The Holland Sentinel Volleyball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Holland Sentinel Volleyball Player of the Year is and who runs it

The Holland Sentinel Volleyball Player of the Year is an award decided by readers of the paper. The organizer is The Holland Sentinel, a newspaper based in Holland, Michigan, that publishes at hollandsentinel.com and covers prep sports across its lakeshore market. The award sits in the paper's sports coverage rather than in a separate promotion, and the honor itself predates the current polling setup: a December 2019 entry in the Sentinel's own people index already refers to a Sentinel Volleyball Player of the Year.

The voting runs through Crowdsignal's poll.fm host, the polling platform the Sentinel uses for its reader ballots. The live address for the program is poll.fm/14249835, and that single ballot carries the poll question, the nominated players and the running standings. The mechanic is a straightforward open vote: any supporter who opens the page can select a nominee and submit, with no entry fee and no published account requirement.

The ballot's scope is a single question, the player of the year honor itself. Unlike multi-category readers choice contests, there is no category roster to work through, just the list of nominated players. Each nominee is presented with her school, which is how supporters find their program on the form. Schools appearing on the confirmed 2024 ballot include Zeeland East, Zeeland West, Hamilton, West Ottawa and Holland Christian, all Michigan high schools in the Sentinel's coverage area.

The dated record: which editions are confirmed and when the vote runs

Two ballot editions are confirmed for this program, in 2022 and 2024. Both are anchored to the same polling address, and the 2024 round carries the clearest timing evidence: the ballot was live during August of that year, in the voting phase, before closing. The page at poll.fm/14249835 now shows the poll in its closed state, with final standings displayed as percentages beside each nominee.

The program's history reaches further back than its confirmed ballots. A December 2019 entry in the Sentinel's own people index notes a Sentinel Volleyball Player of the Year being named, which places the honor at least as early as 2019 even though the polling rounds from that era are not part of the confirmed ballot list. The Sentinel's sports desk has also published a preseason version of the vote, referred to on the paper's own site as the Holland Sentinel Preseason Volleyball Player of the Year poll, so the program operates in more than a single slot in the calendar.

What the Sentinel has never printed is a dated open and close pair for any round, so treat the August window as the only fixed point and confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The ballot page likewise publishes no rules text on whether one person may cast several ballots in the volleyball round, and no eligibility wording for the nominees. The Sentinel has not announced the year of the next edition either, which leaves the closed 2024 poll as the most recent confirmed round until the paper posts a new one.

How a supporter votes on the Sentinel's volleyball ballot today

Casting a ballot takes little time. A supporter opens poll.fm/14249835, reads the poll question in the Sentinel's wording, and sees the nominated players beneath it. Every nominee is identified by name and school, so a Zeeland West supporter, a Hamilton supporter or a Holland Christian supporter can find her program's player directly. Selecting the button beside a nominee and submitting logs the choice, and the Crowdsignal form then displays the running standings as percentages next to each entry.

Because the 2024 round has closed, that same address currently shows the final percentages instead of an open form. This is standard behavior for the Sentinel's poll.fm ballots: a closed poll stays online with its percentages visible, and the next round replaces it at the same address when the paper posts it. There is no separate nomination form to watch; the nominated players appear on the ballot itself.

Three things the ballot page does not publish are worth knowing before you plan a push. It carries no rules text on whether a single supporter may return and cast again in the volleyball round, so neither a daily-return routine nor a single-vote assumption can be verified against this poll. It carries no account requirement, meaning no sign-in step is shown between opening the page and submitting. And it carries no stated closing time, so the August window is the only scheduling anchor the Sentinel gives. Each of these gaps is visible only on the live ballot when a round is actually running.

How this ballot sits beside its Michigan neighbours

Michigan's public-vote landscape is crowded with weekly football polls, and that contrast defines what this program is. The Ann Arbor-Area High School Football Player of the Week, the MLive Bay City-Area High School Football Player of the Week, the Flint-Area High School Football Player of the Week, the Jackson-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the MLive Kalamazoo-Area High School Football Player of the Week all run as recurring weekly series during football season, each tied to a different MLive market. The High School on SI Michigan Athlete of the Week adds a statewide, multi-sport weekly option.

The Sentinel's volleyball award is different in three ways. It is a year-end honor rather than a weekly series, so a supporter gets a single sustained push instead of a fresh ballot every few days. It covers volleyball rather than football, which means its window lands in the fall sports calendar and its audience is the lakeshore volleyball community. And it belongs to a single local newspaper, The Holland Sentinel, rather than to a statewide chain, so the nominated players come from a compact set of schools around Holland, Zeeland, Hamilton, West Ottawa and Holland Christian.

Anyone comparing programs across the state should match the tactic to the cadence of the specific ballot. A weekly series rewards returning voters across many rounds; this ballot rewards concentrating support inside a single August window, and tactics borrowed from weekly football polls do not transfer cleanly to it.

Strengthening support in a single-window volleyball poll

Because this ballot is a single open vote rather than a weekly series, effective support means moving people to poll.fm/14249835 inside the August window and having them submit while the round is open. The school-identified nominee list makes targeting straightforward: teammates, classmates, and each school's own volleyball community are the natural audiences, and each needs the direct ballot link rather than instructions to search for it.

On the question of outside help, the Sentinel has printed no policy for this volleyball poll, so no organizer rule exists to lean on either way. The format itself is a Crowdsignal open vote with standings shown as percentages, which makes any shift in the race visible immediately. Methods for reaching and mobilizing supporters in polls of this shape are covered in the guide to getting more votes online, and the award-specific version of the same question is on the award votes page.

Timing matters more here than in a weekly poll. With no published closing date, waiting for a final-day push risks acting after the round has closed, as the 2024 ballot already has. Treat the window as open from the moment the Sentinel posts a new round and act early.