READER'S CHOICE Mansfield News Journal Athlete of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the READER'S CHOICE Athlete of the Year ballot is

The READER'S CHOICE Mansfield News Journal Athlete of the Year is a reader-driven sports award run by the Mansfield News Journal, the daily newspaper serving Mansfield, Ohio. The program sits in the sports vertical and crowns high school athletes as chosen by readers rather than by a panel. It belongs to the newspaper's READER'S CHOICE family of audience features, which is the brand the paper uses when it hands editorial decisions to its readers.

The voting experience lives on Crowdsignal, the survey platform that operates through poll.fm, and the current ballot is poll number 17158985. Anyone who opens that URL sees the full READER'S CHOICE: 2025-26 Mansfield News Journal Athlete of the Year form. The ballot is open to the general public, so no subscription, login or newspaper account is required to take part.

Because this is a high school poll, the nominees are students. This page deliberately refers only to the structure of the ballot, the sports it covers and the schools involved, never to individual athletes. The named schools on the current edition include Lexington, Madison and Ontario, alongside entries from the Mansfield area generally.

Facts at a glance

The dated record for this Athlete of the Year vote

The published run for this ballot covers 2025 and 2026. That pair of years is what marks the program as annual on this site, and it is the entire history anyone can point to. The current edition is titled for the 2025-26 school year, which is how a year-end award names itself, and the ballot evidence ties the live poll directly to that title and to poll number 17158985.

The timing of the window is pinned to June. Both the 2025 and 2026 activity for this program falls in that month, so a reader looking for the ballot should think early summer, when winter and fall sports seasons have finished and the paper compiles its year-end honors. No specific start or stop day appears anywhere in the published material, so the safe reading is a June window with the closing date stated on the poll form itself.

Several things the organizer does not publish are worth naming. The newspaper has released no full category roster, no statement about whether the paper caps repeat submissions, and no eligibility terms for nominees. Each of those gaps is a reason to confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

No ballot for 2027 has been announced. Given the two confirmed years the program will likely appear again, but an unannounced edition is not a scheduled one, and nothing on this page should be read as a 2027 date.

How a supporter votes on the poll.fm ballot

The mechanic is the standard Crowdsignal single-ballot flow. A supporter opens poll.fm/17158985, scrolls through the READER'S CHOICE: 2025-26 list, and finds the sport grouping that applies. Each option pairs an athlete with a school, so the supporter selects the radio button beside the correct pairing and submits. The page then refreshes to show the running tally across every option on the ballot.

Two practical notes follow from that structure. First, because athletes are grouped under sport headings, a supporter should verify both the sport and the school before submitting, since similar names can appear across different groupings. Second, the tally is public, so supporters can watch standing change as voting progresses through the June window.

The login question comes up often with poll.fm ballots: this one does not require an account, so the barrier to voting is simply reaching the page. What is not visible is whether the newspaper has configured a repeat-vote limit on the form. Crowdsignal supports such limits, and the setting for this ballot is decided by the Mansfield News Journal rather than by the platform, so the only reliable source is the wording on the live poll itself.

Because nominees are high school students, supporters should keep promotion within normal community channels: team groups, school booster communications and family networks. Those channels are where the votes genuinely come from on a ballot of this size.

How this ballot sits among Ohio's athlete fan votes

Ohio is well covered by newspaper and broadcaster fan votes, and this program holds a distinct slot among them. It crowns a full year of work instead of a single week. Its closest siblings on this site are the weekly ballots linked here: the Akron-area weekly vote, the Cincinnati Enquirer weekly vote and the Columbus Dispatch weekly vote, all of which reset every seven days during their seasons.

The difference matters for supporters. A weekly ballot rewards fast mobilization inside a seven-day window, while the Mansfield Athlete of the Year vote concentrates attention on one June ballot covering the whole 2025-26 school year. Turnout patterns differ accordingly: the weekly formats build habits, while this one builds a single peak.

Two further siblings round out the Ohio set. The Dayton Daily News weekly vote and the Dayton football player vote split Dayton-area voting by sport, and the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote is the broadcaster's year-end equivalent. Every one of these ballots is governed by a different newsroom, so nothing stated on this page transfers to them.

Within that field, the Mansfield program is the small-market year-end ballot: one newspaper, one market, one poll, decided in June.

Strengthening support in this year-end poll

Support for the 2025-26 ballot has to work within the June window, which compresses the campaign compared with a weekly vote. The most effective moves are local: the athlete's own team channels, booster club messages and school social accounts, each carrying the direct poll.fm link so nobody has to search for the ballot.

Timing matters more here than volume. Because the closing date is printed only on the live form, a campaign that peaks too early risks burning support before the final stretch. Share in waves: an initial push when the ballot opens in June, a reminder mid-window, and a final call anchored to whatever closing notice the Mansfield News Journal prints on the page.

Keep the pitch honest. This is a reader's choice award for a student, so messages framed around community pride and a genuine season recap consistently outperform generic vote-begging, and they age better when the results are announced.

On outside help: the organizer's position is whatever its own terms state, and nothing on this ballot licenses bulk third-party voting. For a fuller picture of legitimate promotion tactics, our guide at how to get more votes online covers share timing, message templates and platform-specific constraints that apply to poll.fm ballots like this one.