Who is the Beaver County Times' Boys Basketball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

A county newspaper award decided by its readers

The Beaver County Times runs Who is the Beaver County Times' Boys Basketball Player of the Year as a reader award attached to its high school sports coverage. The paper serves Beaver County in western Pennsylvania, and the ballot asks one plain question: which county boys basketball player deserves the title for the season. Unlike a coaches' selection or an all-star committee, this title is settled entirely by whoever clicks the form, which is why local fan bases treat it as a measuring stick of community support as much as of on-court production.

The voting form lives on poll.fm, a Crowdsignal property, and the current address is poll.fm/15095125. Crowdsignal builds simple one-question ballots: a list of options, a vote button, and a results screen that shows each choice's share once an answer is in. The 2025 edition listed players paired with their schools, including entries from Aliquippa, Ambridge, Beaver Area, Beaver Falls, Blackhawk, Ellwood City and BCCS, so a reader could find his own town's name on the list and vote for it directly.

Who actually votes

The audience is the paper's local readership plus the school communities of the nominated players. Nothing gates participation to Beaver County residents; anyone who reaches the poll.fm link can answer. In practice that means student sections, families, alumni pages and local basketball groups do the work of turning out votes, and the final tally reads as a measure of which school mobilized hardest during the window the paper left the ballot open.

The dated run of the award and what is not published

The paper's own published list of winners names an edition for 2008, 2016, 2022 and 2025. Those four years are the confirmed run of the award: a long-spaced series rather than an unbroken streak, with the 2022 and 2025 editions appearing close together after the earlier gaps. Anyone quoting the award's history should stick to those years, because the paper's list is the only published source naming them, and intermediate seasons carry no entry on it.

The 2025 ballot is the most recent confirmed edition, and its form has now closed. The results screen on the closed poll still shows the final standings, with the leading entry credited at 25% of the vote on 3,204 votes, a figure that gives some sense of how many people took part in a single-county poll. Ballot timing for that edition fell in February, which fits a postseason award decided after the high school basketball season. The Beaver County Times has not posted the exact open and close dates, the nominee roster for the coming cycle, or any per-supporter voting limit; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two practical consequences follow from what the paper leaves unstated. First, there is no published calendar to plan around, so supporters who want to campaign for a player need to watch the paper's coverage during the season rather than a fixed date. Second, because no rules text travels with the award, questions about repeat voting, eligibility or tie-breaking can only be answered by whatever the active form itself displays.

How a supporter casts a vote on the live ballot

Few public ballots ask less of a supporter. The poll.fm address opens on one question, and beneath it sits one option per nominated player, each labelled with the player's school. Selecting a choice and pressing the vote button registers the answer, and Crowdsignal immediately shows the results screen with every option's running share. On the 2025 ballot that screen also displayed the raw count, so a reader could see both the percentage and the total number of votes behind it.

Because the current ballot has closed, that same address now functions as a permanent result page rather than a working form. Anyone visiting sees the final standings frozen in place, which is useful for settling a season-long argument but useless for casting a new vote. The working form for the next edition will be a fresh Crowdsignal poll with its own address, announced through the Beaver County Times when the paper chooses to open it.

The practical sequence for a supporter today is therefore: follow the paper's coverage during basketball season, open the new poll link when it appears, pick the player and school combination you want to back, submit, and check the results screen. If the form displays any note about repeat voting, that note is the operative rule; nothing in the paper's award coverage supersedes what the live form says at the moment you vote.

Where this ballot sits among Pennsylvania fan votes

Beaver County's award differs from its Pennsylvania neighbours on three axes: publisher, geography and rhythm. It belongs to one county newspaper and covers one county's boys basketball scene, whereas Mr. PA Football is a statewide football honor, and the Pennsylvania High School Football Player of the Week and Pennsylvania High School Softball Player of the Year ballots draw from across the state in other sports. Geography shapes the campaigning too: a county poll rewards whoever can turn out Aliquippa, Beaver Falls or Blackhawk fans in concentrated numbers, while a statewide ballot spreads that energy across dozens of markets.

Rhythm differs as well. The Beaver County Times' award is a single season-capping question that appears once the basketball year ends, while PennLive Mid-Penn Boys Basketball Player of the Week runs as a recurring in-season series with a fresh ballot most weeks, and the Morning Call Athlete of the Week follows that same weekly pattern for the Lehigh Valley. The WICU Athlete of the Year is a television station's year-end honor for the Erie market. For a supporter, that means this award's window is short and decisive: there are no weekly second chances, so the edition that opens each cycle is the whole contest, and whoever is organized when the paper posts the link carries the advantage.

Building real support for a Beaver County nominee

Campaigning for this ballot is a turnout problem inside one county. The 2025 result, with the leader on 3,204 votes, shows the scale: a few thousand engaged voters decide the title, so a single well-organized school community can swing it. The moves that work are local ones. Ask the athletic department to post the poll link, get the student section account to share it, and reach the youth and alumni groups that follow the program. The paper has said nothing about outside help, so the governing constraint is whatever the live form allows, and the honest path is mobilizing real supporters rather than gaming the form. Anyone weighing a paid boost can compare options on how to get more votes online, and our pricing page lists package sizes, but no outcome here is guaranteed and the organizer's decision stands.