READER'S CHOICE MNJ Boys Basketball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

A season-capping player of the year vote, not another weekly poll

Most Ohio high school fan votes on this site reset every week. The READER'S CHOICE MNJ Boys Basketball Player of the Year works on the opposite rhythm: it is a single ballot that caps a full boys basketball season, run by the publisher MNJ under its reader's choice label. Where a weekly athlete of the honor roll asks readers to pick again each Monday, this poll asks one question once a year, and the answer decides the market's player of the year.

The ballot is hosted at Crowdsignal (poll.fm) as poll 15177776, and the voting URL is https://poll.fm/15177776. The program sits in the sport vertical and the format is a straightforward public vote: no nomination round is described on the published page, no entry form, no judging panel. Readers pick a player, the poll closes, and the tallies stay visible afterward.

The market is Ohio, and the nominee list is what pins it down. The 2025 ballot drew its options from Lexington, Mansfield Senior, Ontario, Crestview, Mansfield Christian and Shelby, a cluster of schools rather than a statewide field. That makes this a local reader's choice award in the MNJ's own coverage area, closer in spirit to a newspaper's all-area team than to a state poll.

Facts at a glance

What the 2023 and 2025 editions establish, and what they do not

Two cycles of this ballot are on the published page: 2023 and 2025. That pair is the reason the program counts as annual rather than a one-off poll, and it means the 2025 edition was a return, not a debut. The 2025 voting window fell in March, and the ballot now carries a closed label with final results beneath it.

Those results are the most concrete dated facts the page offers. The leading nominee closed at 48 percent on 7,328 votes, and the runner-up finished at 39 percent on 5,993, a gap of roughly nine points. The remaining options split the rest of the ballot, each listed with a home school. Because the poll is closed, those figures are final for the 2025 edition.

Equally important for anyone planning around a future cycle is what the page leaves out. MNJ prints no opening or closing day for the player of the year ballot, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The organizer also publishes no category roster beyond the one player of the year question it asks, nothing about repeat voting by a single supporter, and no eligibility text. Platform round dates are absent too, since no promotion for this market is listed anywhere. A 2026 edition is the natural next step for an annual program, but no date for it has been stated, and nothing on the published page should be read as one.

How a supporter votes on the MNJ ballot today

The mechanic is the simplest shape a fan vote takes. A supporter opens the Crowdsignal ballot at poll.fm/15177776, sees the list of boys basketball nominees, selects one player, and submits. Each option pairs a player with his school, in the pattern the 2025 ballot used for its Lexington, Mansfield Senior, Ontario, Crestview, Mansfield Christian and Shelby nominees. The submission registers immediately and the running tally updates on the same page.

Right now that URL shows the closed 2025 poll with its final numbers, so a visitor arriving between seasons sees results rather than a live form. When MNJ posts the next player of the year ballot, the same poll.fm series is where it appears, and the closed view gives way to the open one. There is no separate nomination step to wait for on the published page: the poll itself is the entry point.

Two practical notes follow from the format. First, because the ballot is a single-choice Crowdsignal poll, a supporter's entire impact is one selection per submission, so mobilizing other voters matters more than any individual's repeat behavior. Second, MNJ has not printed any limit on how many submissions one supporter can make to this poll, nor an account requirement, so only the live page can settle whether repeat submissions count. Neither the closed 2025 view nor any published text states a rule, and guessing at one is worse than reading the ballot when it reopens.

Where this ballot sits among Ohio's other fan votes

Six sibling programs share this page's state and vertical, and the contrast with each is what defines this one. The Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week, the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week and the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week are all recurring weekly honors tied to big-city newsrooms. The Dayton Daily News High School Athlete of the Week and the Dayton High School Football Player of the Week run the same weekly pattern, the latter scoped to football.

The closest structural neighbor is the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote, because both are player of the year ballots rather than weekly honors. The difference is scope and publisher: Fox 8 is a Cleveland television station, while MNJ's ballot is a reader's choice award whose 2025 nominee list drew from Lexington, Mansfield Senior, Ontario, Crestview, Mansfield Christian and Shelby.

That school list is also what separates this poll from the metro weeklies in practical terms. A weekly honor spreads attention across many sports and many schools in a large market, so a single nominee's supporters compete against a broad field every cycle. MNJ's ballot concentrates one sport, one gender and one season into a single question, which means the entire reader audience for boys basketball in its coverage area lands on one page at one moment in March. For a nominee's community, that concentration is the difference between a weekly splash and a season-defining result.

Strengthening support for a nominee on this ballot

Because this is one poll deciding one award, support campaigns here look different from a weekly honor. The useful window is short: the 2025 vote ran in March, and the 48 percent to 39 percent finish shows the outcome was decided by a margin a motivated school community could plausibly close. Sharing the poll.fm link through team families, booster groups and student sections is the core move, and the organizer has published no rule restricting how supporters promote the ballot. What MNJ has not printed is any ceiling on repeat submissions, so the live poll's own terms govern that behavior. A fuller rundown of outreach methods that fit a school-centered poll sits on how to get more votes online.