Who is the Erie Times-News Female Athlete of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Female Athlete of the Year ballot is and who runs it

Who is the Erie Times-News Female Athlete of the Year is a reader-decided honor question put to the newspaper's audience in Erie, northwest Pennsylvania. The Erie Times-News, the daily paper there, honors female high school athletes from District 10, the interscholastic grouping whose schools the publisher covers in its sports section. Nominees on the confirmed edition are tied to communities across that coverage area, among them Jamestown, Sharon, Meadville and Sharpsville.

The vote runs on Crowdsignal, a polling platform whose ballots live at poll.fm addresses, and this award's page is poll.fm/15663165. The publisher frames the ballot as part of its girls sports coverage: "The Erie Times-News Seaway Window and AHN Sports Medicine, for the last time this summer, will conduct a special ballot related to District 10's 2025-26 calendar year."

Facts table

Everything a supporter needs to take part sits on the poll page itself: the question, the nominee list and a submit action. The publisher supplies the editorial framing, and Crowdsignal supplies the voting machinery, which keeps the award simple compared with multi-category readers choice ballots.

Edition years, the June window and what the publisher has not posted

This award has two confirmed years behind it, 2023 and 2025. The 2025 edition is the more fully documented of the pair, because its ballot remains reachable at poll.fm/15663165 with final results displayed. That poll was live during June, with both the opening and closing of the window falling inside the month. Under the annual status, 2026 would be the year of the next edition.

The current state of the ballot matters for anyone arriving now: the 2025 page carries a Poll Closed notice, so it displays outcomes rather than accepting selections. Results are shown as percentages beside each nominee's school or community.

Several facts sit outside what the publisher has printed. The Erie Times-News has not posted a rules page for this award, so the precise opening and closing dates of any cycle, the way nominees are chosen, the eligibility terms for athletes and any cap on repeat voting are all absent from the ballot itself; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The confirmed page likewise shows nothing about a nomination stage before voting.

Reading all of that practically, the award is real and recurring, the most recent cycle ended with results published, and the next cycle becomes votable only when the publisher puts a fresh live poll in front of readers.

How a supporter casts a vote on the poll.fm ballot

The mechanic on this ballot is about as plain as voting pages come. A supporter loads the Crowdsignal page, reads the single question asking who the Erie Times-News Female Athlete of the Year should be, and picks from the list of answers beneath it. Each answer names an athlete with her school or community beside the name, so the field is self-explanatory without any category breakdown.

After marking a choice, the supporter submits through the button on the page, and Crowdsignal responds by displaying the running split across all nominees. There is no separate nomination stage visible on the confirmed ballot, and no second round appears between choosing and submitting.

Timing is the part that needs attention today. Because the confirmed 2025 poll shows the closed notice, arriving at that address now produces results rather than a live vote. Taking part in the next edition means reaching the new ballot the publisher issues, which will sit at a fresh poll.fm link and will stay open for whatever window the Erie Times-News sets.

The habit that carries across cycles is to cast a selection soon after the ballot opens instead of assuming the poll is still running. A closed page cannot be revived by returning to it, and the percentages visible on the results view show how far behind a trailing nominee can be once voting has stopped.

How this ballot differs from other Pennsylvania athlete votes

Pennsylvania's public athlete ballots split into two shapes, and this award sits firmly in the year-end camp. The Morning Call Athlete of the Week, the weekly PennLive Mid-Penn boys basketball player vote and the statewide high school football weekly player vote all run on weekly rhythms tied to a season, producing a fresh winner again and again. This Erie ballot instead asks a single question about the whole calendar year of District 10 girls sports.

Within the Erie market itself, the closest neighbour is the WICU Athlete of the Year, a television-side award for the same viewing area. The Erie Times-News ballot differs by being the newspaper's own vote and by being scoped to female athletes specifically.

Elsewhere statewide, the Mr. PA Football ballot is boys-only and statewide in reach, while the softball player of the year ballot covering Pennsylvania high schools is a sport-specific award. The Erie Times-News ballot cuts across sports instead, gathering District 10 female athletes whatever their discipline, which is what makes it the broad female athlete honor in this corner of Pennsylvania.

Building support for a District 10 athlete of the year nominee

A year-end award of this kind rewards sustained outreach rather than a late burst, because the window is measured in weeks of June rather than days. The concrete work is putting the direct poll.fm link where the athlete's community already gathers: team group chats, the school's athletic boosters, family networks and local youth sports pages that already follow District 10 results.

The publisher's own framing shows the audience the ballot speaks to, since the Erie Times-News ties the vote to its girls sports coverage and to partners presenting the summer series. Sharing the link through channels that already read that coverage is the most natural fit for a newspaper-conducted poll.

Two cautions keep a campaign safe. The ballot page carries no printed rules from the publisher, so any conduct question is settled by the Erie Times-News, not by the platform. And because the confirmed 2025 poll is closed, outreach aimed at that address now reaches a results page, so effort belongs against the next live ballot. Tactics suited to polls of this shape are collected in how to get more votes online, written for readers supporting a nominee rather than for organizers.