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

What is the High School on SI Oregon Player of the Year poll?

Each Oregon high school sports season, High School on SI — the prep-sports arm of Sports Illustrated, built on the Pacific Northwest–founded SBLive platform — publishes an annual fan-vote poll naming a sport-specific Oregon Player of the Year. These POY votes are separate from OSAA's official postseason awards, which are decided by a coaches and media panel; the SI/SBLive polls put the choice entirely in the hands of Oregon fans.

• Polls are hosted at si.com/high-school/oregon — free to vote in, no account or subscription required.
• Each poll is sport-specific and season-specific: Mr. Football runs after the fall football championships; Girls Wrestler of the Year after the OSAA wrestling state meet; basketball POY polls after the spring tournament, and so on.
• The ballot is curated by the SI/SBLive Oregon editorial team from that season's standout performers across OSAA classifications — from 6A metro schools down to 1A rural programmes.
• Voting is unlimited manual votes per person before a stated deadline shown on the poll article; automated scripts and bots are explicitly banned and trigger disqualification of the nominated athlete.
• OSAA's own Player of the Year designations — awarded in each sport through conference coaches and sportswriters — stand independently. A fan-vote win and an OSAA coaches' honour sometimes go to the same athlete; often they diverge, reflecting the difference between statistical merit and community mobilisation.
• SBLive's Pacific Northwest roots give these Oregon polls deeper local editorial credibility than most national network prep awards.

Which sports have a High School on SI Oregon Player of the Year vote?

High School on SI publishes annual POY fan-vote polls for multiple Oregon sports at season's end. The table below maps confirmed polls to their sport, season, and the OSAA calendar window in which they typically appear. Note that poll offerings can shift year to year — always check si.com/high-school/oregon for the current season's active ballots.

Mr. Football is the most prominent and most contested of the annual Oregon POY fan votes. The 2024 poll, in which Henley senior Mark Carpenter — a two-way 4A first-team all-state receiver and cornerback from Klamath Falls — defeated candidates from larger Portland metro programmes, illustrated how effectively rural Oregon communities mobilise for these votes. Henley's Klamath Falls fan base produced a winning total over schools with significantly larger enrolments.

How the ballot is built

The SI/SBLive Oregon editorial team curates each annual ballot from that season's top performers, drawing on all-state selections, state championship participants, and standouts nominated by coaches and fans. Not every OSAA all-state honouree appears on the ballot — the team typically names four to eight finalists per sport, balancing classifications so rural and small-school athletes are represented alongside 6A metro nominees.

How does the Oregon Player of the Year voting work?

Each annual POY poll lives in a dedicated article at si.com/high-school/oregon. Any visitor can vote without logging in, creating an account, or paying anything. The embedded widget displays each nominee's name, school, classification, and a brief description of their season, with live vote totals visible throughout the window. For a broader explanation of how these sports-media fan polls operate, see our guide to online contest voting.

Vote cap and deadline

Unlike newspaper polls capped at one vote per device per hour, the SI/SBLive Oregon format allows unlimited manual votes per person during the open window. The only hard rule is the ban on automated tools: scripts, macros, and bots are prohibited and result in the nominated athlete's entry being disqualified. Human voters clicking or tapping at their own pace — across multiple sessions, multiple days — are fully within the rules.

Each poll article displays a specific deadline. For the Girls Wrestler of the Year 2024–25 vote, the deadline was Wednesday, April 22 at 11:59 pm PDT; for the Mr. Football 2024 vote, the window closed in late November after the football championships. Always confirm the deadline on the live poll article at si.com rather than assuming a fixed end date.

The poll is accessible from any device — desktop, phone, tablet — and from anywhere. Supporters outside Oregon, including out-of-state family, former classmates, and alumni, can vote just as legitimately as local fans. This geographic openness is one reason small-school communities in rural Oregon can genuinely compete against larger metro schools on vote totals.

Recent Oregon Mr. Football winners and notable POY ballot highlights

High School on SI confirms the Mr. Football winner each year via a published article at si.com. OSAA's official Player of the Year designations — selected by conference coaches — are announced separately and do not always match the fan-vote result. The table below captures confirmed High School on SI fan-vote outcomes alongside OSAA coaches-panel honours where both are known.

Important transparency note: High School on SI's fan-vote POY results and OSAA's official coach-selected awards are distinct honours run by different organisations. The Gatorade Oregon Player of the Year and MaxPreps state POY are separate again — those are national media awards decided by panels, not fan votes. This page covers the SI/SBLive fan-vote polls specifically.

Where confirmed winner data is not available in public sources for a given sport or year, it is not included — no results are fabricated on this page. The annual Mr. Football fan vote is the most consistently documented across multiple seasons. For the most current and complete results, the published winner article at si.com/high-school/oregon is the authoritative source.

How do you build a winning vote total for an Oregon POY poll?

Annual POY polls follow the same unlimited-cap mechanic as the weekly SBLive Athlete of the Week polls, but the window is shorter and the competition more concentrated — only a handful of finalists appear, and each one's community typically mobilises hard. The tactical priority is speed: get the direct poll link in front of the right networks within the first few hours of the article going live. For general vote-building principles, see our how-to resource centre and the online voting guide.

The 2024 Mr. Football result is the clearest Oregon case study: Henley High School, a 4A programme in Klamath Falls (population ~22,000), produced a fan-vote total that beat 6A Portland metro schools with student bodies four to five times larger. The Klamath Basin community's coordinated mobilisation — spanning current students, alumni, and regional sports networks — was the decisive factor, not the school's OSAA classification.

When the full organic network has been activated and the nominee is still trailing a well-mobilised metro school, some families and booster clubs use a paid vote promotion service to reach additional real voters. If that path is considered, use a service that delivers paced, genuine votes matched to the poll's unlimited-cap mechanic — our sports fan poll votes service is built around this model.

What are the rules — and can you buy votes for Oregon POY polls?

High School on SI's Oregon Player of the Year polls are reader-engagement fan polls with no cash prize, no Oregon prize-promotion law framework, and no formal sweepstakes structure. The enforceable restrictions come from the platform's own terms. The core rule, stated explicitly in the poll articles, is the ban on automated scripts, macros, and bots. For a comprehensive balanced treatment of online poll legality across jurisdictions, see our detailed guide.

Two categories of vote-related activity exist, and they are meaningfully different:

• Automated bots and scripts — vote generation bypassing human interaction. Explicitly prohibited by High School on SI; detectable through traffic-pattern analysis; penalty is disqualification of the athlete's complete entry, not just a vote-count adjustment. This is the activity the platform's rules target.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people who read the poll article and cast genuine manual votes from their own devices. This is structurally identical to a booster-club email reaching more families or a sport-specific community group sharing the link. Real voters are what the platform invites.

Whether paid real-voter outreach satisfies the spirit of the contest terms is a judgement each athlete's family or booster club must make after reading the current official poll article at si.com. The practical stakes in this format — a sports-media fan poll with no prize — are reputational, not legal. The risk of a disqualification falls on the nominated athlete; weigh that honestly against the recognition value of a statewide POY credential on a Sports Illustrated platform.

Oregon POY fan votes vs. OSAA official Player of the Year — what is the difference?

Oregon high school sports have multiple distinct Player of the Year designations, and they are frequently confused. Understanding the difference matters before deciding whether a fan-vote win is the recognition you are pursuing.

OSAA itself does not operate a single statewide "Player of the Year" programme — OSAA's role is administering championships, not selecting individual honours. The conference coaches panels (Greater Oregon League, Metro League, Three Rivers League, Southwest Conference, and others) each run their own Player of the Year designations for their member schools. High School on SI fills a different niche: a public, community-driven annual recognition that any Oregon fan can influence.

A win in the High School on SI fan-vote POY produces a published, searchable article on a Sports Illustrated platform — visible to any college coach, recruiter, or admissions office that searches the athlete's name. That credential is distinct from an OSAA coaches-panel honour and serves a different purpose on a recruiting profile. For Oregon prep athletes seeking broad public recognition, both types of awards have value; they are not substitutes for each other.

For the broader Oregon contest landscape — school elections, mascot votes, community recognition polls — explore the Oregon contest hub. For all US contest guides, visit the USA contest index.