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

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

The Minnesota High School Player of the Year is the annual season-ending fan-vote award published by High School on SI at si.com/high-school/minnesota, recognising the top performers across each MSHSL sport after the season's final buzzer. Unlike the recurring weekly polls, this recognition arrives once per sport per season — making it a genuine end-of-year credential rather than a mid-season snapshot.

• Hosted at si.com/high-school/minnesota by High School on SI, the SBLive-powered prep-sports vertical of Sports Illustrated, now operated under the Arena Group.
• Polls are published sport by sport and MSHSL class by class at the conclusion of each season — separate elections for football, boys and girls hockey, basketball, and spring sports, each run after the MSHSL state tournament concludes.
• All six MSHSL enrollment classes (6A, 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, A) across all eight geographic sections are eligible, giving athletes at small Class A schools a path to recognition against peers of similar school size.
• Voting is free and unlimited for human fans — no account, subscription, or personal data required — and polls close at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the stated date.
• A win earns a permanent published article on si.com under the Sports Illustrated brand, which surfaces when recruiters, coaches, and media search the athlete's name online.
• The Player of the Year is distinct from the weekly Athlete of the Week poll; the weekly award recognises single-game standouts, while this annual vote crowns the season's best performer per class.

Which sports and MSHSL classes run Player of the Year polls?

High School on SI Minnesota publishes Player of the Year fan polls for the major sport seasons, with nominations drawn from standout performers across the MSHSL postseason. Each poll targets a defined class tier so athletes compete against peers at schools of equivalent size. The table below maps the confirmed sports, their typical poll timing, and the MSHSL classes covered.

Because each poll is a standalone article, the competitive field for a Class 6A football Player of the Year looks entirely different from a Class A hockey poll. Eden Prairie, Lakeville North, and Maple Grove — Class 6A programmes with enrollments above 2,500 — generate the largest raw vote totals in football because their communities are large and digitally active. Hockey polls at the Class A tier, however, can be equally contested: small-town rink communities in Greater Minnesota — Warroad, Eveleth-Gilbert, Marshall — have decades of deep identity around their hockey programmes that translates into highly motivated, concentrated voter bases.

Minnesota's unique hockey POY distinction

Ice hockey holds a singular place in Minnesota prep sports culture, and the MSHSL state tournament — held each February at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul — is one of the highest-attended high school events in the country. The Player of the Year polls for boys and girls hockey consistently attract SI readers from outside Minnesota who follow the sport nationally, giving hockey nominees an audience depth unavailable in most other states' prep polls.

How does the Minnesota Player of the Year fan vote work?

Voting takes place through a poll widget embedded inside individual sport-and-class articles published on si.com/high-school/minnesota. There is no single universal Player of the Year voting page — each poll is a distinct article, and supporters must find the specific article for their athlete's sport and MSHSL class.

There is no per-vote cap on these polls. A fan can return to the same article repeatedly and vote again without any hourly or daily cooldown. High School on SI's format relies on the prohibition against automated tools — not rate-limiting — to maintain integrity. This makes the polls highly susceptible to the size and persistence of each nominee's mobilised network.

The mechanics are the same for every sport: click the nominee's name in the poll widget, submit, and the live tally updates immediately. No account, email address, login, or subscription is required. Both desktop and mobile browsers support the widget fully — Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android both function without a dedicated app.

Poll windows typically run for several days to two weeks after the season concludes. For football, polls often open in December after the MSHSL state championships and close before the new year. Hockey polls follow the late-February or March state tournament. Always verify the closing deadline in the specific poll article rather than inferring it from another sport's window. For a broader overview of how Sports Illustrated's prep fan polls work structurally, see the online voting guide.

Recent Minnesota High School Player of the Year — notable award history

High School on SI has published Minnesota Player of the Year fan-vote polls since the platform's SBLive era (launched in Minnesota circa 2019). The most reliably documented awards are in football and hockey, where the MSHSL state tournament structure makes class-based nominees straightforward. The table below lists confirmed and widely reported POY recognitions from verified public records; note that High School on SI controls the editorial record and some older results are accessible only through archived poll articles.

Because the polls are fan-driven and vote totals are not archived publicly by High School on SI after the window closes, a complete historical winner list is not available from open sources. The community knowledge — which schools have won and in which sports — lives primarily in local booster networks, school athletics departments, and archived social media posts from the winning athletes' families.

For the most accurate current record, the MSHSL's own postseason award pages and the Minnesota Sports Media Association's annual All-State selections provide a complementary institutional track that persists independently of the poll results.

How to build your nominee's vote count for Minnesota Player of the Year

Because there is no vote ceiling on these polls, the only variable that determines outcome is the number of real, persistent voters a campaign can activate and keep returning to the poll page between opening day and the 11:59 p.m. PT deadline. A voter who returns ten times adds ten votes. A booster email that reaches 400 parents, each of whom votes five times over a two-week window, adds 2,000 votes. The arithmetic is simple; the execution — keeping supporters engaged across a multi-day window — is where most campaigns lose ground. For general principles of online poll mobilisation see the how-to guide; the Minnesota-specific notes below address what actually drives results in this market.

Minnesota football POY campaigns peak in December, when the state championship buzz is fresh and communities are still processing tournament outcomes — this is the highest-energy window, and a same-day activation when the poll opens will always outperform a campaign that ramps up mid-window.

Hockey POY campaigns in March operate differently: the Xcel Energy Center state tournament is a major state event, and the week after the tournament the High School on SI editorial team typically publishes the hockey class polls. The hockey alumni network is particularly deep — former Minnesota high school hockey players who went on to college and professional careers often follow SI's Minnesota prep hockey coverage, making the hockey POY polls one of the widest-reach fan votes in the state.

When every organic channel has been tapped and a nominee is still trailing, some families and booster clubs engage a paid vote promotion service. Given the explicit disqualification-for-scripts rule on this platform, only services that guarantee genuine manual human delivery — never automated — are appropriate here. Our sports fan poll votes service is built around that standard. See pricing options for package tiers.

Rules and the buy-votes question for Minnesota Player of the Year

The Minnesota High School Player of the Year is a fan-engagement feature published by a media company — not a licensed sweepstakes, not a MSHSL-administered award, and not a regulated contest under Minnesota state law. There is no cash prize, no entry fee, and no formal contest statute framework. The governing terms are High School on SI's own poll platform rules, which are consistently stated across its Minnesota season polls.

The stated rule that matters most: votes generated by script, macro, or other automated means are not allowed, and athletes that receive such votes will be disqualified. This is a harsher stated penalty than many comparable media polls, and it is worth weighing carefully.

• What is banned: automated tools — scripts, macros, browser bots, VPN rotation services — that submit votes programmatically at speeds or volumes inconsistent with real human browser behaviour. The platform detects anomalous traffic patterns and applies the disqualification penalty to the athlete, not just the votes.
• What is not banned: a real human fan manually voting many times over the course of a multi-day window. The platform explicitly states there is no per-vote limit for human voters. Multi-device voting by different people in the same household is also fully legitimate.
• The grey area: paid outreach services that direct real human voters to the poll link. Structurally, this is the same as a booster club email reaching additional supporters — it is fans voting, reached through a different channel. Whether that satisfies the intent of the "fun fan engagement" framing is a judgement each family must make after reading the current official poll article at si.com.

For a full, balanced treatment of the buy-votes question across online fan polls generally — covering the legal, ethical, and practical dimensions — see buy-votes-online. The Minnesota Player of the Year context, because of the disqualification clause, warrants more caution than polls that only remove votes without penalising the athlete.

When does voting open and close — MSHSL season-end calendar

Each Player of the Year poll goes live shortly after the MSHSL state championship for that sport concludes. Poll windows range from several days to roughly two weeks, closing at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the date stated in the specific poll article. Because multiple sports and classes run simultaneously in some months, supporters must verify the exact deadline for their athlete's sport and class independently.

The 11:59 p.m. PT close converts to 1:59 a.m. Central Time in Minnesota. For a poll closing on a Sunday, that means the practical last-chance push for Minnesota supporters is Sunday evening Central — around 9 to 11 p.m. local time. Schedule coordinated reminders for Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening to capture the final window without confusion from the Pacific Time designation.

Football POY polls are the most time-sensitive to activate quickly. The MSHSL football season ends in early-to-mid December, and the High School on SI editorial team typically publishes class-specific Player of the Year polls within days of the final championship game. Campaigns that begin mobilising the moment the poll article goes live — sharing the exact article URL rather than the section homepage — consistently outperform campaigns that wait for word to spread organically.

For the full landscape of Minnesota high school sports recognition votes — including the weekly Athlete of the Week poll, seasonal awards, and community contests — visit our Minnesota voting contests hub. For all US state contest guides, see the USA contest directory.