Mississippi High School Girls Soccer Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

The thing most voters don't know before they search for this poll

Mississippi girls soccer does not run in the fall. That is the first fact worth having, because it reshapes everything about when and how this poll operates. While most states schedule girls soccer as an autumn sport, Mississippi plays a winter season — games run from mid-January through February, bracketed by the end of football and the start of spring sports. The player of the week poll follows that calendar exactly.

So when the January 22, 2025 ballot went live covering games from January 12–18, it was already three weeks into the season. Supporters looking for the poll in October or November will not find it — it does not exist yet. And by March it is over.

The second thing worth knowing: the poll may not always run as its own dedicated ballot. The confirmed 2025 poll is on record. For the 2025–26 season, no separate girls soccer player of the week has been indexed — some Mississippi soccer athletes turned up on the general Athlete of the Week ballot instead. Before you go looking for a dedicated soccer poll in 2026, check the Mississippi contest hub and the multi-sport Athlete of the Week page; Reed Green may have folded soccer weeks into that broader poll. The mechanics are the same either way — unlimited voting, Sunday close — but knowing which ballot your player is on is the obvious first step.

Eight nominees, two from the same school

The January 22, 2025 poll — the only confirmed dedicated girls soccer ballot on record — had eight nominees. That is a tight field compared to the 21-to-34-name weeks the football poll regularly runs. Eight names means every vote share matters more, and the math on winning is simpler: you need to reach more of your own supporters, not outrun a fractured 30-person ballot.

The field that week: Hannah Kate Winstead and Keagan Hester, both from Enterprise; Lily Halter (St. Andrew's Episcopal); Adi Holcomb (Loyd Star); Lela Trout (New Albany); Amina Rozelle (McComb); Katelyn Hilario (Hernando); and Ella Elliott (Neshoba Central).

Enterprise placed two players on the same ballot. That is a real double-edged situation. A week that good for one program earns recognition, but supporters who vote for Winstead do not automatically vote for Hester — and the school's fan energy splits between them. A community that rallies hard around one name generally beats one that divides its attention, regardless of how talented both nominees are.

One other thing the field shows: geographic spread. St. Andrew's Episcopal is a MAIS private school in Ridgeland. Loyd Star is a small rural program in Lawrence County. Hernando is a large DeSoto County district near Memphis. They are all on one ballot, which is the point — MHSAA and MAIS schools share the same poll, and enrollment means nothing here once the voting starts.

How the Sunday deadline actually works in a winter sport

The poll closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific. In Mississippi, that is 1:59 a.m. Monday Central — so the effective deadline for anyone organizing a push is Sunday evening local time. That is not unusual for SI's Mississippi polls; football, basketball, softball, and baseball all run to the same Sunday-night Pacific close.

What is different in January and February is the competing attention around that deadline. Football season is over. The state championships wrapped in early December. Basketball is deep in region play and drawing coverage. Girls soccer is running its entire season in the same narrow window, meaning a player's family and team have a short runway to build any kind of sustained voting effort — and so does everyone on the field.

That compressed timeline is the structural reality of a winter sport. For a national context on how fan polls work, the dynamics are well-documented; the how-to guide walks through the weekly cadence that applies to any open fan poll. For this specific poll, the short season means you typically get one shot at a given week's ballot, not a slow build across months. Getting the link out to supporters the day the ballot opens — via team chats, school accounts, and personal networks — is worth more than a heavy push the day before close, because the total voting window is only about four days.