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

The thing most voters don't know before they search

Noon Thursday. That is when this poll closes. Not Sunday night. Not Friday after the games. Noon Thursday — a hard midweek cutoff confirmed from the Sept 16-22, 2024 ballot, which closed Sept 24, 2024.

It matters because the SI / SBLive Idaho Athlete of the Week at si.com closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific, and that poll is better known. Fans who heard there's an Idaho volleyball fan vote often assume they have until the weekend to weigh in. By the time they find the article on IdahoStatesman.com, the ballot is already closed. The two polls are completely separate — different organizer, different platform, different deadline, different geographic scope, and a different vote cap — and conflating them is the single most common reason a supporter shows up too late.

The other thing worth saying upfront: the Idaho Statesman explicitly allows multiple votes per person. The article language is "you can vote multiple times" — the organizer's own words, not an inference. That puts this poll in a different category from the SI Idaho poll, which limits to one vote per device per window. Here, a supporter who comes back Wednesday evening and again Thursday morning is using the poll exactly as designed.

What the Sept 2024 ballot tells you about this field

The Sept 16-22, 2024 poll is the cleanest window into how this ballot actually behaves. Ten nominees, four IHSAA classification tiers in one list. Worth reading slowly.

At the 5A level: Maija Howse of Eagle with 129 kills, 64 digs, 18 aces, and 9 blocks across seven matches; Tenesyn Frye of Mountain View with 35 digs, 29 kills, 26 assists, and 5 blocks in a single week; Alauna Watts of Rocky Mountain with 38 kills across a five-match tournament. At the 4A level: Afton McRae of Kuna with six-plus kills per match and 8 solo blocks. At the 3A level: Eva Wall of Fruitland, who put up 13 kills, 15 digs, and 8 aces in one match, then went back out the same week for a tri-match with 24 kills, 18 digs, and 7 aces more. And at the 2A level: Tiffini Goss of Parma with 28 kills, 7 aces, 3 digs, and 2 blocks — on a ballot that also included Eagle and Mountain View.

That range is not a coincidence. It is the structure of this poll. The Idaho Statesman covers Treasure Valley athletics across all classifications, and the volleyball ballot reflects the full width of what the valley produces. A 2A school like Parma and a 5A program like Eagle do not play each other; they do land on the same week's ballot, and the outcome depends entirely on who turns out.

One nomination worth specific attention: Shaynee McWilliams of Owyhee with 61 assists, 8 digs, 6 kills, 3 aces, and 3 blocks. A setter putting up 61 assists in a week is a distribution statistic, not a glamour line — but the Statesman nominated it. The ballot recognizes the position as fully as it recognizes outside hitters. That is worth knowing for setters and liberos whose coaches wonder whether to submit.

The Thursday window and how it runs

The Idaho Statesman publishes the week's article — nominees, stat lines, embedded poll — after the previous week's matches are in and stats have been compiled. The ballot runs through noon Thursday, which gives a window from roughly Sunday through Thursday morning for fans to find it and vote.

But the practical campaign window is shorter than it looks. The article is syndicated to Yahoo Sports and shared by the Statesman's Varsity Extra Facebook page (@varsityextra), but organic reach builds over the week. The loudest push period is Tuesday evening through Wednesday night — after most school families have had time to see the ballot but before Thursday morning traffic dies out. A family group chat that sends the link Monday and again Wednesday hits both the early and late movers.

The SI poll and this one do not compete with each other directly — a player can be nominated on both in the same week in different sports, and the audiences are somewhat separate. But for a volleyball player and her community, this is the poll that is specifically theirs. The statewide SI ballot might pull a swimmer or a football player from Boise the same week; this ballot is volleyball, Treasure Valley, and nothing else.

Running a real campaign before Thursday noon

Getting onto the ballot starts with the coaches. Idaho Statesman editors and area coaches build the field from submitted stats, so a coach who reports a standout week proactively — kills, digs, aces, assists, blocks, opponent, score, and week range — is the clearest path to a nomination. The Statesman can only nominate what it knows about.

Once the ballot goes live, the math is reach before noon Thursday. The poll is unlimited, so the instinct is to grind from one phone. But that is the slower path. A player who texts her full roster, a parent who shares the Yahoo Sports link in the team's group chat Sunday evening, a coach who posts to the school Instagram and tags the nominee — those moves reach dozens of people who each vote once or twice. That scales faster than any single device.

The small-school programs — Fruitland, Parma, Owyhee — have something the 5A schools do not: a tighter community structure. A 2A school's parent group is one chat, not fifteen. When that chat moves together, it moves fast. The Sept 2024 ballot had Parma and Owyhee nominees alongside Eagle and Mountain View; the gap in enrollment did not prevent them from being on the same list. Whether it prevents them from winning is a question of Thursday morning.

For broader fan-vote context, the full Idaho poll directory is at /usa/idaho/, and the national contest guide lives at /usa/. The general mechanics of open weekly fan polls are covered in the how-to guide. If you are building a vote campaign for an open, unlimited-vote poll like this one, buy votes online covers how structured vote support works for exactly this format. The sport-specific option is sports fan-poll vote support.