StarNews Boys Lacrosse Player of the Year Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in the StarNews Boys Lacrosse Player of the Year Poll and why it exists

StarNews, the North Carolina newspaper whose high school sports desk follows lacrosse through the spring season, runs the Boys Lacrosse Player of the Year Poll as an end-of-season reader vote. The ballot sits on Crowdsignal at poll.fm, the polling platform many newsroom polls use, and the 2026 edition was introduced on the paper's own sports pages with the line "Vote here in the 2026 StarNews Boys Lacrosse end-of-season poll."

The people who decide it are readers. Families of the nominees, classmates, and fans of the schools whose lacrosse programs the paper covers all reach the same public ballot, and the results table updates as votes land. Because the vote is public, anyone who arrives at the page during the window can take part, which is why turnout among a school community, not a judging panel, settles the outcome.

The poll is deliberately narrow: one sport, one gender, one award. That focus separates it from the weekly athlete ballots other North Carolina outlets run, where a fresh question opens every seven days. Here the whole season funnels into a single question about the year's top boys lacrosse player, and the answer is set by whoever turns out between the opening and closing dates. The table below pulls together the fixed facts a supporter or a nominee needs.

The dated record for the StarNews boys lacrosse poll

Three edition years are confirmed for this poll: 2022, 2025 and 2026. The 2026 edition carries the fully dated window, and it ran in June. StarNews's own closing language for that ballot read "Voting remains open until June 25, at 11:59 p.m.", which puts the 2026 voting window at June 7 through June 25, 2026. After the close, the ballot page title changed to show the poll as closed, with the results still on display.

The gap between 2022 and 2025 is simply what the confirmed years show; no claim about every intervening season is made here. What the pattern supports is an annual shape, with the next edition expected in 2027. Each cycle gets its own dates when StarNews publishes that year's ballot, so a supporter planning ahead should watch the paper's sports coverage in late spring.

Several facts sit outside the published page. StarNews has not printed a category list for this ballot, nor any per-supporter voting limit or eligibility rule; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Whether a nomination round precedes the voting window is likewise not stated on the ballot page. Those gaps are worth knowing before planning a push, because a rule that exists for a different newspaper's poll tells you nothing about this one.

How a supporter votes in the StarNews boys lacrosse poll today

Voting here is a plain public vote on Crowdsignal. A supporter opens the ballot at the StarNews poll's own poll.fm address, reads the nominee list, selects one entry and presses the vote control. Each nominee appears with his school affiliation, so a voter arriving from a school community can find the name he or she came to back without hunting through unrelated categories. There is no bracket, no write-in stage and no second round described on the page: one ballot, one question, one selection.

Two practical points matter. First, the ballot page does not state that an account is required, so the vote is presented as open participation. Second, the page prints no rule about how often one supporter may vote, which means any such limit can be read only on the live ballot for that edition. The 2026 ballot closed on June 25, and once a poll closes, Crowdsignal keeps the results table visible while shutting off new votes.

Timing is the other half of the mechanic. The window ran June 7 through June 25, 2026, so votes cast after the close do not count toward the outcome. A supporter who wants to matter to the result has to arrive inside the published dates, and for future editions those dates are set when StarNews publishes the new ballot.

How this poll sits beside other North Carolina high school ballots

North Carolina has a busy field of reader-voted high school sports ballots, and this poll occupies a specific corner of it. The Charlotte Observer Athlete of the Week and its boys and girls high school variants run as weekly series from the state's largest metro paper, resetting every seven days. The Greensboro News & Record Player of the Week follows the same weekly rhythm from the Triad. The Tatum & Atkinson Scholar Athlete of the Week adds a scholastic angle, and the statewide baseball player of the week ballot covers a different spring sport entirely.

Against those neighbours, the StarNews poll differs on three axes. It is end-of-season rather than weekly, so a supporter has one sustained window instead of a fresh chance each week. It is single-sport and single-gender, boys lacrosse only, where the weekly ballots span every sport the paper covers. And it is run by a coastal-plain newspaper rather than a metro daily, which shapes whose supporters hear about it.

For a nominee's family, the practical consequence is strategy. A weekly ballot rewards fast, repeated mobilization; this poll rewards a planned push across the whole June window. The rules also differ by organizer, so nothing printed on a Charlotte or Greensboro ballot page carries over here. Each of these ballots answers to a different publisher, with platform settings set separately.

Strengthening support for a StarNews lacrosse nominee

Because this is one long public window rather than a weekly reset, support for a nominee is built by spreading the poll.fm link across the school's lacrosse community early in the June span and reminding people before the June 25 close. Teammates, families and class groups are the natural audience, since they already follow the season and have a reason to act when asked.

Where outside help stands with the organizer is the open question: StarNews has not published a rule on its ballot page about purchased or automated votes, so any supporter weighing that route should read the paper's position first and understand that StarNews, not the platform, decides what counts. The general legality picture is laid out in is buying votes legal, and award-specific context sits at buy award votes.

The dependable levers are the free ones: a clear ask, a direct link, and a deadline. A message that names the nominee, gives the poll address and states the closing date converts far better than a bare request to vote for the player. Those habits, applied across a two-and-a-half-week window, are what separate a nominee who leads the results table from one who merely appears on it.