Vote who think is the Eagle-Gazette Girls Basketball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

A single award ballot in a directory of weekly series

Most Ohio high school fan votes listed alongside this one are weekly series: the Akron-area, Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch and Dayton Daily News athlete of the week ballots each reset every few days through a season, and the Dayton football player of the week works the same way for one sport. The Eagle-Gazette award for girls basketball works differently. It is one award, one sport, one gender, published once a girls basketball season wraps rather than on a weekly drumbeat, which makes it a closer cousin of the Fox 8 FNTD player of the year vote than of the weekly athlete series.

The organizer is The Eagle-Gazette, the Ohio daily whose sports desk prepares the All-Area teams and the player of the year announcement that the fan vote sits beside. Crowdsignal hosts the ballot at poll.fm, and the voting address for the most recent confirmed edition is https://poll.fm/15002817. The award falls in the sport vertical, and supporters cast a plain public vote: anyone with the link can see the nominees and pick one, with no entry fee and no judge panel standing between a supporter and the count.

The dated history behind the award

Two editions of the Eagle-Gazette award are confirmed: 2023 and 2025. The 2025 ballot carried a February window, opening and closing inside that month, and it has since closed; the page title for poll 15002817 is marked Poll Closed. When that count finished, one nominee had taken 53 percent of the 37,858 votes cast, a share that shows how concentrated support becomes in a single-award school ballot where the whole season's argument settles at once.

The paper's own sports coverage anchors the timing. A February 2026 story states that "the Eagle-Gazette is preparing to announce its All-Area teams and the Player of the Year," which places the award at the end of the high school girls season rather than in the middle of it. The next expected cycle is 2026, though no ballot for it has been published yet, and no promotion schedule for the award appears on the platform side either.

What the paper has not printed anywhere alongside the ballot is the exact day voting opens, the exact day it closes, or a per-supporter voting rule; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The 2024 season also sits between the two confirmed editions without a documented ballot, so the run is recurring but not proven unbroken.

How a supporter votes on the Eagle-Gazette ballot

The mechanic on the 2025 Eagle-Gazette ballot was deliberately plain. A supporter opened the poll.fm address, read the player of the year nominee list where each candidate was shown with her school, selected one player, and pressed the button to log the choice. The running tally sat on the same page, so the count was visible while the February window was live, and the page now reads Poll Closed now that the 2025 edition has finished.

Nothing on the ballot requires a payment, a nomination form or a judge panel; the public vote is the whole process. Whether one person may return on additional days within the window is left unstated on the ballot page, and the paper has not published a rules sheet for the award that would settle it.

For the next cycle the sequence should look the same, because the platform and the award format carry over: a fresh poll.fm address or the same one repopulated, a new nominee slate from the paper's coverage area, and a short window at the close of the girls basketball season. The practical move for a supporter is to watch the Eagle-Gazette sports section in February, since that is where the All-Area and player of the year announcement surfaces first, then follow the ballot link from there.

How this ballot sits beside Ohio's other fan votes

The Ohio programs around this one divide into two shapes. The Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week, the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week, the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week and the Dayton Daily News High School Athlete of the Week are all weekly series that rotate nominees across sports throughout a season. The Dayton High School Football Player of the Week narrows to one sport but keeps the weekly rhythm.

The Eagle-Gazette award goes the other way: one ballot, one sport, one decision, and a window that opens and closes inside a single month. The nearest shape is the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote, another Ohio single-award ballot, though that one is a television station's program while this belongs to a print newspaper's All-Area coverage.

Two practical differences follow from the shape. First, a weekly series gives a nominee's supporters a fresh start every few days, while this award concentrates all support into one short February window, so timing matters more. Second, the nominee slate is drawn from one newspaper's coverage area rather than a whole metro or a statewide footprint, which keeps the vote local and the turnout figures, like the 37,858 cast in 2025, tied to one community's argument.

Backing a nominee in a one-window award

Because the Eagle-Gazette award is decided on a single ballot inside a February window, support has to be organized before the season ends rather than spread across weeks. A school community that waits for the ballot to appear and then scrambles loses days; the nominees come from the paper's All-Area coverage, so the announcement itself is the starting gun. The Eagle-Gazette publishes no statement on organized vote help for this award, and no per-supporter rule appears anywhere on the ballot page, which leaves the organizer's position unstated rather than permissive. Tactics that fit a short-window school award, including rallying a single school's base in one push, are set out on this site's votes guide, and the award-specific version is on the award votes page. Whatever route a supporter takes, the 53 percent winning share in 2025 is the benchmark: in this format the top nominee does not edge ahead, she runs away with the count.