Who is The Gardner News Field Hockey Preseason Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Gardner News preseason field hockey vote is and who runs it

Run by The Gardner News, a newspaper based in Gardner, Massachusetts, this program asks readers one question each preseason: who deserves the title of player of the year in high school field hockey before the season begins. It belongs to the sport vertical, and its mechanic is a plain public vote rather than a judged award or a nomination round.

Crowdsignal, a polling service reached at poll.fm addresses, carries the ballot. The voting URL for this program is poll.fm/15985756, and that address is the live ballot, not a platform landing page. Opening it shows the poll title under the program name and a list of answers: nominees for the title, each printed alongside the high school she represents. Schools named on the ballot in past cycles sit in the Gardner News coverage area in north central Massachusetts.

Because the organizer is a local newspaper, the program is shaped like the reader-poll tradition of regional papers: a short window, a simple ballot and a result the paper can report back to its community. The table below gathers what is fixed about the program in one spot.

The dated history of the preseason player of the year vote

The program is annual, and its confirmed history covers 2024 and 2025. Both editions are anchored to September: the voting window opens and closes inside that month, which fits the preseason framing, since Massachusetts field hockey seasons begin in the late summer and the newspaper polls its readers before play starts. The next expected cycle is 2026, on the same annual rhythm.

Beyond the month, the newspaper keeps its scheduling detail under wraps until the poll appears. The precise open and close days of the September window, the platform round dates and the nominee roster for the coming cycle are all absent from the published material; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. That gap matters for supporters planning a push, because a preseason poll that runs for a short span can close before a community has finished mobilizing.

The organizer has also not published a category list for the ballot. The program poses one question whose answers are the nominees, and nothing in the published material describes additional divisions, honorable mentions or a nomination stage that feeds the vote. Anyone who needs the precise structure of the current edition should read the ballot at poll.fm/15985756 directly, since the newspaper posts the live poll there when the window opens each September.

How a supporter votes in the Gardner News poll today

Few ballots are easier to work. A supporter opens poll.fm/15985756, the Crowdsignal ballot for the current edition. The page presents the program question and a list of answers, where each answer is a nominee paired with her high school. There is no account creation, no nomination form and no separate entry step described on the ballot; the supporter scrolls the list, selects the player who deserves the preseason title and submits the form.

Crowdsignal confirms the submission on screen once the choice is registered. Unstated is any per-supporter rule. The newspaper has not printed a ceiling on repeat submissions from the same browser, nor whether any eligibility condition applies to who may take part. Those details, if they exist, live on the live ballot itself when the window is open.

Timing is the other practical point. The window falls in September, and the 2024 and 2025 editions both ran inside that month. A supporter who waits for the closing days risks finding the poll shut, so the sensible habit is to check the ballot as the preseason begins, read the nominee list, cast a choice early and follow The Gardner News coverage for the result. The newspaper reports on its own polls, so the outcome is usually announced through its own channels after the window closes.

How this ballot sits beside its Massachusetts neighbours

Fan-voted high school sports programs are plentiful across Massachusetts, and this one is distinct in several ways. It is run by a community newspaper rooted in Gardner, while many of its neighbours belong to larger publishers with statewide or metro reach. The Eagle-Tribune Athlete of the Week and the Enterprise Brockton Athlete of the Week are weekly series tied to daily newspapers in the Merrimack Valley and in the Brockton area respectively, whereas the Gardner News program is a single preseason title for a single sport.

The sport focus is the sharpest difference. The Massachusetts High School Baseball Player of the Week and the Massachusetts High School Basketball Player of the Week cover spring and winter sports, and the Massachusetts Gatorade Softball Player of the Year is a corporate-branded year-end award. Field hockey, a fall sport, gets its fan-vote spotlight here, before the season rather than after it.

The Massachusetts High School Athlete of the Week is the closest structural cousin, since it spans sports, but it runs on a weekly cadence through the year. The Gardner News ballot compresses its whole competition into a September window and a single question, which makes every vote cast in that short span carry more weight per supporter than in a series that resets every seven days.

Strengthening support for a nominee in this poll

Because the whole competition fits inside a September window, mobilization has to be quick. The most effective action for a nominee's supporters is circulating the ballot link, poll.fm/15985756, through team group chats, the school's parent networks and local community pages, with a clear ask to vote before the window closes. A nominee paired with a recognizable school name tends to travel well in a community newspaper's audience, since readers rally around their own town's program.

Nothing about outside help has been put in print by the organizer. The Gardner News has not issued a rule on vote services, automated voting or any per-person limit for this poll, which means supporters cannot know in advance what the ballot will accept. That uncertainty is a reason to keep a push organic and community-driven, and to read the live ballot for any rules text before the window opens. For a broader view of methods that work in fan-voted contests of this shape, see how to get more votes online, and for the specific award-poll context see buy award votes.