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

What is the Wisconsin High School Softball Player of the Year vote?

The Wisconsin High School Softball Player of the Year vote is a series of annual free fan polls run by High School on SI — the prep-sports vertical of Sports Illustrated, operated by SBLive Sports under Authentic Brands Group. Each poll targets a specific position or season achievement: top pitcher, top catcher, top hitter, top shortstop, top outfielder, and returning player honours for the coming season. Statewide fans vote to pick Wisconsin's best at each slot; the highest vote-getter is announced as the winner on si.com/high-school/wisconsin.

• Hosted at si.com/high-school/wisconsin — Sports Illustrated's statewide Wisconsin prep hub, covering scores, rankings, and awards across all WIAA sports.
• Polls are softball-specific and separate from the broader Wisconsin High School Player of the Year awards, which span multiple sports.
• Voting is free and open to anyone — no account, subscription, or Wisconsin residency required.
• Each poll closes at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on a publicly posted deadline; the winner is named via a results article on si.com.
• The Wisconsin Fastpitch Softball Coaches Association (WFSCA) separately names coach-voted Players of the Year by WIAA division (D1–D5); the SI fan votes are distinct public polls running alongside these.
• The WIAA has sanctioned Wisconsin girls softball since 1976, making it one of the longest-running state high school softball programmes in the Midwest.

Who are Wisconsin's recent softball Players of the Year by WIAA division?

The Wisconsin Fastpitch Softball Coaches Association (WFSCA) names coach-voted Players of the Year across all five WIAA competitive divisions each spring. These awards represent the most authoritative annual recognition in Wisconsin prep softball and provide the talent pool from which SI fan-vote nominees are typically drawn. The table below lists confirmed WFSCA divisional winners from 2022 through 2024.

Kaukauna's Karly Meredith is the only Wisconsin player to win the WFSCA Division 1 Player of the Year award in back-to-back seasons (2023 and 2024), establishing her as the defining Division 1 pitcher of her era in the Fox Valley Association. Meredith's repeat win reflects the dominance of Fox Valley Association programmes in large-school Wisconsin softball — Kaukauna, Hortonville, and Little Chute are perennial Division 1 contenders at the Goodman Diamond state tournament.

At the smaller-school level, Pacelli (Stevens Point) earned WFSCA Division 5 honours in both 2023 (Hannah Trzinski) and 2024 (Peyton Mancl), underscoring the Cardinals as one of the state's most consistent small-school softball programmes. Division 4 newcomer Brooklyn Berrens of Iola-Scandinavia won the award as a freshman in 2023 — one of the youngest WFSCA honourees on record for Wisconsin softball.

How does the SI High School Wisconsin softball fan vote work?

Each position vote is a standalone article published on si.com/high-school/wisconsin. The article names the nominees — typically six to twelve players drawn from across all WIAA divisions and geographic regions — and embeds a poll widget where readers cast votes. The poll is entirely free: no Sports Illustrated subscription, no account creation, and no personal data submission are required. A plain-English overview of how online prep sports fan polls function is at our contest-voting guide.

Poll structure and timing

Each poll has a published close time — consistently stated as 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the listed date. Unlike hourly-cap newspaper polls, the SI platform does not publicly state a per-device voting frequency limit; voters are encouraged to share the link widely and drive traffic. Live totals are visible throughout the window, updating as votes arrive.

The sequence for a single award cycle typically runs as follows: SBLive's Wisconsin prep desk identifies nominees based on season statistics, WFSCA recognition, and MaxPreps data; the poll goes live with a link shared to the si.com/high-school/wisconsin hub and promoted on SI's social channels; voting runs for roughly one to two weeks; the winner is announced in a follow-up article naming the champion alongside the final vote tally.

Because the polls are annual (not weekly), the vote windows accumulate days rather than hours of activity. A nominee whose support network activates early and sustains engagement across the full window has a structural advantage over a nominee whose community surges in the final 24 hours alone. For an in-depth breakdown of timing strategy for this style of annual prep poll, see our how-to guides.

Which Wisconsin schools and conferences produce the most softball POY contenders?

Wisconsin's top prep softball programmes are spread across five WIAA divisions and three broad geographic regions: the Fox Valley / Northeast corridor, the Southcentral region anchored by Madison's Goodman Diamond state tournament site, and the rural clusters in the Northwoods and Western Wisconsin. The table below maps the state's perennial softball powers by division and conference.

The Fox Valley Association (FVA) in northeastern Wisconsin is the state's most competitive Division 1 softball conference — Kaukauna's consecutive WFSCA POY wins in 2023–2024 reflect broader FVA dominance at the Goodman Diamond. The FVA regularly sends multiple teams deep into the Division 1 bracket, and its alumni pipelines feed NCAA Division I and Division II programmes in the Big Ten footprint. For a broader view of Wisconsin fan-vote contests across all sports, visit the Wisconsin contest guide.

How to get more votes for your Wisconsin softball Player of the Year nominee

Annual polls like the SI High School position votes run for days, not hours, which changes the math significantly compared to weekly newspaper polls. The full window means early activation matters less than sustained engagement — but an early lead does visibly discourage rival networks from investing effort. For general tactics that apply to any online prep sports poll, the starting point is our vote-building guide; the Wisconsin-specific notes below cover what actually moves the needle for these softball awards.

Wisconsin travel-ball networks are among the most underused organic channels in state prep fan votes. A player who competes with a Fox Valley-area club in summer likely has teammates, parents, and coaches spread across Outagamie, Calumet, and Winnebago counties — a geography that can multiply a school's direct network two- to three-fold. Asking the travel club's group chat to share the poll link costs nothing and reaches an audience that is already invested in the player's career.

When organic reach has been fully tapped and the vote gap remains large, some families and boosters use a paid vote-promotion service to reach additional real voters. If you take that approach, use a provider that delivers paced, genuine votes — not automated scripts — and always read the current poll's stated terms first. Our sports fan poll service is built around paced, cap-matched delivery.

Can you buy votes for the Wisconsin softball Player of the Year poll?

The SI High School fan polls are reader-engagement awards, not regulated sweepstakes — there is no cash prize, no formal Wisconsin prize-promotion law framework, and no licensing requirement. The relevant restrictions are whatever the SBLive / SI platform states in its current poll terms. For a full, balanced breakdown of legality across online prep polls, see our buy-votes guide; below are the practical notes specific to this award.

There is a clear distinction between two approaches:

• Automated bot scripts — software that submits votes by mimicking browser requests, bypassing any rate limits. These violate standard poll platform terms and produce traffic signatures that platforms can detect and purge.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people visiting the poll page and casting genuine votes from their own devices. This is structurally equivalent to a booster club email or a travel-ball group chat reaching additional fans — it is human fan voting, delivered through a different channel.

Whether paid human outreach satisfies the intent of any specific poll's terms is each entrant's own decision to make after reading the current official page. The practical risk for a fan-recognition award like this is reputational, not legal — a Wisconsin girls softball player faces no formal consequence from a platform award. Weigh that honestly against the recognition value of a statewide SI feature.

Wisconsin WIAA softball season timeline and the Goodman Diamond

The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association sponsors girls varsity softball as a spring sport. The season begins with pre-season practice in late March, conference play runs through May, and the state tournament takes place at Goodman Diamond on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus in late May or early June. SI position-vote polls typically open after the WIAA state tournament concludes, drawing on final-season statistics and state-tournament performance to identify nominees.

Goodman Diamond — formally the Goodman Diamond at Bob "Woodsy" Woodworth Field — seats approximately 2,000 fans and is the permanent home of the WIAA softball state tournament. A Goodman Diamond appearance is the defining goal for every Wisconsin varsity softball programme, and players who perform there enter the SI nominee pool in the same cycle. For full Wisconsin contest context, visit the Wisconsin sports voting hub or the broader USA contest index.