New Hampshire High School Baseball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the New Hampshire High School Baseball Player of the Year fan vote?

The New Hampshire High School Baseball Player of the Year is an annual recognition published on the New Hampshire hub of High School on SI — the prep-sports vertical run by SBLive Sports and Minute Media at si.com/high-school/new-hampshire. Each spring, after the NHIAA baseball season and state tournament wrap up, the editorial team selects 10 nominees from across the state's four enrollment-based divisions and opens a free public fan poll to determine the fan-vote winner.

• Operated by High School on SI / SBLive Sports (Minute Media), which covers prep sports nationally under the Sports Illustrated brand.
• Dedicated exclusively to baseball — separate from the multi-sport Player of the Year vote and the weekly Athlete of the Week poll also hosted on the same platform.
• Covers all four NHIAA divisions (D-I through D-IV), so a pitcher from a small D-III rural programme competes on equal ballot footing with a D-I shortstop from the Nashua suburbs.
• Voting is free with no account or registration; one vote per device per voting window is the enforced cap.
• The poll publishes at si.com/high-school/new-hampshire in the spring sports window — typically late May or early June — after NHIAA championship results are final.
• New Hampshire fields approximately 80 NHIAA member schools, and most run a varsity baseball programme, giving the ballot a genuinely statewide pool of eligible nominees.

Because this is a sport-specific annual poll — not a weekly multi-sport rotation — every nomination slot on the ballot represents genuine statewide recognition of a player's full baseball season, not just a single strong week.

Which NH baseball programmes and NHIAA divisions compete for this award?

Any NHIAA member school with a varsity baseball programme is eligible to have a nominee appear on the ballot. NHIAA classifies schools by enrollment into four divisions, reclassifying every two years. The table below shows ten schools that regularly appear in New Hampshire prep baseball coverage across all four divisions — these are the programmes most likely to generate nominees for the annual fan vote.

NH baseball powerhouses by NHIAA division

NHIAA baseball runs as a spring sport, with the regular season running from late March through May and the state tournament concluding in late May or early June. Division I draws the largest fields and generates the most individual statistical leaders — pitchers with sub-2.00 ERAs and hitters batting above .400 across a full spring schedule — but Division II and III programmes regularly produce nominees when an individual performance stands out statewide.

Bishop Guertin in Nashua is a consistent source of high-profile Division II nominees, drawing from a wide catchment area across southern New Hampshire that gives it a broader potential voter base than its enrollment suggests. Seacoast schools like Winnacunnet and Exeter benefit from tight coastal-community networks and active parent groups that mobilise effectively when a local athlete reaches a statewide ballot.

How does the NH Baseball Player of the Year fan vote work?

When the NHIAA spring baseball season and state tournament conclude, High School on SI publishes a poll article at si.com/high-school/new-hampshire. The article lists 10 nominees — each with their name, school, NHIAA division, and a brief season summary — alongside an embedded voting widget. Any visitor clicks a nominee name and submits; no Sports Illustrated account, no email, and no subscription of any kind is needed. For a full overview of how online sports fan polls function, see our guide to contest voting.

The cap is one vote per device per voting window — not one per hour as in weekly polls. That is the most important mechanical difference between this vote and the weekly NH Athlete of the Week poll on the same platform. Returning to the same phone or laptop after voting will not register a second submission. The entire competitive dynamic of the baseball POY is about width of reach, not depth of repeat voting.

The voting window is stated on the poll article itself. The 2025 edition used a late-May midnight PT deadline — consistent with the NHIAA spring calendar closing in the final week of May. Always verify the specific deadline on the live article rather than assuming a fixed date, since SI/SBLive adjusts windows by year and by how the state tournament schedule falls.

Recent NH baseball POY winners and contenders — what the data shows

High School on SI's New Hampshire editorial team has published annual baseball Player of the Year fan votes since the SBLive Sports platform expanded its NH coverage in the early 2020s. The table below summarises the publicly available POY vote data from recent spring seasons, reflecting nominee schools and division representation confirmed through si.com/high-school/new-hampshire coverage.

NH Baseball POY vote data — recent seasons

Specific winner names and vote counts for each edition are published by High School on SI on the New Hampshire section of si.com following poll close. Because these results are confirmed through the platform's own articles rather than a centralised public database, the table above reflects the poll format and confirms the annual cadence — for the specific current or past winning names, visit si.com/high-school/new-hampshire and search for "baseball player of the year New Hampshire."

The baseball POY ballot typically reflects the same schools that dominate NHIAA Division I and II spring playoffs — Bedford, Pinkerton, Londonderry, and Concord appear in D-I tournament runs most years, while Bishop Guertin and Winnacunnet are the most consistent D-II baseball contenders with statewide name recognition. Division III and IV nominees appear when an individual's statistics are dominant enough to earn editorial attention regardless of team record.

NHIAA spring baseball season timeline and POY poll window

The New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association (NHIAA) governs the spring baseball season on a calendar that runs from late March through late May. The High School on SI baseball POY vote publishes after the state championship, making the spring schedule the relevant frame for anyone tracking the annual ballot cycle.

New Hampshire's compressed spring schedule — cold April weather often pushes the effective playing window into a 6–7 week span — means individual game performances carry extra weight. A pitcher who throws two complete-game shutouts in tournament play or a cleanup hitter who bats .500 over the final two weeks of the regular season can vault into POY conversation quickly. The NHIAA does not publish a unified, sport-specific "Player of the Year" panel award for baseball the way the National Football Foundation does for football (the Joe Yukica Award), so the SI/SBLive fan vote is the primary statewide public recognition for NH prep baseball.

The roughly 7–14-day voting window that follows the NHIAA baseball championship is the decisive period — supporters who activate their networks in the first 48 hours of the poll window consistently secure a structural advantage, since the one-vote-per-device cap means early voters cannot add to the total later. For guidance on the broader NH high school sports contest landscape, see the New Hampshire contest hub. For all US contest guides, visit the USA contest index.

How do you get more votes for the NH Baseball Player of the Year poll?

Because the baseball POY cap is one vote per device per window — not hourly — every unique supporter with a unique device is worth exactly one vote to the total. There is no compounding effect from returning to the same phone repeatedly. The entire campaign math is: how many distinct people with distinct devices can you bring to the poll URL before the deadline? General online poll strategy is covered at our voting guide and how-to resources; the notes below are specific to this baseball poll and NH's community dynamics.

• Send the direct poll article URL — not the si.com homepage — in the first message. Each extra navigation step before reaching the vote widget loses a significant portion of potential voters. The article URL goes in every group chat, booster email, and social post from the moment the poll goes live.
• Activate the full team programme network. Baseball rosters typically run 15–20 players, each with a family of three to five adults — that alone is 60–100 unique devices. Add coaching staff, assistant coaches, and JV roster families for another meaningful block.
• Post in town-specific NH Facebook groups. Communities like Derry (Pinkerton), Bedford, Hampton (Winnacunnet), Amherst (Souhegan), and Exeter each have active local Facebook groups where a post from a known community member converts well.
• Reach alumni and college-aged former players. A spring poll closing in late May coincides with college exam season — former players home for the summer represent an additional voting block that many campaigns overlook.
• Time the push immediately at poll launch, not in the final 24 hours. Unlike hourly-cap polls where a closing-hours surge is tactically sound, the one-vote-per-window structure means first-mover reach matters most. Get supporters to vote in the first 48 hours when urgency is highest.

When a programme has mobilised every realistic organic network and the nominee is still trailing, some families and booster clubs use a paid vote-promotion service to extend reach to additional real voters. If that route is considered, choose a service designed for single-cap polls — one that delivers paced votes from genuine, unique devices — rather than a service built for hourly-reset polls. Our sports fan poll votes service is structured for this cap model.

Can you buy votes for the NH Baseball Player of the Year, and what are the rules?

Paid vote promotion services are available for fan polls of this type. Whether using one is appropriate depends on the specific poll's terms and the supporter's own judgement about the spirit of a community recognition vote.

The SI/SBLive platform administers this poll as a fan-engagement feature with no formal prize, no sweepstakes structure, and no state prize-promotion law framework. Platform terms address automated manipulation — scripts and bots that generate artificial submissions — not real people choosing to cast a genuine vote after learning about the poll through a paid distribution channel. Two meaningfully different categories exist:

• Automated bots / scripts — software that generates repeated submissions programmatically, attempting to circumvent the one-vote-per-device cap. These produce abnormal traffic signatures, are identifiable by the poll platform, and result in those votes being removed from the count. They also violate platform terms.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — actual supporters, on their own devices, each casting one vote after being directed to the poll. Mechanically identical to a booster club email that reaches five hundred additional baseball families — genuine votes, through a paid distribution channel rather than an organic contact list.

Whether that distinction satisfies the spirit of the specific poll's terms is a judgement each supporter should make after reading the current official poll page at si.com/high-school/new-hampshire. The practical consequence of detected automated manipulation is vote removal from the tally — not athlete disqualification, not a school sanction, and not a legal consequence, since no login or account exists to ban and no formal prize is attached.