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

What is the High School on SI Maine Player of the Year?

The High School on SI Maine Player of the Year is an annual statewide football award published by si.com/high-school/maine — the Maine desk of Sports Illustrated's prep-sports network, operated in partnership with SBLive Sports (formerly known as Varsity). The poll opens in late November or early December, after the Maine Principals' Association (MPA) state championship games have concluded, and closes approximately two to three weeks later. Any visitor to the poll page can vote for free.

• The award covers all MPA football classes — Class A through Class D — drawn from every corner of Maine's 16 counties.
• The 2024 edition drew 23,621 votes, with winner Jamier Rose (Noble High School, North Berwick, York County) capturing 50.96 percent of all votes cast.
• The poll is separate from — but often overlaps with — the James J. Fitzpatrick Trophy, Maine's oldest senior football honor (first awarded in 1972), which is selected by a committee rather than fan vote.
• High School on SI's Maine coverage reaches a statewide prep-sports audience across all 16 Maine counties, from York County in the south to Aroostook County in the north.
• The 2025–26 Gatorade Maine Football Player of the Year was Connor Ayoob of Thornton Academy (Saco), a Class A South school in the SMAA — a separate editorial award that shares some nominees with the SI fan poll but uses a different selection process.

A win in the High School on SI Maine Player of the Year fan poll produces a published Sports Illustrated network byline that is indexed and searchable — a credential many Maine prep athletes include in college application portfolios and recruiting correspondence.

Which Maine schools and conferences compete for this title?

The High School on SI Maine Player of the Year ballot draws from MPA-member schools statewide, covering all four enrollment-based classes and both the North and South regional brackets. Unlike many state POY awards that skew toward the most populous counties, the SI poll has historically included nominees from Class B, C, and D schools alongside the larger Class A programmes. The table below lists frequently appearing schools by conference and region.

The Southwestern Maine Activities Association (SMAA) anchors the most competitive end of the ballot. The SMAA's seventeen member schools — concentrated in Cumberland and York counties, Maine's two most populous — include several programmes with consistent state-championship track records: Thornton Academy holds multiple Class A South titles, and Noble, South Portland, and Scarborough all reached Class A championship games in the 2020s. These schools also carry larger alumni bases and stronger booster-club infrastructure, which directly affects fan-poll competitiveness.

The Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference (KVAC), based in central and northern Maine, provides a strong counterweight. Bangor, Lewiston, and Edward Little are historically strong Class A North programmes whose communities vote with genuine regional pride. Class B, C, and D nominees — from smaller schools in Oxford, Franklin, Aroostook, and Washington counties — occasionally appear on the SI ballot when a standout rural-school performance generates statewide attention.

How does the High School on SI Maine Player of the Year vote work?

The Player of the Year poll is published as a standalone article on si.com/high-school/maine, typically titled "Vote: Who was the [year] Maine Football Player of the Year?" The poll widget embeds directly in the article page. Voting is completely free — no Sports Illustrated subscription, no account, and no personal information are required. For a plain-English overview of how online fan polls like this work in general, see our guide to online contest voting.

The 2024 edition of the poll did not state a per-hour device cap in its published rules — the vote widget tracked running percentage totals rather than raw vote counts per device cycle. This differs from weekly newspaper polls (which typically enforce a one-vote-per-hour limit) and means that a coordinated campaign of real supporters visiting the poll repeatedly may generate higher totals than an hourly-capped format would allow.

Live percentage tallies are visible throughout the window, updating in near-real-time. The window runs approximately two to three weeks — long enough that a coordinated late push in the final 48–72 hours can move percentages meaningfully, particularly in a multi-candidate race where no single nominee has built an early dominant lead.

The poll is accessible from any state or country. College coaches, recruiting services, and sports media contacts following Maine prep coverage can see the live standings and will note a significant vote total as an indicator of community support and athlete visibility.

Who has won the Maine High School Player of the Year?

High School on SI has been running annual Maine football POY fan polls since at least the early 2020s. The table below compiles confirmed winners and notable nominees from verified published sources. Note that the SI fan-vote POY and the Gatorade Maine Football Player of the Year are separate awards with different selection criteria; both are included below for context.

Confirmed Maine High School Football Player of the Year winners

Jamier Rose's 2024 season stands as the documented benchmark for what earns a Player of the Year distinction in Maine: dual-threat performance at the highest classification level, deep into the state playoffs, with a stat line that crossed a genuine two-way threshold (offense + defense). Rose's 23,621-vote POY win with 50.96 percent of votes reflects both on-field excellence and an active York County community network.

POY by sport: High School on SI Maine annual polls

Football generates the largest vote totals by a significant margin. The fall season's longer timeline, larger team rosters, and stronger Maine prep-football media ecosystem (si.com, Portland Press Herald Varsity Maine, centralmaine.com) means more community touchpoints per nominee than any other sport.

How do you build a winning vote campaign for Maine Player of the Year?

Because the SI Maine POY poll runs for two to three weeks rather than two to three days, the vote-building calculus is different from a weekly newspaper poll. Consistency across the full window matters more than a single peak-hour push. The most effective Maine-specific campaigns share the direct article link — not just the athlete's name — immediately when the poll goes live, then reinforce with a second push in the final 48–72 hours when percentage gaps are visible and late-closing supporters are most motivated.

Maine's statewide geography matters. York County (Noble, Thornton Academy, Sanford) and Cumberland County (Scarborough, South Portland, Bonny Eagle) have the densest populations and the strongest social-media participation rates. Penobscot County (Bangor, Brewer, Hampden) has historically active community sports networks fed by 929 The Ticket and Bangor Daily News coverage. A York County nominee can reach a larger raw audience, but a well-organised Penobscot County campaign can close that gap quickly.

The most important single action is placing the exact poll URL — not just a general si.com link — in front of every realistic supporter on Day 1. The SI poll page isn't always easy to navigate to organically; supporters who can't find the vote link in two clicks typically don't vote. For context on general vote-mobilisation strategy, see our how-to guide and the Maine contest hub.

What are the rules — and can you buy votes for this poll?

The High School on SI Maine Player of the Year poll is a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize and no formal sweepstakes legal framework under Maine law. The practical restrictions come from the SI/SBLive poll platform's own technical terms, which vary by edition. The 2024 football POY edition did not publish a stated per-device hourly cap, which contrasts with newspaper-hosted polls that typically enforce a one-vote-per-hour cooldown. For a full, balanced treatment of buying votes across online contests generally, see our buy-votes guide.

Two distinct types of activity exist in this space:

• Automated scripts or bots — rapid programmatic submissions from the same device fingerprint or IP block. These are detectable through traffic pattern analysis and result in vote removal when flagged.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people casting genuine votes from their own devices within whatever cap (or no cap) the current poll states. This is structurally equivalent to a booster club email that reaches 500 additional real supporters — it is fans voting, reached through a different channel.

Whether paid outreach satisfies the spirit of the specific poll terms is a judgement each family and booster club must make after reviewing the current official poll page. Given that the SI Maine POY is a no-prize fan-engagement poll with no formal contest law structure, the risk profile is reputational rather than legal. The 2024 edition's 23,621-vote scale suggests that winning requires either a genuinely large organic network, a coordinated campaign, or both.

When does the Maine Player of the Year voting open and close?

The High School on SI Maine Football Player of the Year poll opens after the Maine Principals' Association (MPA) state championship games have been played — typically in mid-to-late November. The poll article appears on si.com/high-school/maine within one to two weeks of the final MPA championship game, once the full season's nominee field is clear. The voting window runs approximately two to three weeks, closing in mid-December.

The exact poll open and close dates shift from year to year based on MPA scheduling — if the state championship is played unusually late due to weather or rescheduling, the POY poll window shifts accordingly. Always find the current poll directly on si.com/high-school/maine rather than anticipating a fixed calendar date.

The final 72 hours before close are consistently the highest-traffic period of the window. Campaigns that have been steady through the first two weeks but see a tight race should concentrate their largest mobilisation effort in this window — when supporters can see that the outcome is genuinely uncertain, conversion rates on share messages increase significantly. See the USA contest guide index for other statewide fan-vote awards across the country.