The Monroe News-Star Girls Athlete of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Monroe News-Star Girls Athlete of the Year is and who runs it

The Monroe News-Star Girls Athlete of the Year is a reader-decided award for girls high school athletes in the Monroe, Louisiana market. It is run by the Monroe News-Star, whose publisher prints under the name The News Star, and it sits inside the newspaper's high school sports desk rather than inside a chamber of commerce or a festival program. The vertical is sport, the contest type is an award, and the mechanic is a straightforward reader vote on the paper's own ballot.

The vote is carried on Crowdsignal's poll.fm platform, and the voting URL for the current cycle is poll.fm/17147369. The ballot poses a single season question, asking readers who the Monroe News-Star's girls Athlete of the Year is for the school year in question, and lists the nominees with their school towns. Towns appearing among the nominees span the paper's coverage area in northeast Louisiana, including Ruston, Sterlington, Oak Grove, Bastrop, West Monroe, Jena and Winnfield.

The News-Star also runs shorter athlete polls during the regular season, inviting readers to cast votes for weekly honorees, and the year-end Athlete of the Year ballot is the capstone of that rhythm. That makes this program different from a business-list voting contest: the nominees are athletes, the electorate is the paper's readership, and the outcome is a sports honor rather than a commercial listing win.

The dated record for the Monroe News-Star girls award

The program's confirmed editions number two, 2025 and 2026, which is what qualifies it as an annual award. The 2026 edition carries the title "Who is the Monroe News-Star's girls Athlete of the Year for 2025-26?" and is marked Poll Closed on poll.fm. Its window fell in June, with both the opening and the closing of voting inside that month, following the end of the 2025-26 school sports year.

The closed 2025-26 ballot shows a decided result: the leading finisher held 36% of the vote on 13,907 votes, with the rest of the field trailing behind. That tally is the only figure the ballot publishes, and it is the clearest evidence of how competitive the year-end vote is across a multi-town nominee field.

Several facts sit outside what the News-Star has printed. The June window's opening day and closing day go unstated, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle. No category roster appears on the ballot page, which is consistent with a single-question award rather than a multi-category program. The organizer also publishes no limit on repeat voting, no rule on daily returns and no eligibility text for nominees or voters. On the recurrence side, the next edition is expected in 2027, keyed to the season then ending, though the News-Star has not printed a forward calendar for the award.

How a supporter votes in the Monroe News-Star girls award today

The action a supporter takes is simple and entirely on the Crowdsignal page. Open the Monroe News-Star's Girls Athlete of the Year ballot at poll.fm/17147369, read the nominee list, select the athlete you want to honor, and submit the choice. The ballot is a single question covering the whole season, so there is no nomination form to fill and no second round to wait for; the vote you cast on the poll.fm page is the whole participation.

The nominee list is what makes this ballot distinctive. Each entry pairs an athlete with her school town, and the field stretches across the Monroe News-Star's northeast Louisiana coverage, from Ruston and West Monroe to Sterlington, Bastrop, Oak Grove, Jena and Winnfield. A supporter therefore votes within a field drawn from many communities, not a single school's shortlist.

On the rules side, the News-Star publishes no account requirement, no stated cap on repeat voting and no daily-return rule for this award. The live ballot is the authority: whatever it asks of a supporter in a given June is the rule for that cycle. Once voting closes, the poll.fm page displays the final tally, as it does now for the 2025-26 ballot, and the paper reports the winner through its high school sports desk at thenewsstar.com.

How this ballot sits beside its Louisiana neighbours

The Monroe News-Star Girls Athlete of the Year is one of several reader-vote sports programs in Louisiana, and its closest neighbours differ in cadence, gender focus and market. The Baton Rouge High School Athlete of the Week and the New Orleans Area High School Athlete of the Week both run on a weekly rhythm during the season, while this Monroe award is a single year-end vote each June. The Louisiana High School Football Player of the Week and the New Orleans Area Prep Football Player of the Week are sport-specific and male-focused, where the Monroe ballot is girls-only and spans all sports.

Two further siblings round out the set: the Shreveport Times High School Athlete of the Week, from another Louisiana newsroom, and the WAFB Sportsline Player of the Week, from a Baton Rouge television station. Each belongs to a different publisher in a different city, so a vote cast in one carries no weight toward another.

What makes the Monroe program distinct is the combination of an annual year-end honor, a girls-only field, and a multi-town nominee list spanning the whole Monroe News-Star coverage area. A supporter in Ruston, Bastrop or Winnfield competes in the same June ballot, which is why the leading 2025-26 tally of 13,907 votes mattered across so many communities at once.

Strengthening support for a Monroe News-Star girls award nominee

Support in this program is built around a single June window on poll.fm, so timing matters more than volume spread across a season. Send the ballot link at thenewsstar.com's poll.fm page out as soon as the News-Star publishes the nominee list, name the athlete and her school town in the ask, and give supporters the concrete action: open the page, find her entry, submit the vote. Because the ballot is a single year-end question, every share should point at the same URL rather than at a rotating weekly poll.

The organizer's published position on outside help is simply absent: the News-Star prints no rule text on purchased votes, vote software or supporter campaigns for this award, so the live ballot and the paper's own coverage are the only stated authorities. What is verifiable is the shape of the result, a leading tally of 13,907 votes at 36% on the 2025-26 ballot, which shows that concentrated supporter networks, not casual traffic, decide the honor.

For a fuller playbook that applies to reader polls like this one, see how to get more votes online, and for award-specific ballots generally, award contest voting covers the mechanics of year-end honors.