Who is the Times Recorder Boys Basketball Player of the Year? Vote here: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Times Recorder boys basketball vote is and who runs it

This reader prize from the Times Recorder, an Ohio newspaper whose web address, zanesvilletimesrecorder.com, identifies its home market, honours one boys basketball player each edition. The program poses a single question: which boys basketball player deserves the year's crown? Supporters answer by voting on a public ballot carried on Crowdsignal, reached through poll.fm, the polling service behind many newspaper fan votes. The live form for the newest edition sat at poll.fm/16801073.

The ballot is a pure public vote. There is no jury, no entry fee and no separate nomination form visible on the poll itself; the newspaper selects the nominees, publishes them as poll answers, and readers decide the winner. Each answer pairs a player with his school, drawing from high school programs in the Times Recorder's coverage area: Maysville, John Glenn, Tri-Valley, Zanesville, West Muskingum and Rosecrans all appeared on the 2026 form. Each nominee is still in high school, so this page refers to every one by school rather than by name.

Facts at a glance

The dated record: which editions ran and what the ballot does not say

Two years stand in the confirmed history of this award, 2022 and 2026. The 2026 ballot was a March vote: it shut at noon on March 4, 2026, and the page marked itself as closed from that point. The gap between 2022 and 2026 is wider than a strict annual pattern would suggest, and the Times Recorder has not published a year-by-year list of which editions ran in between, so the honest reading is that 2022 and 2026 are the years on file, not proof of an unbroken annual streak.

When the 2026 poll ended, the leading answer held 60 percent of the tally, about 7,500 votes, a margin that shows how heavily traffic can concentrate on a single nominee in a school-community vote. Those figures come from the results display on the ballot itself.

Several practical facts sit outside the ballot page. The day voting started was never printed on the 2026 form, no nomination round or platform round dates appear anywhere on it, and the sole category on offer is the player of the year crown itself; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Eligibility, and whether the hourly rule returns, are likewise unpublished, since no rules text for future editions exists yet.

How a supporter votes in this poll today

The mechanic is deliberately simple. The supporter loads the Crowdsignal form at poll.fm/16801073, sees a list of radio-button answers, each a nominee paired with his school, picks one and submits. Crowdsignal logs the choice at once and shows the running percentages, so a vote has visible effect the moment it lands. No account, no email confirmation and no login are required on the 2026 form; the poll accepted a choice directly from the page.

The one published rule that shapes strategy is the frequency limit: the 2026 form permitted one vote every hour. A supporter who votes once and leaves contributes a single data point; a supporter who returns each hour multiplies his effect by the length of the window. Because the 2026 edition shut at noon on March 4, 2026, that loop is currently switched off, and the page displays a poll closed banner with the final tally instead of an open form.

Nothing on the ballot indicates a cap on votes from a shared network, a requirement to confirm by email, or any verification step, and the Times Recorder publishes no separate voting instructions page for the award. The practical sequence is therefore the four-step loop above: open the poll, find your player's school on the list, submit, and come back after the next hour begins while the window is open.

How this ballot sits beside its Ohio neighbours

Ohio readers meet this poll in a crowded field of publisher-run high school ballots, and the differences matter more than the similarities. Most of the state's well-known fan votes are weekly series: the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week, the Cincinnati Enquirer's weekly athlete ballot, the Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week and the Dayton Daily News High School Athlete of the Week all reset on a rolling schedule across many sports and genders. The Times Recorder prize is the opposite shape: one award, one sport, boys basketball, decided once per edition.

Two more Ohio programs round out the set, the Dayton High School Football Player of the Week and the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote, the latter being the closest structural cousin because it too asks a player of the year question rather than a weekly award.

From a nominee's camp, the practical difference is urgency. A weekly ballot offers a new chance every seven days, so a missed week costs little. The Times Recorder poll offers a single window, apparently in March, and when it shuts the result stands. Concentrating community effort inside that short window is therefore worth more here than on the weekly Ohio ballots, and the geographic base is narrower too, drawing on the schools around the newspaper's own coverage area rather than a whole metro.

Strengthening support in a single-window basketball poll

Because this ballot allows one vote every hour, the strongest honest campaign is a scheduling one. Families and teammates who set an hourly reminder from the moment the poll opens will outperform a larger group that votes once and forgets. Assign hours across a group so the school's support is spread evenly through the day, and keep going until the closing moment rather than tailing off early.

Concentrate on the communities the ballot actually draws from. The 2026 form listed Maysville, John Glenn, Tri-Valley, Zanesville, West Muskingum and Rosecrans, so a team account, a booster post or a senior-night announcement that reaches those gym crowds directly will move numbers faster than generic social sharing. The Times Recorder publishes no policy on outside vote help for this award, so supporters should rely on the published mechanic and genuine community mobilization; tactics suited to hourly public polls are set out at our votes guide.