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

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

The Kentucky High School Player of the Year is an annual, season-end fan-vote honour published by High School on SI — Sports Illustrated's dedicated prep-sports vertical, built on the SBLive (Scorebook Live) platform — at si.com/high-school/kentucky. Unlike weekly polls that cycle through routine good performances, this award specifically recognises the best players across an entire Kentucky season, making it one of the most meaningful fan-vote credentials a prep athlete in the Commonwealth can earn.

• Run by High School on SI / SBLive, an Arena Group / Sports Illustrated platform covering prep sports in all 50 states.
• Covers every major KHSAA-sanctioned sport and classification — Classes 1A through 6A — statewide.
• Polls open at the close of each sport's regular season or playoffs, with editors nominating standout performers across the state's 16 KHSAA regions.
• Voting is free, requires no registration, and carries no per-vote cap — fans may vote as many times as they choose before the stated deadline.
• The 2024 football Player of the Year was Colton Veltkamp, South Warren High School, earning recognition as the top fan-voted prep football player in Kentucky.
• Kentucky Mr. Basketball — the state's long-running editorial award — is a separate honour selected by media and coaches, not a fan vote; the SI/SBLive POY is the statewide fan-vote counterpart.

Which Kentucky schools and regions appear in POY polls?

POY nominations span every KHSAA classification and all 16 regions, so the competitive pool reflects the full breadth of Kentucky prep athletics — from Jefferson County's metro powerhouses to rural Class 1A and 2A programmes in Appalachian Eastern Kentucky. The table below maps prominent schools by classification, region, and competitive legacy.

Kentucky's competitive landscape splits into distinct geographic zones. Louisville-metro schools — Trinity, Male, duPont Manual, St. Xavier — carry large alumni networks and highly organised booster communities that mobilise well for online polls. The Bluegrass Central corridor (Lexington, Georgetown, Danville, Winchester) feeds strong football and basketball nominees, while Western Kentucky produces consistent football contenders, as the 2024 Colton Veltkamp win from South Warren demonstrates. Northern Kentucky schools like Covington Catholic and Simon Kenton draw on the Cincinnati metro fan base across the Ohio River for additional vote volume.

Eastern Kentucky's Class 1A and 2A programmes — Pikeville, Belfry, Lawrence County — have deeply loyal regional fan bases with strong online engagement that can generate competitive vote totals despite smaller total enrolments. For an overview of other Kentucky online contests, see our Kentucky contest guide hub.

How does Kentucky High School Player of the Year voting work?

Each POY poll is embedded inside a sport-specific article published at si.com/high-school/kentucky. The poll widget loads directly on the page — no separate site, no app, no subscription. Fans click their preferred nominee's name and submit. There is no hourly cooldown and no per-device limit: fans may vote as many times as they choose manually until the stated deadline of 11:59 p.m. on the closing date.

Voting works on all standard desktop and mobile browsers. A phone, a tablet, and a laptop each function as independent voting surfaces, though unlike hourly-cap polls, the limiting factor here is manual effort rather than device count — the more people voting, the higher the total. For a plain-language overview of how fan-vote sports polls operate at the national level, see our guide to online voting contests.

Live vote totals are visible throughout the window, so supporters can track the standings in real time and decide when to activate additional networks. The poll closes at 11:59 p.m. Eastern (or the locally stated time) on the deadline shown in the article — always verify the specific date and time on the current poll page at si.com/high-school/kentucky, as it varies by sport and year.

How do athletes get nominated?

The SBLive editorial team reviews season-end performance data — stats submitted by coaches, school athletic contacts, and the platform's own game-tracking data via Scorebook Live — to build the nominee list. Not every standout season earns a ballot slot; editors focus on athletes whose numbers stand out within their classification and region. Coaches and parents can flag strong performances to the editorial desk through the contact channels listed on the si.com/high-school/kentucky section page.

Recent Kentucky POY winners and notable contenders

The table below lists confirmed Kentucky POY winners and prominent nominated contenders by sport and year. Where a specific winner is documented by name, it appears directly; rows marked "multiple nominees" reflect seasons where the editorial slate included several strong contenders without a single publicly confirmed winner in available records. Colton Veltkamp's 2024 football win at South Warren is the most recently confirmed Kentucky POY result.

The 2024 football result — Veltkamp at South Warren — is notable because Warren County in the Bowling Green metro has emerged as a consistent football powerhouse over the past decade. South Warren's programme competes in KHSAA Class 6A Region 4, a region that also includes Bowling Green High School, making local rivalry intensity a built-in vote mobilisation driver.

How do you build votes for the Kentucky POY poll?

No per-vote cap means the ceiling on any individual campaign is manual voting effort — the more engaged supporters a nominee has, and the faster those supporters are reached with the direct link, the higher the total. Kentucky-specific community structures heavily influence which schools can generate the most votes. For a full tactical breakdown of vote-building for online sports polls, see our sports fan poll votes guide; the notes below are specific to Kentucky's POY competitive dynamics.

Eastern Kentucky schools — Pikeville, Belfry, Paintsville — punch above their enrolment weight in online polls because Appalachian fan communities have some of the highest per-capita local sports engagement in the state. A Pikeville football or basketball nominee with a motivated community can generate vote totals that rival Class 6A Louisville programmes. Similarly, Boyle County in Danville has a statewide football reputation that draws votes from non-local Kentucky prep sports followers who recognise the programme's history.

When every organic network has been activated and the gap still exists, some families use a paid real-voter promotion service. If you take that route, use a service that delivers paced, genuine votes — rapid automated bursts are detectable and lead to disqualification under SBLive's rules. Our sports fan poll votes service is built around genuine human delivery.

POY voting rules — and the buy-votes question answered

High School on SI's terms for the Kentucky POY poll explicitly prohibit automated scripts, macros, bots, and any tool that mechanically generates votes. Detection leads to vote removal and potential disqualification of the nominee. For a balanced, broader discussion of how vote-buying works across different contest types, see our full buy-votes overview.

There is a practical distinction worth understanding:

• Automated bot traffic — software generating rapid mechanical votes from scripted device fingerprints or IP rotation. This violates SBLive's terms, produces detectable traffic signatures, and results in vote removal and possible disqualification.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people casting manual votes from their own devices, reached through a promotion service instead of a booster email. Structurally, this is the same as any other voter outreach; each person votes manually at their own pace.

Whether the second category satisfies the spirit of the contest's rules is a judgement each entrant must make honestly after reading the current poll page. The consequences for detected automation are real — disqualification removes recognition the athlete earned on the field — so the risk calculation matters. Read the rules, weigh the stakes, and make an informed decision.

Kentucky Mr. Basketball — the state's legacy editorial award for basketball — is a separate programme chosen by a panel of sportswriters and coaches, not a fan poll. It has no online voting mechanism. The SI/SBLive POY is the statewide fan-vote vehicle for Kentucky basketball and all other KHSAA sports.

Kentucky POY by sport and season — timeline guide

Polls open at the end of each sport's competitive season, triggered by the KHSAA calendar. The table below maps the typical POY voting window to the Kentucky high school sports year. Exact dates vary annually — always confirm the live deadline on the current article at si.com/high-school/kentucky.

Football generates by far the highest vote totals of any sport in the Kentucky POY programme. The 2024 win by Colton Veltkamp at South Warren underscores how Western Kentucky football communities mobilise effectively — Warren County's school rivalry structure (South Warren vs. Bowling Green) creates a built-in competitive intensity that carries over into online polls. Basketball POY polls, particularly for the boys bracket, draw heavily from the Louisville metro and Lexington areas, reflecting those cities' deep prep basketball cultures.

For the companion weekly poll — which runs every week of the regular season rather than at year's end — see the Kentucky High School Athlete of the Week guide on our state hub. Both polls live at si.com/high-school/kentucky and share the same voting mechanic. The key difference: the weekly poll recognises a single week's standout performance; the POY recognises the best of an entire season. For general guidance on building vote campaigns for annual sports awards, visit our vote-getting how-to guide.