Here for Times Recorder High School Softball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Times Recorder softball Player of the Year vote is

The softball Player of the Year program run under the Times Recorder name is a reader-voted award from the Times Recorder, an Ohio newspaper whose own site is zanesvilletimesrecorder.com. It honors one high school softball player per edition, chosen by reader vote rather than by a panel, and it belongs to the sport vertical rather than to a general readers-choice format.

The balloting lives on Crowdsignal (poll.fm), and the voting page for the program is poll.fm/17152597. The 2026 ballot at that address is titled as a vote for the Times Recorder softball Player of the Year and carries a Poll Closed status, meaning the most recent edition has finished and its results are printed on the page.

The market is the state of Ohio, and more precisely the readership of the Times Recorder. No city is published for this program, so the ballot is described by its publisher and its state rather than by a town. The nominee list on the 2026 ballot draws from area high schools, which is what anchors the program to the newspaper's local coverage area.

Facts at a glance

The dated record for the softball Player of the Year vote

The softball vote's confirmed edition years are 2022 and 2026. The 2026 edition is the one whose ballot is live at the program's poll.fm address, and it is marked closed. The newspaper has not published a statement covering the years between those two editions, so the page does not claim a continuous annual run; it names the two confirmed years and stops there.

The voting window for the 2026 edition fell in June. That month placement is what the ballot evidence supports, and the next edition, if the pattern holds, points to June 2027. No opening day or closing day is printed anywhere alongside the Times Recorder softball vote; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The closed 2026 ballot prints its results. The leading nominee took 49 percent of the vote on a total of 14,567 votes, and the second-place nominee finished at 37 percent. Six players from area high schools appeared on that ballot. Every nominee is a student athlete, so the field is described here by school and vote share rather than by name.

Several facts sit outside what the organizer has published. The ballot shows a single Player of the Year award, so there is no category roster to list. No rules text about a per-supporter cap, daily voting or nominee eligibility accompanies the softball poll. No round dates for the platform, such as a nomination phase before voting, are published for this market either.

How a supporter votes in the softball Player of the Year poll

The Times Recorder softball vote is a straightforward public ballot on Crowdsignal, reachable at poll.fm/17152597. When a poll is live, the page lists each nominated player with a selection control, the supporter picks one nominee and presses the vote button, and the form registers the choice without any purchase or registration step shown on the ballot.

Right now that sequence cannot be performed, because the 2026 softball ballot is closed. A supporter arriving at the program's URL today sees the final standings rather than an open form. The practical move is to return when the next Player of the Year poll opens, which on the evidence of the 2026 edition points to the June window of 2027.

Three things about the mechanic are not published by the Times Recorder. The ballot carries no printed rule on whether a single supporter may vote more than once in the softball poll, so any limit exists only as whatever the Crowdsignal form enforces. No account requirement is stated for the vote. And no eligibility text explains how a player is nominated onto the softball ballot in the first place.

For a supporter planning ahead, the useful habit is simple: keep the program's poll.fm address, check it as the softball season closes, and act within the window while the vote button is still live. Once the page flips to closed, as the 2026 ballot has, the results are final and printed in full.

How this softball vote sits among Ohio's other public ballots

Ohio runs a crowded field of reader-voted sports programs, and the Times Recorder softball award is the most specialized of the six listed here. Where the others honor an athlete of the week across all sports, this ballot honors a single softball player for the year, which concentrates the vote among softball families in the Times Recorder's readership.

The weekly programs answer to their own publishers. The Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week and the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week run on their own metro cycles, while the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week serves the state's largest market. None of them shares this softball ballot's publisher or its poll.fm address.

Two more siblings round out the set: the Dayton Daily News High School Athlete of the Week and the Dayton High School Football Player of the Week, both tied to Dayton publishers, plus the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote, a television station's year-end award. A supporter looking for a football-focused or broadcast-run ballot lands there; a softball supporter in the Times Recorder area stays on this page's ballot.

The practical difference for nominees is the shape of the vote. A weekly athlete poll resets every seven days and rewards fast mobilization again and again, while this softball award is a single June window in which one sustained push decides the year.

Strengthening support for a softball nominee

Because this is one award decided in a single June window, support for a Times Recorder softball nominee works differently from a weekly poll. There is no next week to make up ground, so the families and teammates around a player do their best work early in the window rather than near the close, when the Crowdsignal form gives no visibility into the margin.

The Times Recorder has published no rule text for this softball ballot about outside help, paid votes or automation, which means the only written terms a supporter can point to are the ones on the live poll.fm page itself. That gap is worth taking seriously: a nominee's standing rests on the organizer's discretion, and the safest reading of any newspaper-run vote is that software-driven voting is unwelcome even where it is not spelled out.

What holds up in a ballot like this is reach through real channels: the school's softball community, team group chats and local softball pages sharing the poll.fm link directly. The tactics that fit a single-award public vote are laid out in the get more votes online guide, and the legal position for purchased support in a newspaper poll is covered on the legality page.