual feature with confirmed editions in 2025 and 2026. The 2026 edition settled the 2025-26 season, and its voting window fell in June. A story promoting the ballot framed the stakes for the paper's readers, telling them it was their chance to "cast your votes for the Team of the Year for the upcoming 2025-26 season." That same announcement pointed toward a Friday conclusion for the voting.

On the result itself, Claiborne Christian baseball led the 2025-26 count with 61 percent earned off 129 votes, while Ouachita Christian baseball followed at 17 percent on 37 votes. The remainder of the nominated field divided what was left. Both figures stayed displayed on the ballot even after submissions stopped.

Timeline as published

Beyond the outcome, the newspaper publishes neither a vote cap nor a repeat-submission rule nor eligibility terms beside its team list; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Start and finish dates for the next edition are also absent so far, leaving the follow-up season an open question until the paper announces it.

What does a supporter actually do on the News-Star's team ballot?

The mechanics are about as simple as reader balloting gets. The page poses the team of the year question and lists the nominated squads; a reader marks a preference and submits it. On the 2025-26 form the choices read Cedar Creek boys golf, Cedar Creek boys powerlifting, Cedar Creek girls powerlifting, Claiborne Christian baseball, D'Arbonne Woods Charter girls powerlifting, Lincoln Prep boys and Ouachita Christian baseball. Every entry carried its own running percentage and vote total, so supporters could watch the standings shift while the window stayed open.

Because the 2025-26 poll has shut, a visitor landing on it now sees the final standings instead of an active form. Taking part means waiting for the newspaper's next team ballot and acting inside whatever window it declares. Any sign-in step, device restriction or timing rule the paper applies would surface on that future ballot itself, since the current page carries none of that language.

For a school community, the takeaway is that the whole campaign lives or dies inside a short stretch of days. There is no season-long accumulation of points, no panel of judges and no second round to recover a slow start.

How does this school-team vote compare with Louisiana's other reader contests?

Louisiana's reader ballots on this site cluster around community choice awards. The Best of Baton Rouge ballot and Gambit's Best of New Orleans both ask residents to sort hundreds of local businesses into winners, and the same business-award shape drives Best of SWLA. The statewide 2025 Family Favorites round extends that model across the whole state, and Bayou's Best Community's Choice Awards in Houma runs on the identical reader-choice footing.

The Monroe News-Star's poll breaks from that pattern in three ways. It honors a school team rather than a merchant or service. It asks a single question instead of running dozens of categories. And it resolves inside a June window rather than stretching across a summer of rounds, which compresses every campaign into a sprint.

That difference changes who wins. A business award tends to reward broad consumer recognition accumulated over months of signage and social presence, while the team honor rides on how fast a school community can move its people to the ballot before the paper pulls it down.

How can a school community get behind its Team of the Year nomination?

Since the ballot is a straight count of reader submissions inside a compressed June window, the practical lever is turnout speed. Teammates, parents, alumni and faculty need the link while voting is live, because a surge that starts near the deadline has far fewer hours to accumulate. A message that reaches the roster on day one beats a better-written message that lands on the final afternoon.

A short window rewards preparation: settle on the message and the distribution list before the ballot goes up, then spend the live days reminding people rather than persuading them from scratch.

The newspaper has printed no guidance on organized campaigning or paid assistance alongside this poll, so a group planning anything beyond ordinary sharing should study whatever conditions the paper attaches to its team list before scaling up. General outreach methods that work across public polls, from reminder cycles to messaging that fits each audience, are collected at this how-to guide.