KHON2 Cover2 Hawaii High School Football Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

One-third fans, two-thirds coaches and media. That's the whole story.

Most fan-vote football awards let the public decide everything. Cover2 doesn't. KHON2 caps the online vote at one-third of each category's final result, and hands the other two-thirds to coaches' panels and media panels who've actually watched the season. Six categories run this way: Offensive Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Lineman of the Year, Two-Way Player of the Year, Special Teams Player of the Year, and Coach of the Year.

Nominees come from all five HHSAA leagues statewide: ILH and OIA on Oahu, BIIF on Hawaii Island, MIL on Maui, KIF on Kauai. So a category ballot can genuinely mix a Kauai two-way standout against an Oahu lineman in the same field. That's a structurally different contest from a straight Hawaii fan-vote program, and it changes what a supporter should actually spend effort on.

Why the blended score changes what "winning the vote" even means

A nominee can lead the public tally comfortably and still lose. That's not a hypothetical; it's how the math works when two-thirds of a category is decided by people who aren't voting online at all. Coaches across ILH, OIA, BIIF, MIL, and KIF submit their own read on the season. So do media panels covering Hawaii prep football. Neither group is swayed by how many times a nominee's name got shared in a group chat.

So what does the one-third actually buy a supporter? Real weight in close categories, enough to swing a tight race where coaches and media are split. Not enough to overturn a category where the panels have clearly converged elsewhere. A lineman with modest name recognition online but a season of tape that impressed every coach who watched it has a real path to Lineman of the Year even against a nominee with a louder online push. That's the entire design.

Each of the six categories runs its own separate ballot on khon2.com, not one combined vote. Voting for a favorite two-way player on the wrong category page (say, under Special Teams instead of Two-Way Player of the Year) simply doesn't count. Worth checking the page heading before casting anything, the same basic discipline covered in getting votes for an online contest generally.

A once-a-season window, not a weekly one

Cover2 votes once per year. The window opens roughly November 13, closes around December 1, and sits right after the HHSAA regular season wraps across every island. There's no following week to recover a missed push, unlike a weekly poll where a slow week gets forgotten fast.

Winners across all six categories, plus the Marcus Mariota Award for Hawaii's top program, get named at the December 4 finale broadcast. And because the coaches' and media panels' two-thirds share forms independently over that same stretch, a late online surge changes less than it would in a pure popularity contest. It can still tip a close one.

For the program that runs the opposite way (pure fan-vote count, every week, all year), see the Hawaii High School Athlete of the Week, organized separately by ScoringLive. The Hawaii High School Player of the Year guide covers a related season-end honor with its own separate ballot.

Where a fan push actually helps, and where it doesn't

Treat the public vote as a real lever capped at one-third, not the whole contest. A push that reaches classmates, teammates, and league communities across the roughly two-and-a-half-week window can move a tight category meaningfully. It won't move a category where coaches and media have already converged on someone else: that two-thirds is locked in by people, not by vote count.

Confirm the exact category ballot first. Six separate pages exist on khon2.com, and votes cast on the wrong one don't transfer. Steady outreach across the full window beats one big push at open or close, since this isn't a same-day contest that rewards a final-hour scramble. For general guidance on running a fan-vote push in a blended-scoring format like this one, see fan poll vote support, the sport-specific rundown on sports fan poll votes, the broader guide to buying real votes, and the pillar page on how online voting contests work.