Player of the Year Winter Edition Boys Basketball: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the CatchMark SportsNet Winter Edition boys basketball poll is

The Player of the Year Winter Edition Boys Basketball poll is a fan-voted award program run by CatchMark SportsNet, the Michigan sports publisher behind catchmarksports.com. It sits in the high school sports vertical and asks readers to pick a standout boys basketball player for the winter season. The balloting itself is carried on Crowdsignal, and the working ballot for the current cycle lives at poll.fm/15173560.

The program's market is Michigan, and the 2026 edition drew its nominees from three school communities the publisher named on the ballot: Whitehall, Oakridge and Muskegon. Those towns anchor the poll in the West Michigan high school basketball scene that CatchMark SportsNet covers daily. The format is an open fan ballot, so anyone reaching the poll.fm page can select a nominee and log a vote without paying an entry fee.

The facts below summarize what is confirmed about the program.

Because CatchMark SportsNet is both the publisher and the award's organizer, everything about the poll, from its nominee list to its closing announcement, flows through the publisher's own channels rather than through a third-party contest operator.

The dated record for the Player of the Year Winter Edition

CatchMark SportsNet's Winter Edition carries edition years of 2023 and 2025, and together those two winters qualify the boys basketball poll as an annual fixture. The 2026 cycle extends that run with a fully dated window.

For 2026, CatchMark SportsNet published the schedule on its own site: the polls opened on March 17, 2026, and stayed open for seven days of voting, with winners announced on March 24, 2026. That makes the 2026 edition the best-documented cycle the program has, since both the opening and closing dates come from the publisher's announcement rather than from inference.

The closed 2026 ballot also preserves the full result. It recorded 4,308 total votes. The Whitehall nominee finished at 47 percent with 2,031 votes, the Oakridge nominee at 33 percent with 1,422 votes, and the Muskegon nominee at 20 percent with 855 votes. Those four figures are the only counts the ballot page carries.

Several things remain off the page. CatchMark SportsNet has placed no category roster, no wording about repeat visits and no eligibility terms anywhere on the Winter Edition ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same applies to whether a nomination round precedes voting in future winters, since no nomination dates appear anywhere on the 2026 ballot or the publisher's window announcement.

How a supporter votes on the Winter Edition boys basketball ballot

Voting in the CatchMark SportsNet poll is a short sequence on the Crowdsignal page. Reaching the Winter Edition boys basketball ballot at poll.fm/15173560, a voter sees the nominee list and selects the radio button beside the player they want to back. Each option is labeled with the nominee's school community, so the Whitehall, Oakridge and Muskegon entries are easy to tell apart at a glance.

After the selection is made, pressing the vote button logs it. The Crowdsignal page then shows the live percentage and raw count for every option, which is how supporters watching the 2026 edition could see the race move in real time toward the 4,308-vote total. There is no payment step, no form to fill in and no visible account requirement on the ballot page.

The ballot closes with a share prompt of its own: the page tells supporters to give others the chance to vote by sharing the poll. That prompt is the distribution lever CatchMark SportsNet builds into the program, and it matters because a seven-day window rewards campaigns that reach people early rather than in the final hours.

One caution belongs here. Because the publisher has printed no rule about repeat voting, nobody outside CatchMark SportsNet can state how often one person may return to the poll.fm ballot during the seven days. The live page for each new edition is the only authoritative source for that.

Where this poll sits among Michigan fan-voted awards

Among Michigan's fan-voted high school programs, CatchMark SportsNet's Winter Edition stands apart, and the sibling ballots on this site show exactly how. Most of those siblings are weekly player of the week awards tied to football seasons, while the Winter Edition is a single season-ending player of the year ballot for boys basketball.

The siblings include the Ann Arbor-Area High School Football Player of the Week, the MLive Bay City-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the Flint-Area High School Football Player of the Week. Each of those is anchored to a specific city or region and to a weekly rhythm during the fall.

Two more siblings follow the same weekly shape in other markets: the Jackson-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the MLive Kalamazoo-Area High School Football Player of the Week. A fourth statewide option, the High School on SI Michigan Athlete of the Week, covers all sports rather than one team sport.

Against that field, the Winter Edition differs on three axes: the organizer is a dedicated local sports publisher rather than a metro newspaper chain, the sport is basketball rather than football, and the award is a year-level honor decided in a single seven-day March window instead of a rolling weekly vote. Supporters who follow several of these ballots will recognize the Crowdsignal format, since poll.fm hosts many Michigan fan votes, but the nominee pool and the timing are entirely CatchMark SportsNet's own.

Strengthening support for a West Michigan basketball nominee

Support for a nominee in this poll travels the same road the ballot itself points to: the share prompt. Because the 2026 window lasted seven days, from March 17 to March 24, a campaign built around the Whitehall, Oakridge or Muskegon school community had a full week to reach parents, classmates and local fans, and the publisher's own announcement gave every camp the same starting gun.

On the subject of outside assistance, vote software or automated voting, CatchMark SportsNet has placed no rule of any kind on the Winter Edition ballot, so no organizer position can be quoted here. The one certainty is the format: a visible Crowdsignal ballot where every percentage point shows, which makes steady, genuine outreach easy to measure as it lands.

For supporters planning outreach around a Michigan basketball nominee, the practical playbook in how to get more votes online covers timing, sharing and community channels that fit a short seven-day window. Anyone weighing paid support can compare options on buy award votes, keeping in mind that no organizer rule for this poll addresses purchased votes either way.