The Section III Boys Tennis Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Section III Boys Tennis Player of the Year vote is

The Section III Boys Tennis Player of the Year recognizes the season's top boys tennis player, as decided by a public vote. Section III, the high school athletics body that governs interscholastic sports across its own region of New York, puts the question to supporters at the end of the boys tennis season: who is the Section III boys tennis player of the year? The answer is decided entirely by whoever visits the ballot and casts a vote.

Section III does not run the balloting on its own website. Crowdsignal, the poll.fm platform, carries the vote instead, and that platform handles single-question public polls of exactly this kind. The confirmed ballot address is poll.fm/13905629, and the page carries the Section III boys tennis question, the nominee list and the vote controls in one view. The 2024 edition of that ballot is marked closed, with the final tally left visible.

The nominees on the most recent confirmed ballot came from school communities across the Section III footprint, including Liverpool, Cortland, Cazenovia and Fayetteville-Manlius. That footprint is what separates this award from a statewide ballot: it is a sectional honor, decided by the tennis community inside one athletics section of New York rather than by readers of a single newspaper across the whole state.

Because the vote is a public poll with no entry form, the barrier to participating is low. Any supporter who reaches the ballot page during a live window can take part, which is why the tally moves quickly once a school community starts rallying behind its nominee.

The dated record: which editions ran and when

Three editions of the Section III Boys Tennis Player of the Year are confirmed: 2022, 2023 and 2024. Each of those ballots is anchored to June, which fits the rhythm of a spring sport. Boys tennis in New York finishes its season in late spring, and the player of the year vote lands in June once the section's dual matches and postseason play are done.

The 2024 ballot is the most recent confirmed edition, and it is marked closed on poll.fm. A closed poll keeps its results visible: the 2024 page shows four nominees and the share of the tally each one took, with the leading nominee from Liverpool finishing well ahead of the field. That closed page is the clearest public evidence of how the award ran in its latest confirmed year.

No edition after 2024 is confirmed. Section III has not published the year its next boys tennis ballot will open, and no later poll is attached to the program. The same gap applies to the fine print of any future edition: the exact day the next June window opens, the day it closes, the nomination process if one exists, and the platform's round dates are all absent from what Section III has put in public; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For planning purposes, the honest reading is this: June is the month the vote has landed in every confirmed year, the poll.fm address is where the ballot appears, and anything beyond the 2024 edition has to be read from the live page when Section III posts it.

How a supporter votes on the Section III boys tennis ballot

The Section III mechanic asks little of the supporter, and it works the same way in every confirmed edition. A supporter opens the ballot at poll.fm/13905629, reads the single question, and sees the nominee list beneath it. Each option pairs a player with the school community that player represents, so a Liverpool supporter looks for the Liverpool option, a Cortland supporter for the Cortland option, and so on down the list.

Selecting an option is a single click on the radio button beside that nominee. The ballot is single-choice: one question, one selection, one submission. Nothing on the confirmed Section III boys tennis page indicates that an account, an email address or a login is required before the vote button will register a choice, so a plain browser visit is enough to take part.

After the selection is made, the supporter presses the vote button under the option list. On a live poll the page confirms the choice. On a closed poll, like the 2024 edition, the page instead displays the final percentages for every nominee, which is how the standings stay public after the window shuts.

Two things the ballot page does not state are worth flagging. It does not print a per-supporter limit on repeat voting, and it does not print a closing time for the window. Both facts would live on the live ballot if Section III chose to publish them, so a supporter planning a coordinated push should read the current poll page rather than assume either rule from a past edition.

How this ballot sits beside its New York neighbours

New York's high school sports fan votes mostly run as weekly honors rather than season-ending awards. The Buffalo News Prep Talk Girls Athlete of the Week resets every seven days. 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 do the same for football in their regions. The lohud Boys Basketball Player of the Week and Lohud Girls Basketball Player of the Week run on the same weekly pattern for basketball.

The Section III Boys Tennis Player of the Year is different on three counts. First, it is annual, not weekly: one ballot per June, one honoree per season, rather than a fresh winner every week. Second, it names a player of the year across the whole season, which carries more weight in a school community than a single-week honor. Third, it is sectional, decided by the tennis community inside Section III's footprint rather than by a newspaper's readership across a metro area.

There is also a statewide football program, the New York High School Football Player of the Week, that covers the entire state under its own publisher. None of these programs shares a ballot with the Section III tennis vote: each answers to its own organizer, and a vote cast on one football or basketball poll counts for nothing in the Section III tennis tally.

Rallying support for a Section III tennis nominee

A single-question June poll rewards concentrated outreach. The Section III boys tennis ballot lists nominees by school community, so the natural base is the roster's own families, the tennis program's alumni, and the district's social media accounts. A short post with the direct poll.fm link, sent while the window is live, does more than a generic plea. The get more votes guide walks through outreach that fits a poll of this shape. On the rules side, Section III has never printed a statement about outside help for the boys tennis vote, so the position is unstated rather than permissive; anyone weighing a paid push should read the buying votes overview and the live ballot before deciding.