Who should be the Journal's Midseason Boy's Basketball Player of the Year presented by Glen Oaks: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Journal's midseason boys basketball poll is and who runs it

This programme is a midseason reader poll built around one winter question for the Journal's audience: who should be its Boy's Basketball Player of the Year, presented by Glen Oaks. The Journal, the publication covering the Sturgis, Michigan area, runs the vote as part of its high school basketball coverage. The ballot is a fan vote in the sport vertical, meaning the winner is decided entirely by whoever the public backs rather than by a panel or an editorial pick.

The voting happens on Crowdsignal, the platform reached through poll.fm. The specific ballot for the midseason boys award carries the address poll.fm/16560699, and that link is the voting URL for the programme. The page title on the ballot also carries a status marker, which is how a reader can tell at a glance whether the current window is live or shut.

The market is the Sturgis, Michigan area. The 2026 nominee list draws from schools across that corner of the state, including Sturgis, White Pigeon, Mendon, Colon and Bronson, which places the poll firmly in the local high school sports scene rather than statewide coverage. That local footprint is what separates this ballot from statewide Michigan fan votes.

The dated trail: which editions ran and when the window falls

The 2023 and 2026 winters are the confirmed editions of the Journal's midseason poll. Those are the years the published trail supports, and the programme is treated as annual on the strength of them. The spread between the two confirmed winters is wide, so the safest reading is that the poll runs in winters when the publication chooses to field it, with 2026 the most recent confirmed cycle.

The 2026 window fell in January. The dated phrase attached to that cycle says the poll was open until noon on Friday, which gives supporters a concrete deadline inside that month. No exact opening day and no calendar date for the closing Friday are printed with the ballot, so the month and the noon cutoff are the firm edges of what is known.

The fine print around the vote is what the Journal leaves unpublished: the page omits the category roster, any cap on repeat voting and the eligibility wording, so those details are a matter to confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The next edition's dates fall in the same category. The recurrence pattern points to a 2027 cycle if the annual rhythm holds, but the Journal has not printed a launch date for it, and the current 16560699 ballot is marked closed.

How a supporter votes on the Journal's midseason ballot today

Voting here is a straightforward public selection on a Crowdsignal ballot. A supporter opens poll.fm/16560699, reads down a list in which every nominee appears as a player name paired with his school, chooses the option next to the pairing he wants to back, and submits the choice at the end of the list. There is no nomination round to work through and no form to fill in beyond that selection.

Because the nominees are listed with their schools, the school name is the practical check against a mis-click. Programmes from Sturgis, White Pigeon, Mendon, Colon and Bronson sit on the same list, and similar player names can appear close together, so confirming the pairing before submitting is the only safeguard the ballot offers. A submitted choice on a poll.fm ballot cannot be recalled from the supporter's side.

Timing matters as much as the click. The 2026 ballot closed at noon on a Friday, and the page now shows the poll as closed, so any vote attempted against that link today lands on a shut ballot. When the Journal fields its next midseason poll, it will be a new ballot with a new address, and the closing time will be printed on that live page in the same style as the noon-Friday deadline of the 2026 cycle.

How this ballot sits beside its Michigan neighbours

Michigan carries a crowded field of high school fan votes, and this poll occupies a distinct slot in it. The Journal's midseason award is a boys basketball ballot tied to the Sturgis area, while most of the neighbouring programmes on this site are weekly football votes from larger Michigan markets. That difference in sport, in cadence and in geography is what makes the comparison useful rather than confusing.

The closest neighbours by structure are the MLive weekly votes: the MLive Bay City-Area High School Football Player of the Week and the MLive Kalamazoo-Area High School Football Player of the Week. Both run on the same weekly reset pattern that football season demands, where the Journal's ballot is a midseason award decided once per winter rather than a rolling weekly honour.

Other Michigan ballots on this site include the Ann Arbor-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 High School on SI Michigan Athlete of the Week, the last of these covering the whole state across sports. Against that set, the Journal's poll is the small-market basketball entry: a single winter award, a single poll.fm ballot, and a nominee pool drawn from schools like Sturgis, Mendon and Colon rather than from a metro area.

Strengthening support for a Journal midseason nominee

Support in this poll comes down to reach during a short January window. The 2026 ballot stayed open until noon on a Friday, so the useful window for rallying a school community was days, not weeks. The most effective moves are the plain ones: sharing the poll.fm link through the nominee's school networks, team parent groups and local community pages early in the window, and repeating the share before the noon-Friday cutoff rather than after momentum has faded.

The organizer's rules shape what outside help is worth pursuing. The ballot page publishes no documented policy on voting software or automated voting for this poll, which cuts both ways: nothing published permits it, and nothing published describes how the Journal polices it. A push that reads as genuine community support, classmates, families and local fans each casting a vote, is the approach the ballot's public-vote design rewards. For a fuller treatment of outreach methods that suit reader polls, see our guide on getting more votes online. The legality page addresses paid support in fan ballots as a general matter.