Gold Star Team of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Gold Star Team of the Week and who runs it?

TriStateFootball.com is a regional high school football outlet serving the Greater Cincinnati area of Ohio and the surrounding Tri-State. Through the fall the site pairs with Gold Star on a weekly team honor decided entirely by fans, and the organizers' own description reads: "Each week, Gold Star and TriStateFootball.com recognize 10 teams from across the Greater Cincinnati area for outstanding performances on the field." The weekly question itself runs through Crowdsignal, whose poll.fm address https://poll.fm/17518283 carries the current slate of ten nominated squads beside their win-loss marks. The two names in the title split the work between them: TriStateFootball.com publishes the coverage, collects reader emails and posts each game-week window, while Gold Star's name sits in the honor itself. Every fresh slate arrives under the same standing question: "Who gets your vote for this week's Gold Star Team of the Week?" In shape this is a best-of style public vote: no bracket, no judging panel, no entry fee and no stage night, just a straight choice among the ten teams whose play that week earned them a slot. Because the nominee list turns over weekly, a school can surface again and again across a season, and last week's result buys no head start in the next round of balloting.

Quick facts

Item	Detail
Program	Gold Star Team of the Week
Presenter	TriStateFootball.com, with Gold Star
Market	Greater Cincinnati area, Ohio
Platform	Crowdsignal (poll.fm)
Live ballot	https://poll.fm/17518283
Cadence	Weekly during the fall stretch
Weekly close	Wednesday at 12 p.m. ET
Nomination route	Email, due 7 a.m. Sunday
Vote format	Single choice among ten teams

Which seasons are settled for this series, and when does the live week shut?

Weekly ballots have carried the honor through fall seasons in 2024, 2025 and 2026, each stretch running from August into October with a new poll posted week after week. The 2026 season is the one in motion now, and the ballot at poll.fm/17518283 belongs to it. Read the series as one program with many ballots rather than many separate contests: each fall brings a fresh run of weekly questions, and the link above points at whichever week is live when you open it. A squad such as Summit Country Day, listed this week at 4-1, can drop off later slates entirely and then come back once another strong performance earns a fresh nomination. Inside a single week the rhythm comes from the organizers' game-week post. Voting is open "now through Wednesday at 12 p.m. ET," and reader nominations are welcomed by email "by 7 a.m. Sunday," which gives the slate a weekend to form before the poll goes live for the workweek. What the site has never posted in one place is a master calendar for the whole fall; a reader who wants a particular week's opening moment watches the game-week post itself. The ballot likewise breaks nothing out by category or division beyond the ten-team list; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter vote on this week's ballot?

The ballot asks one question and offers one button per team. A supporter opens https://poll.fm/17518283 in any browser, reads the ten named squads, selects one and submits. The posted rule sets the pace for everyone: "Fans may vote once per hour, per IP address." That spacing is the whole throttle; the Gold Star page asks no voter to register or sign in before choosing, so the only real commitments are the team pick and the timing of each return. A first-time visitor sees the entire contest at once: the question, the ten buttons, the season marks beside each name, and nothing else standing between arrival and a counted choice. Because the count is kept by IP address rather than by account, a household where several people want to weigh in plans around the shared network, a point the phone-voting answer below picks up. Choices stand until the Wednesday noon close, after which the week's result settles and the next slate replaces the list. The lineup below is the slate printed on the live ballot, marks and all, and it changes week to week as new performances earn nominations.

Nominees on the live ballot, with the season marks printed beside them

Team	Season mark
Colerain	3-3
Dixie Heights	2-4
Loveland	2-4
Ludlow	4-2
McNicholas	4-2
Reading	2-4
Ross	2-4
Ryle	2-4
St. Xavier	3-3
Summit Country Day	4-1

Where does this ballot sit among Ohio's other public votes?

Ohio's public votes split into two broad shapes. One shape is the yearly community award that sweeps whole categories at once: Best of Cincinnati run by Cincinnati CityBeat, the statewide Best of Ohio ballot, the CBUS Top Picks Community Choice Awards in Columbus, the Akron Community's Choice Awards, and the Best in Ohio Business Awards aimed at companies. Radio drives another lane entirely, with 97.1 The Fan Pizza Madness Columbus turning a food argument into a tournament. The Gold Star ballot differs from all of those on every axis that matters to a supporter. It runs on a weekly drumbeat instead of a single yearly event, so momentum has to be rebuilt every seven days. Its nominees are school football teams rather than restaurants or businesses, which means the voting base is parents, students, alumni and neighborhood fans. And its footprint is the Greater Cincinnati area the organizers cover, not the whole state, which keeps each week's contest intimate even as the nomination pipeline stays open to any team that earns a slot. That cadence changes campaign planning too: a citywide awards push can gather strength over months, while a Gold Star week lives and dies inside one stretch bounded by the Sunday email cutoff and the Wednesday noon close.

How can a school's base make every hourly vote count?

The hourly spacing rewards organization more than intensity. A booster club, a parent network or a Friday-night announcement can line up returns across the whole window, from the weekend slate reveal right through to the Wednesday close, instead of burning everyone's first vote in a single evening burst. Spacing returns across the day and across different home networks works with the posted rule rather than against it. Getting onto the ballot at all starts with the nomination email to [email protected] before Sunday at 7 a.m., because a team that is not listed cannot collect a single vote. Some campaigns also weigh purchased support in parallel; what ordering votes actually involves is laid out on the service overview, and organic tactics are collected in the votes guide. Whatever mix a campaign chooses, the ballot's own posted rule, one vote per hour from each IP address, is the gate every return passes through on its way to the weekly result. The same spacing also makes coordination visible in the final tally: a base spread across many households can outpace a lone enthusiast refreshing one office computer all afternoon.