Section v Boys Indoor Track Athlete of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Section V boys indoor track athlete of the year vote is

The Section V Boys Indoor Track Athlete of the Year vote is a high school sports honor balloted by the Democrat and Chronicle, the New York newspaper whose newsroom covers the Section V region and publishes at democratandchronicle.com. The program asks readers a single question: who should be Section V's boys indoor track athlete of the year. There is no entry fee and no judging panel. The outcome is decided entirely by readers who open the ballot and choose among the nominees the paper lists.

Crowdsignal (poll.fm) hosts the ballot, a polling platform the publisher uses for reader votes, and the confirmed ballot address is poll.fm/15256581. The vote is a plain public poll: the question, the nominee list and a submit control, followed by a results screen that shows each nominee's share and the overall total.

The market is the Section V high school sports community in New York state. Section V is the regional athletic classification the paper covers, and the nominees on the confirmed ballot came from high schools inside that footprint. The vertical is sport, the format is an athlete of the year award rather than a weekly honor, and anyone holding the link can vote while the poll runs.

The dated facts: which editions ran and when

Two editions of this vote are confirmed: 2022 and 2025. That pair is enough to establish the program as a recurring feature of the paper's indoor track coverage rather than a one-off experiment, and it matches the shape of athlete of the year polls across New York high school sports coverage generally. No edition years beyond those two appear in the confirmed material, so the page treats the program's history as beginning no later than 2022 and continuing through the 2025 ballot.

The 2025 edition was live during March, which fits the indoor track calendar, where championship meets conclude in late winter and season-ending honors follow. That ballot has since closed. Its final tally is public: 7,912 total votes across the three nominees, a substantial figure for a regional single-question poll and a sign of how actively the Section V school communities push their nominees.

The paper has never printed the precise start and finish dates of the window, the nomination process feeding it, or any platform round dates; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. What is safe to say is the rhythm the two confirmed editions suggest: a ballot appearing in the closing stretch of the indoor season, running for a limited span, and closing with its full tally displayed on the poll.fm results page for anyone who arrives late.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot

Voting takes little effort. The supporter loads the poll.fm page, reads the Democrat and Chronicle's question, and sees the nominee list: each athlete's name beside the Section V high school he represents. On the confirmed 2025 ballot three nominees appeared. The supporter selects one, presses the button beneath the list, and Crowdsignal logs the choice and returns the running results immediately.

The final standings from the closed 2025 edition show how lopsided that vote became: the leading nominee finished at 92 percent with 7,271 votes, the second at 7 percent with 589, and the third at 1 percent with 52. Those numbers were displayed openly on the results screen, which is typical of Crowdsignal polls and useful for anyone assessing whether a live edition is drawing genuine participation.

Two practical points matter for a live edition. First, the ballot page prints no per-voter rule, no daily return instruction and no eligibility text, so the on-page wording at voting time is the only authority on how frequently a single supporter may vote. Second, no account or login is mentioned anywhere on the ballot; the vote button sits directly beneath the nominee list. If the paper changes either arrangement for a future edition, the change will show on the live poll page itself, not in any announcement elsewhere.

How this ballot sits beside its New York neighbours

This vote belongs to a wider family of New York high school sports polls covered on this site, and what separates the neighbours from this one comes down to publisher and rhythm rather than mechanics. The Buffalo News Prep Talk Girls Athlete of the Week runs on a weekly cycle under a different newspaper. The Hudson Valley New York High School Football Player of the Week and the New York Section 1 High School Football Player of the Week cover football in other regions under their own publishers.

Basketball has its own pair: the lohud Boys Basketball Player of the Week and the Lohud Girls Basketball Player of the Week, both tied to the lohud newsroom. A statewide football option exists too, the New York High School Football Player of the Week.

What distinguishes this program from those neighbours is scope and cadence. It covers one sport, one gender and one region, and it crowns a season-ending athlete of the year rather than resetting every week. Each of the six neighbouring programs answers to its own publisher and runs on its own schedule, so a vote total or a rule from any of them says nothing about this ballot. Supporters following several of these polls at once should treat every ballot page as its own set of instructions.

Strengthening support in a single-question newspaper poll

Because this ballot asks one question with a small nominee list, support is a concentration game: every vote moved to one nominee comes straight off the others, as the 2025 spread of 92 percent to 1 percent shows. The practical levers are the school community itself, the timing of the push inside the short March window, and making the poll.fm link effortless to find and use. Our guide to getting more votes online covers those basics in detail.

Regarding outside help, the Democrat and Chronicle has never printed a rules document for this ballot, so nobody can quote the paper's own line on purchased or automated votes. That gap cuts both ways: nothing printed permits it, and nothing printed forbids it. Before spending money on any high school poll, read the live ballot and the organizer's terms, and weigh how a newspaper covering the region might treat a suspicious tally. Our legality and rules page sets out the general position, and award vote packages are listed with pricing for readers who decide to proceed.