Treasure Valley High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

The thing most voters get wrong about this poll's deadline

Wednesday noon. That is when it ends. Not midnight, not end of business — noon Pacific on Wednesday, confirmed from the Idaho Statesman's own language on the Varsity Extra girls basketball poll, same publication, same weekly format. If you are planning a push for Tuesday night and figuring you have until Wednesday evening, you are off by eight or nine hours.

The Feb 2-8, 2026 ballot had ten nominees: Tyler Harris from Mountain View, Bridger Barrus from Kuna, Collin Morris from Timberline, Will Gebert from Boise, Henry Johnson from Centennial, Conor Goss from Bishop Kelly, Noah Mitchell from Vallivue, Nathan Compas from Parma, Logan Ellis from North Star Charter, and Dehaven Wilson from Notus. Ten names, five IHSAA classifications, schools spread across Ada and Canyon counties plus two small charters. No confirmed winner is on record from that week — the Idaho Statesman does not publish raw totals or a winner recap in most documented weeks. What is on record is the field, and the field tells you something useful about who is competing for what.

The Idaho Statesman explicitly calls this "a fun way to show support" and says outright that voters can return multiple times. That is the mechanic as the organizer describes it — not a loophole, the stated design. No account is required to vote. The second-most important thing to know is that the close time buries most casual voters who assume weekly polls end at midnight.

Who makes the ballot and what the field looks like

Nominations come from two places: area coaches who submit performers directly to the Idaho Statesman, and Varsity Extra reporters pulling from the week's stat coverage. That dual-sourcing matters because a player at a smaller school — Parma, Notus, North Star Charter — is most likely to make the ballot if their coach gets the line to the Statesman desk before the weekend's over. A 40-point game that nobody reports can be missed.

The Feb 2-8 list is worth reading carefully as a cross-section of Treasure Valley basketball. Mountain View and Boise are 5A programs with full rosters and established coaching staffs in the Boise metro. Kuna and Vallivue sit in Canyon County's 4A tier — real programs with playoff histories, not tokens. Bishop Kelly is a 4A private school with a competitive boys basketball tradition in the Boise Catholic school community. And then there is Parma, a 3A school in Canyon County's farm corridor, and North Star Charter, a 2A/1A school out of Lewiston-area enrollment. Both made the same ballot as Mountain View.

That is not a coincidence — the Statesman draws its Treasure Valley coverage wide. But it does mean the coalition-building math is different for every nominee. A Mountain View supporter base is large and geographically dispersed across eastern Ada County. A North Star Charter community is much smaller but considerably more concentrated. One call through the right group chat reaches most of a small-charter's network. Getting that same percentage out at Mountain View takes multiple channels.

Running a real campaign before Wednesday noon

The ballot link lives inside an Idaho Statesman article. On a given week it appears on IdahoStatesman.com and syndicates to NationalToday and Yahoo Sports local. That distribution actually helps campaigns reach beyond subscribers — the Yahoo Sports link works for anyone, no Idaho Statesman account needed.

Start Monday. Post the NationalToday or Yahoo Sports syndication link to the school's basketball Instagram and any active booster or parent group. Text threads are faster than Facebook for Canyon County programs where the core supporter base skews younger. Get a second push out Tuesday afternoon — that is when voters who saw the first post but did not act have a second chance, and there is still a full morning of voting time remaining. Wednesday morning is too late for a cold outreach; if someone has not seen the poll by then, the noon close will beat the delivery.

Because the ballot is unlimited and settled entirely by turnout, the whole contest is reach before noon Wednesday. That is why structured vote-support campaigns exist for weekly polls with this format. The how-to guide covers the recurring fan-vote cadence in detail. For more Idaho contests, see /usa/idaho/; the full national directory is at /usa/.