Citizen Times and Times-News Preseason WNC Girls Soccer Player of the Year Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the preseason WNC girls soccer poll is and who runs it

Run by the Citizen Times and Times-News, the publisher behind the All-WNC Player of the Year coverage in western North Carolina, this preseason ballot asks readers to pick the girls soccer player they expect to finish the year on top. The publisher's own words state the purpose: to highlight several leading candidates for the All-WNC Player of the Year as the season progresses, allowing supporters to cast their votes for whom they think will emerge as the top player in WNC by the end of the year.

Unlike the weekly athlete ballots the Charlotte Observer runs for the Charlotte market, this one is a preseason exercise: it opens before the girls soccer season gets underway and asks readers to size up the field in advance. The vote itself runs on Crowdsignal, the balloting platform many US newspapers use for reader polls, and the live ballot is reachable at poll.fm/13411466.

The ballot lists its nominees by name with their schools, and the schools on the published edition span the WNC map, from Asheville Christian Academy and Asheville High to Enka, Hendersonville and Murphy. That spread is the point of the exercise: the publisher is polling the whole mountain region's girls soccer scene, not one conference.

The dated record: editions, window and what the publisher leaves unpublished

Two edition years, 2023 and 2024, are on file for this poll, and that pair is what makes the program annual. Both editions are preseason ballots, and the timing evidence for the confirmed runs places the voting window in March, at the front end of the North Carolina high school girls soccer season. No edition beyond those two years is documented on the ballot page, and the publisher has not stated which year the next preseason edition will appear.

One dated fact comes straight from the organizer's own coverage: "The voting will end on June 27 at noon." That close is printed in the publisher's player of the year story, so it is the one deadline a supporter can act on with confidence when a ballot in this series is live.

Several facts sit outside anything the publisher has printed. The exact opening day of the preseason window, the complete category list past the player of the year question itself, and any per-supporter vote limit or eligibility rule are absent from the ballot page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

That combination, a March preseason anchor and a publisher-stated close, is what a supporter planning a push has to work with. Everything else about the schedule must be taken from the live poll.fm page in the season it matters.

How a supporter votes in the preseason poll today

Voting takes one visit. Open poll.fm/13411466, read the list of WNC girls soccer nominees and their schools, select one player, and submit. There is no nomination round for the public to complete and no form to fill in beyond the selection itself; the publisher assembles the nominee list, and the audience votes on it.

One status note matters before anyone plans a push: the ballot at that address currently displays a closed status, meaning the edition it served has finished accepting selections. A closed display is normal between preseason windows, since the poll is tied to the run-up to the girls soccer season rather than running continuously.

Because the vote is public, every submitted selection counts equally and no purchase is involved at the ballot itself. No account requirement appears on the page, so a supporter moving through the nominee list can complete the vote in a single visit. Nothing on the ballot states how often one person may submit, which is why the live ballot, not an assumption carried over from another newspaper poll, is the authority on repeat voting.

For a school community backing one nominee, the practical sequence is to watch for the preseason ballot's return, share the poll.fm link the day it opens, and land the push well before the publisher-stated close rather than in its final minutes.

How this ballot sits beside its North Carolina neighbours

Western North Carolina's preseason girls soccer ballot is the odd one out among the North Carolina reader polls on this site. The Charlotte Observer runs three separate weekly programs, the general Athlete of the Week plus distinct boys and girls high school editions, each resetting every seven days across a metro market. The Greensboro News & Record Player of the Week works the same recurring rhythm for the Triad, and the Tatum & Atkinson Scholar Athlete of the Week adds an academic angle for its station's audience.

This poll breaks that pattern in three ways. It is preseason rather than weekly, so it asks a single question about the whole coming season instead of crowning a new winner every week. It is girls soccer only, where the Observer siblings span all sports. And its market is WNC, the mountain region, where the nominee schools reach from Asheville to Hendersonville and Murphy, a geography none of the Piedmont programs covers.

The closest structural cousin in the state set is the weekly baseball ballot for North Carolina high school players, which is also a single-sport program, though it keeps the weekly cadence. For a supporter, the difference is strategic: a weekly ballot rewards constant return visits, while this preseason poll rewards one well-timed, wide share push inside a short window that ends at the publisher's stated deadline.

Strengthening support inside this poll's short window

A preseason single-question ballot rewards organization over volume. The publisher alone decides who appears as a nominee, so the only lever a school community controls is how many people open the poll.fm page and submit before the close. The window is short and anchored to the run-up of the season, and the publisher's own coverage sets a June 27 noon close for its player of the year voting, which leaves little slack for a delayed start.

Nothing about outside help or purchased participation has been printed as a rule on this ballot, so the organizer's terms, whatever they turn out to be, are what govern. That is why any support plan should start from how to get more votes online and from reading the live ballot's own text before committing to anything.

What works here is the same thing that works in any newspaper public vote: the nominee's own community, teammates' families, the school's social accounts and local group chats, passing the poll.fm link with a clear ask and a deadline. A closed ballot display between seasons is the signal to wait; an open one is the signal to move.