New Hampshire High School Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the New Hampshire High School Athlete of the Week?

The New Hampshire High School Athlete of the Week is a free statewide fan-vote poll published every week of the prep sports calendar at si.com/high-school/new-hampshire — the New Hampshire hub of High School on SI, the national high school sports vertical operated by Minute Media and SBLive Sports. Sports Illustrated's high school network launched state-level weekly voting programmes across the country, including New Hampshire, in the early 2020s, giving communities in all four NHIAA divisions a shared public platform for recognising standout prep performances.

• Operated by High School on SI / SBLive Sports (Minute Media), which covers prep sports in all 50 states under the Sports Illustrated brand.
• Covers all four NHIAA divisions — from the large suburban public schools of Division I to the small-enrollment programmes of Division IV — across fall, winter, and spring seasons.
• Voting is completely free; no account, no email, and no subscription to Sports Illustrated are required.
• Polls close Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT each week, with the winner announced in a follow-up article on the New Hampshire hub.
• The contest covers all NHIAA-sanctioned sports — football, soccer, cross country, basketball, wrestling, hockey, track, baseball, softball, lacrosse, and others.
• New Hampshire has approximately 80 NHIAA member schools across four divisions, making this one of the broader statewide fan polls in New England.

A win earns a published mention on a Sports Illustrated platform — a nationally recognised brand — which can appear in recruiting profiles and community coverage for New Hampshire student-athletes at any school size.

Which New Hampshire schools compete in this athlete poll?

Nominees come from across the state's roughly 80 NHIAA member schools, grouped into four divisions by enrollment. The table below lists 13 frequently nominated schools, their NHIAA division, and home city — a representative cross-section from the Seacoast to the Merrimack Valley to the Lakes Region.

How NHIAA divisions shape the poll

NHIAA classifies schools by enrollment, reclassifying every two years. Division I covers the state's largest schools — Pinkerton Academy in Derry is among the largest, with an enrollment typically above 3,000 students across its unique public academy structure. The Nashua district fields two Division I schools (North and South) in the same city, occasionally placing two nominees from the same metro area on the same weekly ballot.

Division II programmes like Bishop Guertin, Winnacunnet, and Exeter carry strong alumni networks despite smaller enrollment figures. Bishop Guertin, a Catholic private school in Nashua, draws students from across southern New Hampshire and has an organised booster community that mobilises quickly for online recognition events. Winnacunnet and Exeter serve the Seacoast region, where tight-knit beach-town communities and active parent networks translate effectively to fan-poll engagement.

How does the High School on SI New Hampshire Athlete of the Week vote work?

The poll is published as a standalone article on the New Hampshire section of si.com/high-school/new-hampshire, typically appearing mid-week after the High School on SI editorial staff reviews performance submissions and selects nominees. The voting widget is embedded directly in the article — any visitor can see all nominees, cast a vote, and watch live totals update without creating an account or logging in. For a broader explanation of how fan-vote polls of this type function, see our online contest voting guide.

The platform enforces one vote per voting period per device. Unlike hourly-cap polls where you can return every 60 minutes, High School on SI typically enforces a per-period lock — once a device votes in a given poll, it cannot vote again until the window resets or the next poll opens. The exact mechanic may vary week to week, so check the current poll article for any cap language shown on the widget.

Polls run from mid-week through Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT. Because the window is fixed and does not reset on a per-hour basis, the strategic emphasis shifts from "spread votes across the week" to "reach the largest number of unique devices." Every phone, tablet, and laptop that visits the poll URL counts as an independent voter.

The poll is fully mobile-accessible. Family members outside New Hampshire — grandparents, college siblings, relatives in other states — vote from their own devices just as easily as local supporters. The national reach of the Sports Illustrated platform means search traffic alone can bring in voters who find the article organically while browsing NH sports coverage.

How is the winner of the New Hampshire Athlete of the Week named?

The nominee with the highest vote count when the poll closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT is named the winner. High School on SI does not apply editorial weighting to the final tally — the sports desk's role is nomination curation, not outcome selection. After polls close, the result is published in a follow-up article on si.com/high-school/new-hampshire that names the winner, their school, and their performance.

1. Performance submission: coaches, parents, athletic directors, and school contacts submit outstanding weekly results to the High School on SI New Hampshire editorial team via email or online submission forms.
2. Ballot curation: the editorial team selects nominees based on statistical significance, sport representation, and division balance. Not every submission reaches the ballot — being nominated is itself a form of recognition.
3. Poll opens: the weekly voting article goes live at si.com/high-school/new-hampshire, typically Tuesday through Thursday, showing each nominee's name, school, and sport alongside a live vote counter.
4. Poll closes Sunday night: at 11:59 p.m. PT the window shuts; vote totals are final. The nominee with the most votes is the Athlete of the Week for that edition.

There is no cash prize, scholarship, or physical award — the recognition is a published article on a Sports Illustrated platform, which carries naming value in recruiting contexts and community standing.

How do you build votes for New Hampshire's Athlete of the Week?

Because this poll enforces a per-period device cap rather than an hourly reset, every unique device that visits the poll URL matters. The strategic equation is straightforward: maximise the number of distinct devices casting votes before Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT. For a full playbook on vote campaigns for online fan polls, read our comprehensive guide; the notes below focus on what works in the New Hampshire prep sports context specifically.

New Hampshire's small-state dynamic creates an interesting poll environment. The state's population (~1.4 million) is smaller than many individual metro areas covered by competing polls, but that also means a tightly mobilised community — a booster club email that reaches 200 Pinkerton Academy parents, for example, can represent a meaningful percentage of the total realistic voter pool. Schools in Nashua and Manchester benefit from larger urban populations; Seacoast schools like Winnacunnet and Exeter can leverage tight coastal-community networks where local identity is strong.

When organic networks have been fully activated and the nominee is still trailing, some supporters turn to paid promotion services that reach additional real voters. If that route appeals to you, choose a service delivering paced, genuine votes that fit within the platform's per-period cap — our sports fan poll votes service is built around exactly this model.

What are the rules, and can you buy votes for this poll?

High School on SI explicitly describes its athlete-of-the-week polls as a fun, fan-driven way to highlight great prep performances — not a formal sweepstakes or regulated competition. The platform's stated purpose is community engagement and athlete recognition. For a balanced, detailed look at the legality and ethics of vote promotion across online polls generally, see our full resource at buy-votes-online; below is what applies specifically to this poll.

There is a clear practical difference between two categories of activity in this context:

• Automated bot scripts — software that fires repeated rapid-fire votes from spoofed device fingerprints, bypassing the per-period cap. These violate platform terms, produce anomalous traffic signatures, and result in vote removal when detected.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real fans casting genuine single votes from their own devices, reached through a promotional channel rather than an organic booster email. Structurally, this is indistinguishable from a school social media post that reaches 500 additional parents — it is genuine voting, via a wider distribution channel.

Whether that distinction satisfies the spirit of any specific poll edition's rules is a personal judgement each family and booster club must make after reading the current official poll page. The stakes here are reputational, not legal — this is a fan recognition poll with no monetary prize and no formal contest law structure.

New Hampshire Athlete of the Week season timeline (NHIAA calendar)

The poll runs across all three NHIAA-recognised prep sports seasons. Each season brings its own nominee mix — the sports, the schools most active, and the typical community mobilisation level all shift as the year progresses. The table below maps the High School on SI NH polling programme to the NHIAA sports calendar.

The weekly window opens mid-week and closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT. Because High School on SI publishes the poll article as soon as the ballot is set, supporters should check the New Hampshire hub page at si.com/high-school/new-hampshire early in the week rather than waiting for direct notification — the poll article may only run for four to five days before closing.

Fall football season generates the highest engagement for this poll. October weeks involving Division I programmes from Manchester, Nashua, and southern New Hampshire communities consistently produce the largest vote totals of any sports season, driven by the state's deep football culture and the high density of organised booster clubs in those districts.

For context on how prep athlete recognition events fit within the broader New Hampshire community voting landscape, visit our New Hampshire contest hub. For all US contest and voting guides, see the USA contest index.