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

What is the Illinois High School Player of the Year award?

The Illinois High School Player of the Year is a sport-specific annual fan-vote award published at si.com by High School on SI — Sports Illustrated's dedicated prep sports vertical, operated under the SBLive Sports editorial umbrella. Rather than naming one cross-sport winner each week (as the companion Athlete of the Week poll does), the POY ballot runs once at the conclusion of each IHSA sport season and asks the statewide audience to identify the single best player in that season's sport. The 2024 football ballot drew 22,287 confirmed votes — among the highest totals the platform has recorded for any Illinois poll.

• Organised by High School on SI / SBLive Sports, a nationwide prep network with dedicated state hubs at si.com/high-school.
• Illinois is the third-most-populated state and hosts 800-plus IHSA member schools across seven enrollment classes — a depth that produces a highly competitive annual ballot.
• The POY award is sport-specific and season-end: football, boys and girls basketball, baseball, softball, and other major sports each receive their own separate ballot after championships.
• Votes are free to cast and require no account or registration at si.com.
• Automated tools and voting scripts are explicitly prohibited; campaigns that use them have their totals disqualified.
• The 2024 football winner, Geneva's Anthony Chahino, completed 184-of-291 passes for 3,600 yards and 49 touchdowns — statistics confirmed in the si.com announcement.

Which Illinois schools and conferences produce POY contenders?

Because the Illinois POY is statewide and sport-specific, the nominee pool reflects the IHSA's full competitive geography — from Chicago's Catholic League heavyweights to collar-county suburban powerhouses to southern Illinois programmes in Edwardsville and East St. Louis. The table below maps the Illinois high school landscape by region, major conference, and representative programmes that historically generate top-tier nominees.

Football POY ballots tend to be dominated by quarterbacks and skill-position players from Class 6A and 7A programmes — the 2024 winner, Geneva's Anthony Chahino, came from a DuKane Conference programme that went deep into the Class 6A playoffs. Basketball POY votes frequently feature players from Chicago Catholic League schools and southwest-suburban programmes with large, well-mobilised alumni networks. Southern Illinois programmes — particularly Edwardsville and East St. Louis — produce consistent nominees in football, basketball, and track, with fan bases accustomed to rallying around statewide recognition votes.

Recent Illinois POY winners — confirmed results

High School on SI / SBLive has published sport-specific Illinois Player of the Year fan-vote ballots across football, basketball, and other sports over multiple seasons. The table below records confirmed winners with verified vote counts where publicly announced. For sports and seasons where the final winner was announced by SBLive without a publicised vote total, the count is listed as not disclosed.

The 2024 football ballot — 22,287 votes for a single athlete — is the highest confirmed individual vote count publicly attributed to an Illinois SBLive POY poll. Anthony Chahino's campaign combined strong individual statistics (3,600 passing yards, 49 passing touchdowns, 6 rushing TDs on 184-of-291 completions) with a well-organised Geneva community rally across family, teammate, and booster networks. Vote totals for basketball and spring sport POY ballots are typically lower, running in the range of several thousand, because football draws the widest community mobilisation in Illinois.

How does the Illinois POY fan vote actually work?

The ballot is published as a standard article on si.com/high-school/illinois, with the voting widget embedded directly in the page. Any visitor — from anywhere in Illinois or outside it — can vote without creating an account, entering an email address, or paying anything. For a broader primer on how embedded newspaper-style fan polls function technically, see the vote mechanics guide.

The key operational difference between the POY poll and the weekly Athlete of the Week companion is scale and stakes. Because the POY ballot runs only once per sport season — not every week — supporters who miss the window get no second chance. The window length is published inside the ballot article at si.com; it typically spans several days and closes at a specified time shown in the post.

There is no per-vote cap for human voters on the SBLive platform. A single person can click the vote button as many times as they want manually — the restriction is on automated tools (scripts, macros, browser bots) that replicate that behaviour at machine speed. SBLive's published contest rules state that automated voting will result in disqualification of that campaign's totals for the week (or, for a POY ballot, for the entire poll).

Vote totals are visible in real time while the poll is open, so any campaign can see exactly where its nominee stands relative to the field at any moment. This live visibility makes mid-window strategy adjustments — activating a new network when trailing, timing a push for the final 24 hours — straightforward.

How is the Illinois Player of the Year winner chosen?

The winner is whoever holds the highest vote count when the ballot closes — a direct popular vote with no editorial weighting, no panel scoring, and no tiebreaker beyond the final tally. The SBLive editorial team controls only the nomination stage: which athletes appear on the ballot is an editorial decision, typically reflecting the season's standout performers as identified through the weekly Athlete of the Week coverage, IHSA playoff results, and coach/community nominations submitted to the SBLive Illinois desk.

1. Nominations compiled: at the end of the IHSA season, the SBLive Illinois editors assemble a short list of top performers based on statistical output, playoff achievement, and statewide recognition across all IHSA classes.
2. Ballot published: the POY article and embedded poll go live at si.com/high-school/illinois, with a stated close time; the article names each nominee with brief performance context.
3. Open voting window: any visitor votes freely; live totals are visible throughout; automated tools prohibited.
4. Winner announced: after the poll closes, SBLive publishes a follow-up article on si.com naming the winner, confirmed vote total, and season highlights — the announcement is the permanent public record of the win.

The announced winner's recognition typically surfaces in recruiting-relevant contexts: Google search results for the athlete's name, SBLive's social channels, and community coverage that aggregates in the weeks after the announcement. For an athlete in an academically and athletically competitive market like suburban Chicago or Metro East, that searchable credential can carry meaningful weight in college recruiting correspondence.

How do you build a winning Illinois POY vote campaign?

The absence of a per-vote cap means raw vote volume is the only variable. Every additional human voter — or every additional click from a human already voting — adds directly to the total. The first and highest-leverage move is always distributing the direct si.com ballot link (not just the athlete's name) across every realistic network before the window closes. For a full framework, see the vote-building playbook and the complete voter-mobilisation guide; the Illinois-specific patterns below reflect what generates outsized results on statewide annual ballots.

Illinois community networks that convert well

Football POY campaigns in suburban Chicago benefit most from two overlapping mobilisation channels: DuKane / West Suburban conference alumni networks (large, geographically spread, active on Facebook), and school booster clubs with established parent email lists reaching 1,000-plus families at larger schools. Geneva's 2024 winning campaign with 22,287 votes is consistent with a programme that fully activated both channels across a multi-day window. Southern Illinois communities — Edwardsville, East St. Louis — tend to produce lower raw vote totals but very high participation rates relative to their community size, because local identity runs deep around athletic achievement.

Paid vote promotion for annual polls

Some campaigns, after exhausting organic networks, use a paid real-voter service to reach additional human supporters. The key criterion on SBLive polls is that the votes must come from real individuals clicking manually — not scripts. If you consider this route, use a service that delivers paced, genuine human engagement rather than automated traffic. Our sports fan poll votes service is designed around real-voter pacing that respects platform detection. Always read the current ballot article's stated rules before using any external service.

Rules and the buy-votes question for Illinois POY

SBLive's published contest guidelines for Illinois polling explicitly prohibit automated tools — bots, macros, scripts — that replicate human clicks at machine speed. Campaigns whose vote totals show automated-traffic patterns are disqualified. The practical consequence is removal of the affected tally; because no account exists (voting is anonymous), there is no individual ban, no athlete-level sanction, and no legal consequence for the school or family.

The meaningful distinction for Illinois POY — as for most newspaper-embedded fan polls — is between automated bot traffic (prohibited, detectable, disqualifies the campaign) and paid outreach to real human voters (structurally the same as a booster club email reaching a larger audience). Whether that distinction satisfies the spirit of any particular poll's terms is a judgment each campaign must make independently. For a balanced, detailed look at this question across all US poll formats, see the buy-votes guide.

POY voting by sport and IHSA season — timeline

Illinois's IHSA calendar shapes when each sport-specific POY ballot appears. Ballots are published after IHSA championship completion for that sport, so the timing follows the state tournament schedule rather than a fixed calendar date. The table below maps each major sport to its typical Illinois season endpoint and the approximate window when a POY ballot would be expected.

Football consistently generates the highest vote totals because it draws the largest community audiences, the longest season of weekly engagement, and the deepest booster club infrastructure. Basketball is the second-most competitive POY sport in Illinois, particularly for boys basketball where Chicago Catholic League programmes — Mount Carmel, Brother Rice, Loyola — and southwest-suburban Class 4A and 5A schools command large, geographically dispersed alumni networks. Spring sport POY ballots typically close with lower aggregate vote totals but are also less contested, meaning a well-mobilised campaign from a single school can win more decisively.

The Illinois High School Player of the Year ballot is distinct from the companion weekly Athlete of the Week poll — which resets every seven days and never carries end-of-season stakes. Understanding that distinction helps a campaign plan correctly: the POY window opens and closes once, so there is no recovery if a network fails to mobilise before the close.

For the full context of how Illinois high school sports recognition polls fit the broader state picture, see the Illinois contest hub and the national USA contest index.