Massachusetts High School Football Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

The one thing most voters get wrong about this ballot

Anyone who arrives here expecting a city-specific or regional poll will miss the actual structure of this vote. Massachusetts does not run a separate eastern-Massachusetts and western-Massachusetts SI ballot — it is a single statewide poll, which means a Mahar Regional nominee from Orange in Franklin County and a Xaverian Brothers nominee from Westwood land on exactly the same list. That geography is the first thing worth understanding before anything else.

The practical consequence is that Western Mass. programs, which typically get less media coverage, rely even more heavily on their own communities to push a nominee into contention. When Morgan Softic put up 256 total yards and two touchdowns for Mahar Regional in the opening weeks of 2024, that performance made the SI ballot — but turning it into a winning result meant Mahar's community doing the outreach work that a larger metro school might take for granted. The statewide frame equalizes editorial access; it does not equalize fan mobilization.

The second thing voters miss is the ballot's location. It is not on a fixed page — each week Villamarzo publishes a new dated article, and older weeks' widgets stay open online. Search carelessly and you might vote on a poll that closed two months ago. The hub at si.com/high-school/massachusetts/athlete-of-the-week links to the current ballot; the date on the article is the only reliable check.

What the week-of-9/10/2024 ballot reveals about this field

The earliest confirmed Massachusetts POTW ballot on record is the week of September 10, 2024, covering games from roughly September 5–7 and closing Sunday, September 15 at 11:59 p.m. Eight nominees, eight schools, eight different parts of the state.

Two things jump out. First, Springfield Central placed both its quarterback and its top receiver on the same ballot — Staine threw 332 yards and Barbour caught 12 of those passes for 219 yards in the same game. A school whose fan base splits its votes between two nominees is at a structural disadvantage versus a school with one clear representative. That dynamic is not unique to Massachusetts, but it surfaces early when both nominees are on the same ballot.

Second, the range of programs is genuine. Rocco Ryan from Salem made the ballot on a two-way line — 76 receiving yards plus 11 tackles and an interception — which tells you Villamarzo is not running a pure box-score contest. A defensive contribution at a school that does not turn up in the preseason top ten can still earn a nomination. That makes the slate less predictable than it would be if only marquee programs cycled through.

Eight divisions, one ballot — what the MIAA structure actually means for voters

Massachusetts tournament football runs eight divisions, assigned by school enrollment and adjusted by the MIAA's Competitive Equity Modifier, which accounts for school type and stability rates. Division 1 holds the largest programs; Division 8 the smallest. The two-year alignment cycle recalculates placements from DESE enrollment data, so a school's division can shift.

None of that determines what appears on the SI ballot. Mahar Regional, a program whose enrollment puts it well below the Division 1 schools, made the opening 2024 ballot alongside North Quincy and Springfield Central. Cohasset — a South Shore coastal town with an enrollment to match — was there too. The SI poll does not gate nominees by division, which means the competitive landscape for a voter is flatter than the MIAA tournament bracket implies.

What the division spread does tell you is something about community topology. A Division 8 school in a town of a few thousand has a tighter, faster-activating fan base — fewer degrees of separation between the booster group, the alumni chain, and the people who will actually vote before Sunday night. A Division 1 program in a larger suburb carries more absolute followers but moves the message more slowly through a looser network. On the field the division gap is enormous; on the Sunday ballot it is not the variable that decides the race.

Running a real campaign before Sunday night

The Massachusetts window runs roughly four to five days — ballot publishes Tuesday or Wednesday, closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m. The effective campaign arc is shorter than it looks, because mid-week voter attention is lower and the genuine surge happens Thursday through Sunday.

If your player was not on the ballot and had a standout game, the path is nomination first, not voting. Contact Andy Villamarzo through his SI author page with the full stat line, school, opponent, and score. That affects next week's ballot, not the current one — but a great season needs multiple ballot appearances to build the recognition that feeds a season-end Player of the Year run later.

Once the ballot is live, the math is reach. The poll is open and decided entirely by how many supporters show up before Sunday — a structure where vote-support campaigns add real margin in the final 24 hours. The most common mistake is concentrating effort in the first day and going quiet on Saturday and Sunday when casual voters have moved on and the committed base is still voting. Western Mass. schools in particular benefit from early starts; the geographic distance from Boston media means less organic pickup, and a Thursday push from a program like Mahar Regional travels faster within a tight local community than it would through a sprawling metro network. The how-to guide walks through the weekly fan-vote cadence in full; more Massachusetts and national fan-vote context lives at /usa/massachusetts/ and /usa/.