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

The Wednesday close is what you probably got wrong

Most people who have voted in Massachusetts high school sports polls expect the deadline to fall on Sunday or Monday — that is when the football and baseball polls end. The softball ballot closes Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific. That is a two- to three-day difference, and it matters more than it sounds.

A Sunday deadline means campaigns build all week, peak over the weekend, and finish with a late burst. A Wednesday deadline means the window is genuinely mid-week: the poll is live from roughly the weekend's games through Wednesday night, and the live hours for organizing run Monday and Tuesday, not Saturday and Sunday. A supporter who assumes the contest follows the football schedule and pushes hard on the weekend is pushing into a window that may already be over — or is still so early that their effort diffuses before the close.

Confirmed from the May 8, 2025 poll: that ballot closed Wednesday, May 14 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific. When it closed, Maggie Ladd of Plymouth North had already won the following week's edition — the May 16–22 week — which is the only confirmed 2025 winner on record. The pattern suggests SI publishes and closes the softball ballot on a consistent mid-week schedule through the spring season.

So the first and most useful thing to know before supporting anyone in this poll is the actual close day. Check the article. Treat Wednesday as the real deadline. Everything else follows from that.

What the May 2025 ballot tells you about who gets nominated

The May 8, 2025 ballot had thirteen nominees, and reading the field is genuinely informative. It was not dominated by one program, one region, or one position.

Three pitchers made the same week's list. Sharlotte Stazinski of Walpole threw 7 innings, struck out 17, and walked zero. Elsie Testa of Abington went 3-0 in a stretch with 28 strikeouts and no earned runs. Catherine Larson of Taunton pitched a no-hitter and a shutout. All three on one ballot, competing against a field that also included Kamryn Bonneau of Pentucket going 5-for-5 with a grand slam and another home run, and Brianna Fontes of Joseph Case going 6-for-8 over multiple games with 5 RBI.

The geographic spread is also real. Taunton is Bristol County. Plymouth North is Plymouth County. Lenox is in Berkshire County at the western edge of the state. Dighton-Rehoboth and Joseph Case are both South Coast schools. Greenfield is in Franklin County. The ballot is legitimately statewide, which means support is geographically dispersed — no single metro corridor owns the nomination calendar the way the larger football programs can cluster around Boston or Springfield.

What the organizer rewards is a performance you can describe in one line: a no-hitter, 5-for-5 with a grand slam, 17 strikeouts and no walks. A player who delivers a stat line that reads cleanly is more likely to be nominated. A player who quietly goes 3-for-4 twice in two close wins may not make the cut no matter how much her team values the production.

How spring support networks actually work in Massachusetts

Massachusetts high school softball draws on a different community structure than football. Football has Friday nights, stadium crowds, and a fall calendar that dominates local coverage. Softball is a spring sport, competing for attention against baseball, lacrosse, and track — and the fan networks reflect that.

The towns that showed up on the May 2025 ballot span the whole state, and in smaller communities — Lenox, Pentucket, Joseph Case — the softball program is often the primary spring sport people follow. A Pentucket supporter in Groveland knows Kamryn Bonneau by name. A Lenox fan in the Berkshires follows her team's schedule the way a western Mass football town tracks its Friday nights. Those tight networks move faster than a large suburban program where the sport is one of many competing for the same booster attention.

Walpole had two nominees on the May 8 ballot (Stazinski and Abbey Riley), which is worth noting. Two nominees from one school splits the school's support across two names unless organizers and boosters actively coordinate which one the community backs. A divided home community is one of the more common ways a nominally strong candidate ends up mid-ballot.

For context on other Massachusetts high school sports contests, the Massachusetts fan-vote directory covers additional spring and fall polls. The national fan-vote index shows how the SI/SBLive platform runs across states. How recurring fan votes work week-to-week is explained in the how-to guide. And if you are preparing a campaign for the first time, general vote-support resources walk through the turnout mechanics that apply to any open, uncapped poll like this one.