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

What is the Maryland High School Player of the Year?

The Maryland High School Player of the Year is an annual sport-specific fan-voted honour published by High School on SI — Sports Illustrated's prep-sports platform, operated by the Arena Group at si.com/high-school/maryland. Unlike the weekly Athlete of the Week polls that run throughout the season, the Player of the Year poll goes live once per sport, at the end of that sport's competitive calendar, and crowns a single season-long standout based on cumulative reader votes.

• Confirmed annual POY polls include boys basketball, softball, and girls flag football — with additional sports covered as the programme expands.
• Nominees are drawn from both MPSSAA public schools (Classes 1A–4A, all 24 Maryland jurisdictions) and MIAA private schools (A and B conferences, predominantly in the Baltimore–Washington corridor).
• Voting is free — no Sports Illustrated subscription, no account, and no personal data required to cast a vote.
• The winner is determined entirely by fan vote total; the High School on SI editorial desk controls which athletes appear as nominees, not the final result.
• Winners are published on si.com/high-school/maryland with an announcement article naming the vote percentages and the winning athlete's season statistics.

Because the Player of the Year poll covers an entire season's worth of standout performances rather than a single week, the statewide audience is often more engaged — and vote totals are typically higher than a standard weekly poll.

Recent Maryland Player of the Year winners by sport

High School on SI has confirmed annual POY fan votes across multiple sports for Maryland. The table below compiles verified winners and finalists from recent seasons based on published SI.com results articles — no results are estimated or fabricated.

Notable nominees and contenders

The 2025–26 boys basketball POY ballot featured three highly recruited athletes. DeMatha's Ace Meeks is a nationally ranked prospect out of the MIAA's most storied boys basketball programme. C.H. Flowers' Brandon Brooks is a Prince George's County standout from the MPSSAA's most competitive public-school county. Meade's Keon Scott represented Anne Arundel County's MPSSAA 4A contingent. The 2026 softball ballot includes Huntingtown's Racheal Howell from Calvert County — the same county that produced the 2025 girls flag football winner Lucia Siracusano of Northern — alongside Broadneck's Rylan Crisafulli from Anne Arundel County.

How does the Maryland Player of the Year vote work at SI.com?

Each Maryland POY vote follows the same platform format used across the High School on SI network. The poll appears on si.com/high-school/maryland as a standalone article with an embedded vote widget. The deadline is stated on the poll page — typically Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT — and the widget shows live running totals for all nominees as votes come in. For a broader explanation of how fan-vote polls like this function mechanically, see our guide to online contest voting.

Because the deadline is specific to each sport's season calendar and is stated on the active poll page, supporters should locate the current poll early and note the exact close time rather than assuming a recurring weekly schedule. The annual cadence means the window may be open for one to two weeks, longer than a typical weekly poll — creating more time for supporters to build sustained outreach campaigns.

Which Maryland schools and conferences produce POY nominees?

Player of the Year nominees come from both the MIAA private school system and MPSSAA public schools. The MIAA's A Conference — the most competitive private-school league on the East Coast — consistently produces nominees across football, basketball, and other sports.

Two broad geographic blocs dominate the nominee pool. The Baltimore–Washington private school corridor — anchored by MIAA A Conference programmes in Prince George's, Anne Arundel, Montgomery, and Baltimore counties — produces nominees through elite athletic recruiting and large, organised alumni bases. The Southern Maryland public school bloc — Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary's counties under the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference (SMAC) — has punched above its size in girls flag football and football, as evidenced by Northern and Patuxent winning or finishing in recent POY votes.

How do you build votes for the Maryland Player of the Year?

An annual POY poll typically runs for a week or more — a longer window than a weekly award, which means more time to systematically work through every network. The most effective campaigns treat it as a multi-day effort rather than a single push. For a full playbook on vote-building for online fan polls, read our how-to guides; the Maryland-specific notes below reflect the real patterns in this market.

Organic network tactics for Maryland POY voting

• Post the direct poll URL on Day 1 — include athlete name, school, sport, and poll close date in the first message. Supporters who see exactly what to do and when convert at a much higher rate.
• Activate MIAA / MPSSAA team channels — school athletics group chats, boosters association email lists, and team parent groups are the highest-volume surfaces for Maryland prep sports communities.
• Leverage county-specific Facebook groups — Prince George's County has large MPSSAA sports parent groups; Calvert and Southern Maryland communities rely heavily on county-level Facebook for local sports news.
• MIAA alumni networks — DeMatha, Archbishop Spalding, and Calvert Hall have multi-decade alumni bases with high social-media presence; a well-framed ask from an athletic director or coach reaches thousands of former students.
• Repeat reminders 48 and 24 hours before close — a poll open for a week sees a natural vote-volume spike in the final day when supporters receive a deadline reminder.

When the organic network has been fully activated and the nominee remains behind, some families and programme boosters use a paid vote promotion service to reach additional real voters. If you pursue that route, choose a service that delivers paced, genuine votes — not bot traffic that ignores the poll platform's rate controls. Our sports fan poll votes service is designed for exactly this scenario: cap-matched delivery that mirrors natural voter behaviour.

POY voting rules and the buy-votes question

The Maryland Player of the Year polls at si.com carry the same platform terms as all High School on SI fan votes. The relevant restriction is on automated scripts or tools that generate artificial traffic — bot-driven rapid-fire submissions are detectable and result in vote removal. For a balanced discussion of the legality of vote services across different contest types, see our full guide.

The risk profile for annual POY awards is worth understanding clearly. There is no cash prize and no formal sweepstakes structure. The consequence of flagged automated votes is removal from the tally — there is no account ban (the poll requires no account), no disqualification from future nominations, and no legal consequence for the athlete or their family. The real risk is reputational: if a campaign becomes publicly associated with vote manipulation, it can undermine the credibility of a legitimate athletic achievement.

Season timing: when do Maryland POY polls open and close?

Player of the Year polls are tied to each sport's Maryland high school season calendar, not a fixed weekly schedule. The polls go live at or near the conclusion of that sport's regular season or state championship series — typically with a one- to two-week voting window.

Because poll launch dates are not announced in advance on a fixed calendar, the most reliable way to catch a Maryland POY poll before it closes is to follow si.com/high-school/maryland directly, or to search for "player of the year vote" + the sport name on the site when the state championship season concludes. A poll that has been open for several days can still be won — the voting window is typically long enough that an organised campaign launched on Day 3 can close a substantial gap.

For context on other Maryland prep-sports polls that run throughout the season, see the Maryland contest hub. For all US-based voting contests, the full USA guide index lists every state.