StarNews Preseason High School Volleyball Player of the Year Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the StarNews preseason volleyball poll is and who runs it

StarNews, the news publisher serving Wilmington, North Carolina, stages the Preseason Volleyball Player of the Year Poll as a fan vote ahead of each new volleyball season. It belongs to the publisher's high school sports desk and asks readers to pick the preseason player of the year from a nominee list the paper assembles. The ballot is a single public vote, not a multi-round competition, and it runs on Crowdsignal at poll.fm, the same balloting service many regional publishers use for reader polls.

The confirmed 2025 ballot at poll.fm/15880670 lists its nominees with their schools, and the schools named there map squarely onto StarNews's coastal North Carolina coverage: Hoggard, Topsail, Ashley, Laney and Cape Fear Academy all appear. That mix of New Hanover County public schools and a private academy is typical of the paper's volleyball beat, which covers programs on both sides of the Cape Fear region.

Because the vote is open to anyone who reaches the ballot, the audience is the paper's readership plus the families and teammates of the nominated players. There is no entry step for supporters and no nomination form on the live poll; the publisher selects the list, and the public votes on it. The table below collects the fixed facts.

The dated record: editions, the 2026 window and what StarNews leaves unpublished

Confirmed edition years number two for this program, 2022 and 2025. The 2025 ballot is the one live at poll.fm/15880670, titled as the 2025 edition of the poll and now marked closed. StarNews's own 2026 preseason story, published with the season just around the corner, invites fans to vote for the 2026 preseason girls volleyball player of the year, which is what makes the program annual rather than a standalone event.

The 2026 window is stated in StarNews's own words: voting is open now through Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 11:59 p.m. That gives the poll a compressed preseason window in August, running from the story's publication to the mid-August cutoff, after which the ballot closes and the season itself takes over the paper's coverage.

What the publisher has not printed is the ballot's category structure. The live page presents a single player of the year question and no supporting category roster, so how the ballot is organized beyond that headline vote is something to confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Formal rules are similarly thin: beyond the repeat-vote invitation, StarNews has not published a rulebook for this poll, and no eligibility criteria appear on the ballot page itself.

For supporters planning around the calendar, the practical summary is short. The poll returns each August, the 2026 cutoff is Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 11:59 p.m., and the confirmed history runs 2022 and 2025 with 2026 now underway.

How a supporter votes in the StarNews volleyball poll today

Voting here is deliberately simple, and that simplicity is what lets the poll absorb heavy repeat voting. A supporter reaches the ballot at poll.fm/15880670, either through the link in StarNews's preseason volleyball story or by entering the address directly. The page shows the nominee list, each player named beside her school, with a radio control next to every name. The supporter picks a player, presses the vote control, and the choice is logged immediately.

StarNews's stated rule is the most important fact about this ballot: readers may vote for their favorite player as often as they wish. There is no described login, no email verification step and no per-device limit printed on the page. That open repeat structure is what separates this poll from newspaper contests that restrict voting to a single daily ballot, and it means a school community can organize return visits across the whole window rather than a single day.

The ballot sets out no account requirement, so the friction a supporter faces is only the trip to the page itself. Once the window closes on Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 11:59 p.m., the poll is marked closed and the result becomes the publisher's preseason player of the year call. Because the ballot is rebuilt fresh for each preseason, a supporter returning in a later year should expect a new poll address and a new nominee list rather than the same page reopening.

Where this poll sits among North Carolina's high school fan votes

StarNews's volleyball poll is one of several reader-vote programs running across North Carolina high school sports, and it is distinguished by its preseason timing and its single-school-sport focus. Most of its neighbours are weekly recognition formats rather than preseason awards. The Charlotte Observer Athlete of the Week runs a rolling weekly vote across sports, and the Observer splits the same format by gender with the Boys High School Athlete of the Week and the Girls High School Athlete of the Week.

Piedmont and Triad readers have their own equivalents: the Greensboro News & Record Player of the Week serves the Greensboro market, while the Tatum & Atkinson Scholar Athlete of the Week adds an academic criterion to the athletic one. A seasonal sport-specific option exists in the North Carolina High School Baseball Player of the Week.

Against that field, the StarNews poll is narrower and sharper: it names a volleyball player of the year before the season starts, it concentrates the whole vote on the Wilmington coverage area, and its repeat-vote invitation makes it unusually open to sustained community campaigning. For a nominated player's school, that combination of a short August window and unlimited repeat voting is what makes this ballot worth organizing around, since the result is settled quickly and entirely by fan participation rather than a panel.

Strengthening support for a nominee in this poll

Everything about this ballot rewards organized repetition. StarNews allows voting as often as you wish, the window runs only to Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 11:59 p.m., and the ballot requires no account, so the practical lever is keeping a stream of supporters returning to poll.fm/15880670 throughout the window. The channels that work are the ones already attached to the program: the StarNews story link shared into team group chats, the school's own social accounts, and volleyball families reposting the ballot with a named player each time.

On outside help, the only guidance StarNews prints for this poll is the repeat-vote invitation itself; no further rule text exists, so the live ballot's terms are the binding ones. A campaign built on real supporters returning daily sits comfortably inside what the publisher has invited. For a wider view of tactics that fit open public polls like this, see how to get more votes online.