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

What is the New York High School Player of the Year on High School on SI?

High School on SI — the prep-sports vertical within Sports Illustrated, operated since 2021 by the Arena Group and formerly known as SBLive Sports — publishes an annual suite of Player of the Year fan polls covering New York prep athletics at si.com/high-school/new-york. Unlike the weekly Athlete of the Week ballot, these are season-end awards: separate sport-specific polls that recognise the top performers across the entire New York prep calendar.

• The statewide New York Football Player of the Year poll runs at the end of the fall season, drawing from all eleven NYSPHSAA sections plus the CHSFL (Catholic High School Football League) and CHSAA private-school programmes.
• Long Island positional Player of the Year polls — Running Back, Quarterback, Wide Receiver, Defensive Back, Defensive Lineman, Linebacker — run after the Long Island football season concludes, typically in January.
• Baseball position-of-year polls (top pitchers, infielders, outfielders) run during the spring season, typically April through June.
• Basketball standout polls appear after each section tournament; MaxPreps separately tracks a New York state basketball Player of the Year.
• No per-vote cap is enforced — fans vote as many times as they choose until the stated deadline, making mobilisation scale directly proportional to the size and engagement of a supporter base.
• Poll results and winner announcements are published in articles on si.com/high-school/new-york and distributed through the site's social channels.

Which New York schools and sections have competed in Player of the Year polls?

The New York Player of the Year polls at High School on SI span the full breadth of New York's eleven NYSPHSAA athletic sections, plus the CHSFL and CHSAA private-school conferences. Because Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk counties, Sections VIII and XI) has its own suite of positional awards, schools from that region are especially well represented across all football POY categories. Below is a representative look at schools and programmes that have produced nominees or winners across recent sport-specific polls.

Long Island's positional football awards — contested separately from the statewide football POY — draw from both Nassau County (Section VIII) and Suffolk County (Section XI) schools, which together enrol some of the highest concentrations of Division I football recruits in the Northeast. The 2025 Long Island RB of the Year finalists included backs who rushed for 1,294 to 2,082 yards apiece with 22–31 touchdowns, illustrating the level of performance being recognised.

How does the New York High School Player of the Year fan vote actually work?

Each Player of the Year poll on High School on SI is embedded directly in a sport-specific article published at si.com/high-school/new-york. The editorial staff at SI High School identifies the top performers from submitted nominations, coach contacts, and their own season-long tracking, then selects a finalist ballot — typically five to ten athletes per poll. The article goes live and the poll widget activates; supporters vote for their athlete by clicking the nominee's name and submitting.

There is no per-vote cap. Unlike weekly newspaper polls that enforce an hourly cooldown, the High School on SI Player of the Year polls allow unlimited votes per user. This mechanic means the decisive factor is not just how many devices a supporter network has, but how many times and how consistently those supporters engage with the poll across the full open window. A highly motivated fan base that votes repeatedly multiple times per day has a structural advantage over a larger but more passive audience.

Live vote totals are displayed on the poll widget throughout the window, so campaigns can monitor standings in real time. The 2024 New York Football Player of the Year poll confirmed this dynamic: Archie Jones received 63.45% of 4,378 votes — indicating a well-organised network that drove repeated voting from his Section III and Central New York fan base. For a broader explanation of how unlimited-vote fan polls differ from hourly-cap formats, see our complete online voting guide.

Polls close at a specific date and time stated in the article — typically 11:59 p.m. Eastern or Pacific on a published deadline. The window is usually one to two weeks. After close, SI High School publishes a winner announcement article naming the voted Player of the Year and including the final vote percentage.

How is the New York High School Player of the Year winner chosen — and what do they receive?

The winner is determined entirely by fan vote total: whichever nominee has the most votes when the poll closes is named the Player of the Year. High School on SI editors control the nomination stage — deciding which athletes appear on the ballot — but once the poll is live, no editorial weighting, panel score, or override affects the outcome. The 2024 football example confirms this: the winner was the athlete whose supporters voted most effectively, not necessarily the athlete with the highest statistical output among nominees.

What recognition does a winner receive?

• A dedicated winner announcement article published on si.com/high-school/new-york, naming the athlete, school, section, and key stats — permanently searchable on Sports Illustrated's national platform.
• Distribution through High School on SI's social media accounts and regional New York prep sports coverage.
• Inclusion in SI High School's All-State award records for the season (the 2024 football All-State article listed full award winners, including POY).
• The credential reads "voted High School on SI's New York [Sport] Player of the Year" — which carries SI's national brand recognition, useful on recruiting profiles and college applications.

There is no cash prize or physical trophy distributed by High School on SI — the value is entirely reputational, as a published, SI-branded, publicly searchable recognition that any college coach, recruiter, or admissions reader can find.

POY polls by sport and season — the New York High School on SI annual calendar

High School on SI publishes multiple Player of the Year-type polls throughout the New York academic sports year. The table below maps the known poll categories to their approximate season windows, based on the contest format observed across 2024 and 2025 editions.

The football suite — one statewide POY and six Long Island positional awards — represents the densest cluster of fan-vote activity, concentrated in December through January. Baseball polls run across a longer spring window. Fans who want to support a specific athlete should check si.com/high-school/new-york at season's end for newly published poll articles, as each cycle's polls are announced when the editorial team determines the finalist ballot.

How do you build votes for the New York High School Player of the Year?

Because the High School on SI POY polls have no per-vote cap, the ceiling on what a supporter network can contribute is determined entirely by how many people vote and how many times. Every person who votes once and then never returns is a missed opportunity. The tactical frame here is different from hourly-cap newspaper polls: the goal is repeat engagement across the full window, not spreading devices across hourly resets.

New York-specific patterns matter here. Long Island's Nassau and Suffolk counties together contain some of the most organised and competitive prep sports booster communities in the Northeast — high-enrolment suburban public schools (Massapequa, Smithtown, Commack) combine large alumni bases with active social media communities. CHSFL Catholic schools (St. Anthony's, Chaminade, Iona Prep) have multi-generational alumni networks extending far beyond current enrolled families, which converts well for no-cap polls where each contact can vote dozens of times across a two-week window.

When organic networks have been fully activated and a campaign is still trailing in a poll with no vote cap, some families and school communities choose a paid promotion service that delivers additional real-audience votes at scale. For that use case, our voting guide covers what to look for and how to evaluate services responsibly for this specific poll format.

Rules for the New York High School Player of the Year — and the buy-votes question

High School on SI's Player of the Year polls are editorial fan polls — not regulated sweepstakes, not prize-awarding contests subject to New York prize-promotion law, and not connected to any NYSPHSAA official selection process. The relevant restrictions come from the SI/Arena Group platform terms governing poll participation, which typically prohibit automated scripts or bot traffic designed to manipulate poll totals.

The relevant distinction for New York POY polls — which have no per-vote cap — is between two meaningfully different types of activity:

• Automated bot scripts or scripted click-farms — high-frequency machine-generated requests from non-human traffic sources. These are the category that poll platform terms prohibit and that technical detection is designed to catch.
• Real human supporters voting repeatedly — each person in a supporter network voting multiple times per day across the window, which is structurally identical to what an exceptionally well-organised booster network does organically. No stated SI poll rule prohibits a human from voting many times.

Paid services that route real human voters to the poll — as opposed to automated traffic — occupy a grey zone that each family and school community must evaluate against the current poll terms. For this format, where the winner receives a published SI credential rather than a cash prize, the risk is reputational rather than legal. The New York contest resource hub and our general vote-buying guide discuss this trade-off in detail. For any campaign decisions, defer to the most current version of the poll article's stated rules at si.com/high-school/new-york.