Idaho High School Basketball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

Three different Idaho searches, three different basketball ballots

Type "Idaho basketball player of the year" into a search bar and you will land on more than one page claiming the title. The Star-Advertiser and High School on SI co-sponsor an annual, basketball-specific ballot that pulls nominees from all six IHSAA classifications. That is not the same program as the general Idaho High School Player of the Year series, which runs a separate article for every major sport at si.com/high-school/idaho and, for the sports it has confirmed data on, applies no per-vote cap. And neither of those is the weekly Boys and Girls Athlete of the Week polls, which run all winter under a six-hour device cap and reward one strong week rather than a full season.

Three ballots, one search phrase. A booster chasing the season-long basketball recognition for a program could easily end up voting on the wrong poll, casting a vote in a weekly poll that closed months ago, or confusing the all-sport POY article with the basketball-specific one.

Six months separate the weekly polls from this one. A player can collect a January Athlete of the Week nod and still miss the season-end basketball ballot entirely, or the reverse: quietly building a season nobody flagged week to week, then landing on this one because editors weighed the full year rather than any single game.

What's actually confirmed about the Star-Advertiser / SI Idaho basketball ballot

Two names sit on this program, and only one of their roles is spelled out in detail. High School on SI hosts and runs the fan-vote article at si.com/high-school/idaho; that part is settled, and it matches the platform every other Idaho SI poll runs on. The Star-Advertiser is named as a co-sponsor of the annual basketball recognition. What its specific contribution looks like alongside the SI-hosted vote is not detailed beyond that name, so treat it as a fact worth checking on the live page rather than a mechanic to build a campaign around.

Saying plainly that the cap isn't fixed beats printing a number pulled from a prior season that may no longer apply. The general mechanics that most SI/High-School-on-SI polls share are covered in the online contest voting guide; Idaho's weekly counterpart runs a documented six-hour cap, a useful reference point while the exact rule for this annual ballot waits to be confirmed each season.

Six classes, two genders, one statewide ballot

IHSAA basketball splits into six classes, 6A at the top down to 1A, and fields boys' and girls' brackets separately in each one — twelve distinct competitive pools feeding a single Player of the Year conversation. A 1A program from a town of a few hundred people and a 6A program from the Treasure Valley can both produce a nominee for the same annual ballot, judged on the same footing once voting opens.

That spread changes what "a strong season" looks like depending on where a program sits. A 6A guard in Meridian or Coeur d'Alene plays a 28-game slate against deep, well-scouted competition. A 1A forward in Genesee might play half as many games against smaller rosters, but a standout season there is just as visible within that classification — and the ballot does not discount it for playing a shorter schedule against smaller schools. The classification gap explains why this program covers six brackets instead of one, not why any single bracket should be favored over another once the fan vote opens.

Which Idaho basketball communities actually move this vote

Treasure Valley's 6A cluster (Rocky Mountain, Mountain View, and Eagle) sits inside a short drive of one another in Meridian and Eagle, which means a deep gym crowd most Friday nights and a Boise media market already primed to notice a big season. Getting a nominee's name in front of people there is the easy part; getting a busy metro audience to click through and actually vote takes real, sustained reach.

North Idaho runs a tighter loop. Coeur d'Alene and Lake City sit close enough that a rivalry week pulls fans from both towns onto the same coverage, and Spokane's media market spilling across the state line gives Panhandle programs reach a Treasure Valley program does not get for free. Southeast Idaho works differently again: Pocatello and Rigby carry District VI's basketball weight through winter, while Sugar-Salem's 2A community runs through a compact booster network that can put a name in front of most of its realistic voter pool in one evening. Genesee, at 1A, is smaller still: a single well-organized push from a small town can matter more, proportionally, than the same push would in Meridian. That same crowd-density math shows up outside sports too: Idaho's Best of Greater Idaho Falls and Best of Magic Valley Readers' Choice contests reward the same kind of tight-knit town organizing.

Getting a nomination in, then running the window

Season-long recognitions like this one are built by editorial review, not a public entry form. Coaches, athletic directors, and program contacts who want a player considered should reach the Idaho staff through si.com's editorial channels well before the postseason wraps, with a case built on the full body of the season rather than one highlight game.

Once the ballot goes live, the campaign work is entirely about reach. Pass along the actual article URL rather than the nominee's name — drop it into class group texts, run it through the booster newsletter, and post it on the program's own social feed. A link removes the friction of someone hunting for the right poll among the three Idaho basketball ballots covered above. A 1A or 2A program with a close-knit town can move fast on a short timeline; a 6A program has more raw numbers but a more scattered network to activate, so early, repeated outreach matters more than a single big push on day one. General campaign tactics that carry across any Idaho fan poll live in the how-to guide library, and the legal framing around outside vote support is covered fairly at is buying votes legal. When a program has worked every organic channel and the window is still closing fast, a paced boost built specifically for this si.com widget format is available through sports fan-poll vote support, delivered at a pace and volume matched to the ballot so it reads as more real supporters, not a spike.