The Taunton Daily Gazette Fans' Choice Boys Lacrosse Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Fans' Choice Boys Lacrosse award is and who runs it

The Taunton Daily Gazette hands its readers the deciding voice on high school boys lacrosse in its Massachusetts market through this end-of-season honor. The organizer is the Taunton Daily Gazette, a newspaper based in Taunton whose sports section publishes all-scholastics teams, athlete-of-the-year features and a stable of Fans' Choice polls across the seasons. Crowdsignal hosts the ballot, which supporters reach through poll.fm at poll.fm/17268186.

Classed in the sport vertical, the honor uses a public-vote mechanic: whoever gathers the most fan support on the ballot wins. It is an end-of-season recognition rather than a weekly feature, which separates it from the athlete-of-the-week polls many Massachusetts papers run. The newspaper's own coverage treated the 2026 result as part of its boys lacrosse all-scholastics presentation, so the fan vote feeds directly into the paper's recognition of the season's top players.

The dated record: editions, window and what the Gazette leaves unpublished

Two editions of this lacrosse honor are on the books, 2025 and 2026, which makes the program annual in shape. The voting window for each edition falls in June and July, the stretch right after the Massachusetts high school lacrosse season ends. The 2026 ballot at poll.fm/17268186 is closed, and its title still reads as a closed poll, so a visit today shows the settled result rather than an open vote.

The single figure attached to the 2026 edition is the winning share: the top vote-getter finished with 75 percent of the vote, chosen from a four-player nominee list. The Gazette published that result in its 2026 boys lacrosse all-scholastics feature in August.

Several facts sit outside the published material. The Gazette publishes no category roster for this lacrosse ballot, and no rule caps repeat votes by a single supporter; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Exact opening and closing dates for each year's poll are likewise absent from what the ballot page shows, beyond the closed status of the 2026 edition. The newspaper announces each poll through its sports coverage when the window opens, which is where the next deadline will surface.

How a supporter votes on the Taunton Gazette lacrosse ballot

Voting takes little effort. While the poll is live, a supporter opens the Crowdsignal ballot at poll.fm/17268186, sees the list of nominated boys lacrosse players, selects a choice and submits. No payment is involved and the poll is open to anyone who reaches the page. The 2026 ballot listed four nominees, each presented with a player name and a school, and supporters clicked through to register a pick.

Because the current ballot is closed, the practical sequence today starts with waiting: the Gazette opens its next lacrosse poll in the June-July window and announces it through the sports desk. When the new ballot goes live, the address changes, so the link that works is the one printed in the newspaper's own coverage rather than last season's URL. Once on the ballot, the supporter picks a nominee and submits, and the running percentage tallies update on the page.

What the ballot does not display is any instruction about repeat voting, account requirements or daily limits. The Crowdsignal format shows percentages beside each nominee, which is how the 75 percent winning share in 2026 was visible to anyone watching the poll before it closed.

How this ballot sits beside its Massachusetts neighbours

The Taunton market carries several fan-vote programs, and this lacrosse honor differs from most of them in shape. The Eagle-Tribune Athlete of the Week and the Enterprise Brockton Athlete of the Week are recurring weekly honors from other publishers, while the Gazette's lacrosse honor is a single seasonal award focused on one sport and one gender.

Statewide programs occupy a different lane again. The Massachusetts Gatorade Softball Player of the Year is a player-of-the-year award in a different sport, and the Massachusetts High School Athlete of the Week, baseball and basketball player-of-the-week polls cover their own sports on their own schedules.

What makes the Gazette's lacrosse poll distinctive is the combination of a single sport, a June-July window and a publisher that folds the result into its all-scholastics coverage. Anyone weighing where to direct effort should match the program to the athlete: a Taunton-area lacrosse player belongs on this ballot, not on a weekly poll for another sport.

Strengthening support in this lacrosse vote

This ballot rewards early, broad sharing more than anything else, because it is a short-window seasonal poll rather than a week-after-week series. The June-July window gives supporters a limited stretch to move a nominee up the percentage tally, and the 2026 result shows the gap can be wide: a 75 percent winning share means one player's community out-organized the other three nominee bases combined.

The practical playbook fits the mechanic. Circulate the poll.fm address the Gazette prints in its coverage, target the school communities behind each nominee, and remind people before the printed deadline rather than after. No published rule covers outside help for this poll, so anything that looks like manufactured voting carries risk the newspaper has not defined; its sports desk controls the ballot and can act on activity it dislikes. Tactics that stay within normal fan behavior are laid out in the more-votes guide, and the commercial side of fan voting is described on the award-votes page.