Leighton Broadcasting Best of Local High School Sports: How Voting Works & How to Win

Six confirmed editions: the clearest number on this St. Cloud ballot

Six years, back to back. That is the entire confirmed history of Leighton's Best of Local High School Sports: an edition in 2020, then 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and the most recent one closing November 1, 2025. A team or program weighing whether to enter is weighing a ballot with more confirmed history behind it than most Second Street markets in this state can show.

Leighton is the radio and marketing group behind this ballot, operating out of St. Cloud, Minnesota, and hosting it on Second Street's platform at leighton-stcloud.secondstreetapp.com. Across its six editions the ballot has run through the late summer and fall, opening in August or September and closing by November. Past that window, what is published goes quiet fast: no category roster, no per-voter cap, and no separate voting-stage schedule beyond the dates already confirmed.

No published roster of categories and no daily-vote rule exist on that page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. A six-year run of confirmed windows still leaves those two questions open every single year.

A sports-only ballot on a market that also runs sweepstakes and surveys

Leighton's St. Cloud account on Second Street is not a single-purpose page. Across its history that same market has listed 124 separate promotions, from quarterly cash sweepstakes to seasonal contests, alongside this prep-sports ballot. Best of Local High School Sports is the one entry on that account built specifically around local teams and athletes rather than a business or a general reader poll.

Why that difference matters for a St. Cloud entry

Each of those six other Minnesota programs keeps its own separate winner list, unconnected to Leighton's sports ballot, so placing well here changes nothing about how any of them turns out. Someone typing a broad phrase like Minnesota best of into a browser can just as easily land on Rochester's business ballot as on this St. Cloud sports one; the leighton-stcloud.secondstreetapp.com address is the detail that actually tells the two apart.

What six years of dates do, and do not, settle

Leighton's own listing history covers August 24, 2020 through November 1, 2025 across its six confirmed editions, each one opening and closing inside that same late-summer-to-fall stretch. The most recently confirmed edition opened September 22, 2025, and closed November 1, 2025. The next edition is expected in 2026, though Leighton has not yet published its exact dates.

A six-year pattern of similar timing is not the same as a fixed calendar rule. Nothing published commits Leighton to opening on the same date every year, and no confirmed page separates a nomination stage from a voting stage for this particular ballot the way some other Second Street markets do. Reading that pattern honestly means treating "expected in 2026" as exactly that, an expectation, not a locked date.

Building a push around a program with an actual track record

Six confirmed editions give a team or school program more to point to than most first-year ballots can offer, but the two open questions that matter for anyone pushing right now, what the category breakdown looks like and how often a single person can vote, never get answered on the page itself, cycle after cycle. The smarter approach is treating each new window as its own event: check leighton-stcloud.secondstreetapp.com as soon as a fresh edition opens, rather than assuming last year's structure carries over unchanged.

Getting actual St. Cloud-area supporters to click through more than once before a window closes counts for more than any single mass announcement, regardless of whatever category count eventually gets published. Traffic that looks automated puts the whole nomination at risk, on a sixth edition exactly as much as it would on a first one. is buying votes legal explains what separates ordinary supporter outreach from a risky substitute for it, and award-vote campaign planning applies that same thinking to a readers'-choice ballot built like this.