Iowa Class 3A Girls Basketball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

Award overview: what makes Class 3A girls basketball distinct?

The Iowa Class 3A Girls Basketball Player of the Year sits in the middle tier of Iowa's IGHSAU five-class structure. Iowa girls basketball is governed by the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union — a body entirely separate from the IHSAA, which governs boys sports. Girls basketball has five classes (1A through 5A), while boys basketball has only four (1A through 4A). Class 3A is the third-largest girls classification, sitting between 4A and 2A.

The award is published by High School on SI / SBLive at si.com/high-school/iowa. Both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 cycles are confirmed active. The 2024-25 cycle included a preseason ballot with confirmed nominees, and the 2025-26 cycle produced a confirmed end-of-season award winner. For campaign planning, Class 3A is notable for producing competitive, closely watched ballot contests across a geography that spans smaller urban centres and rural communities across Iowa.

Confirmed winners and nominees in Girls 3A

Two cycles contain confirmed facts for the Iowa Class 3A Girls Basketball award. The table below covers every result supported by the facts record — no unverified names, stats, or finalist margins have been added.

Emily Tanny's 2025-26 recognition links Dubuque Wahlert Catholic — a Catholic programme in Dubuque in eastern Iowa — to the Class 3A girls basketball award. Dubuque Wahlert Catholic is one of three confirmed programmes in the 3A girls award record. The other two, Estherville-Lincoln Central and Mount Vernon, represent northwest Iowa and east-central Iowa respectively, illustrating how the Class 3A field draws from across the state's geography.

How voting works for Iowa Girls Class 3A

The High School on SI ballot format for Iowa Class 3A girls basketball follows a three-stage pattern confirmed across the Iowa basketball facts. Understanding each stage separately prevents supporters from missing the most competitive window.

The three ballot stages

First, a preseason ballot can launch in November or December. For Class 3A girls, the 2024-25 preseason ballot is confirmed, with Haylee Stokes of Estherville-Lincoln Central named as a preseason nominee. Second, a finalist ballot launches in February, narrowing the field to a smaller candidate set. Third, the editorial end-of-season award is announced after the March state tournament. The finalist ballot and editorial decision together make February the most important campaign window.

The vote mechanic is open unlimited voting. No per-hour or per-device cap is confirmed in the facts record. SI's share-to-amplify model means that posts including the direct article link are the platform's intended campaign tool. For voters, returning across browser sessions is an option as long as the ballot is still active.

Class 3A programmes in the confirmed facts record

Three schools appear in the confirmed facts record for the Iowa Class 3A Girls Basketball Player of the Year. Each school represents a distinct geography within Iowa, which reflects how broadly the Class 3A girls field draws nominees and finalists.

Dubuque Wahlert Catholic — 2025-26 confirmed programme

Dubuque Wahlert Catholic is a Catholic school in Dubuque, located in eastern Iowa near the Mississippi River. Emily Tanny's 2025-26 award makes Wahlert the most recently confirmed Class 3A girls basketball programme in the award record. Catholic institutions in eastern Iowa have produced individual award winners across multiple IGHSAU classes in recent cycles.

Estherville-Lincoln Central — preseason confirmed

Estherville-Lincoln Central in northwest Iowa is a consolidated programme serving the Estherville area. The school's confirmed 2024-25 preseason ballot presence through Haylee Stokes demonstrates that the Class 3A girls award draws nominees from Iowa's rural northwest, not only from the more populated eastern corridors.

Mount Vernon — 2024-25 state champion

Mount Vernon, a smaller community in east-central Iowa (Linn County area), is confirmed as the 2024-25 IGHSAU Class 3A girls basketball state champion. State championship programmes frequently contribute nominees to SI's editorial consideration, making Mount Vernon a relevant reference point for understanding the class's competitive tier.

For broader Iowa high school sports context, the Iowa contest hub and the national USA contests index provide navigational links across sports, classes, and award types.

The Iowa winter basketball calendar and Wells Fargo Arena

Iowa high school girls basketball belongs entirely to the winter calendar. Games run from late fall through March, with the IGHSAU state tournament held at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. For a Class 3A girls basketball POY campaign, the season rhythm directly controls which ballot windows are available and when the editorial award decision is made.

Class 3A girls basketball typically competes in a distinct bracket at Wells Fargo Arena, separate from the 1A, 2A, 4A, and 5A girls brackets and from the boys basketball classes (which use the same venue through the IHSAA). The march to Des Moines is the shared endpoint for every Iowa girls basketball class and the organisational close of the SI award cycle.

A campaign built around the February finalist ballot should begin outreach preparation in January so that the direct article link and supporter messaging are ready the moment the new SI article goes live. Last-minute campaigns in unlimited-vote formats lose the advantage of sustained early activity.

Running a vote campaign for a Class 3A girls basketball nominee

Class 3A communities are typically smaller than Class 4A or 5A, which shapes how a campaign should be structured. A school like Estherville-Lincoln Central in northwest Iowa or Mount Vernon in Linn County draws from a community where most local fans already know the player and the programme. The challenge is not awareness — it is reducing friction so that supporters can reach the ballot in one step.

The most effective first action is always organic: share the exact SI article link through direct messages to family, team, alumni, and local boosters. In tight-knit 3A communities, a single well-timed message from the player's family or the school athletic account can reach a meaningful percentage of the total local fanbase. Unlike Class 4A or 5A schools, where a large suburban district might have hundreds of booster contacts, Class 3A campaigns often succeed by reaching a loyal core and mobilising them to vote repeatedly across the window.

When organic outreach has been deployed and a candidate still trails, sports fan poll vote packages offer a way to add volume. For the unlimited-vote SI format, bulk vote delivery is compatible with the open-submission mechanic. Always verify the active article rules before using any outside service. For step-by-step campaign sequencing, see our voting strategy guide.

How Class 3A fits Iowa's full girls basketball award landscape

The Iowa Class 3A Girls Basketball Player of the Year is one of five class-specific awards that High School on SI runs for Iowa girls basketball, matching the IGHSAU's five-class structure. Winning the Class 3A fan vote is meaningful as a class-specific community recognition, but it is distinct from the overall Iowa Girls Basketball Player of the Year, which covers all five IGHSAU classes.

In 2025-26, the overall Iowa Girls Basketball Player of the Year went to Jenica Lewis of Johnston, who also won the Class 5A award. Emily Tanny's Class 3A award is a parallel but separate editorial recognition. A Class 3A winner can also earn IGHSAU all-state honours, the Gatorade Iowa Girls Basketball Player of the Year, or the Miss Iowa Basketball designation administered by the Iowa Print Sports Writers Association — each of those awards is independently adjudicated and has no automatic connection to the SI fan vote result.

For searchers exploring the full Iowa girls basketball award structure, the Iowa high school sports hub links to sibling pages for Classes 1A, 2A, 4A, and 5A girls basketball, as well as Iowa boys basketball classes. Each class page is built from its own confirmed facts so that programme-specific communities can find accurate, class-level information without cross-class confusion.