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

What is the Colorado High School Player of the Year award?

Each Colorado prep sports season, High School on SI — Sports Illustrated's dedicated high school vertical, operated on the SBLive (Scorebook Live) platform — publishes a statewide Player of the Year ballot at si.com/high-school/colorado. Unlike the weekly Athlete of the Week poll that runs throughout the school year, the POY vote is an annual capstone: one ballot per sport, opened near the conclusion of that sport's season, asking all of Colorado to weigh in on the year's standout performer. The nominee with the highest fan-vote total when the poll closes is named the High School on SI Colorado POY for that sport and year.

• Administered by High School on SI (Sports Illustrated / SBLive) — a national prep network with a dedicated Colorado editorial team covering all five CHSAA enrollment classes.
• Hosted at si.com/high-school/colorado — the same platform used for the weekly vote, with POY ballots appearing as standalone articles featuring each nominee's season stats.
• Run annually per sport — football, basketball, baseball, and other sports each receive their own POY ballot at the end of the relevant season.
• Confirmed 2024 data: the Colorado Football POY ballot drew 15,847 total votes, with Frederick quarterback Gavin Ishmael capturing 71.01% — a margin that reflects a highly mobilised school community plus a statewide fan base.
• Winners earn a published article on si.com, recognition across SBLive's Colorado social channels, and a permanent digital credential that surfaces in recruiter and admissions web searches.
• Coverage spans all CHSAA member schools across Classes 1A–5A, from major metro Denver 5A programmes to rural mountain and plains schools.

The POY ballot is a qualitatively different event from the weekly poll — it is a season-defining recognition that draws a larger audience, a higher total vote count, and greater recruiting visibility than any single weekly result.

Who has won the Colorado High School Player of the Year?

High School on SI has run Colorado POY ballots since the early 2020s, with football generating the most documented vote history. The 2024 football ballot produced the clearest confirmed data point: Frederick's Gavin Ishmael won by a commanding margin over fellow nominees. The table below documents confirmed and notable Colorado POY data from recent seasons.

Gavin Ishmael's 2024 campaign illustrates the scale of a successful Colorado POY run. In his senior season at Frederick, a Class 4A school in the St. Vrain Valley north of Denver, Ishmael completed 179-of-277 passes for 2,780 yards with 31 touchdowns and 4 interceptions while adding 697 rushing yards — a dual-threat performance that generated a cross-class fan base extending well beyond the Frederick–Carbon Valley community.

Frederick's community mobilisation produced more than 15,000 votes — demonstrating that a well-organised 4A school can decisively outpace larger 5A programmes when its network activates fully for an annual vote.

Which sports run POY ballots?

High School on SI has published Colorado POY ballots for football, boys and girls basketball, and baseball. SI's Colorado coverage also ran sport-specific "best performer" votes in 2025 for baseball hitters and pitchers. The programme expands over time; check si.com/high-school/colorado at the end of each sport's season for the current active ballot.

When does Colorado Player of the Year voting open and close?

Each Colorado POY ballot opens near the conclusion of the relevant sport's CHSAA season, after the High School on SI editorial team assembles nominees based on season-long performance data. Unlike the weekly poll's fixed Sunday close, the POY ballot timeline is announced within the ballot article itself — always check the active si.com/high-school/colorado article for the specific close date before beginning a vote campaign.

The football ballot — confirmed to run through December based on the 2024 cycle — is the highest-stakes annual vote. The November state championship period drives peak awareness: families and fans who followed a team's playoff run are primed to vote for a standout senior. For basketball, the ballot typically appears in the weeks following the CHSAA state tournament at the Pepsi Center (Ball Arena) in Denver.

For broader context on the Colorado prep sports calendar and other annual fan-vote recognition events in the state, see our Colorado contest hub. The national index of US contest guides is at our USA contest directory.

How do you get more votes for Colorado Player of the Year?

The mechanics of the SI/SBLive POY ballot differ from hourly-capped newspaper polls in one critical way: there is no stated hourly cooldown, which means the total is a function of how many real people vote and how often they return across the full window. For Gavin Ishmael's 2024 campaign, 15,847 votes across a multi-week window required a systematic outreach operation far beyond standard word-of-mouth. For a full tactical framework covering online contest voting in general, see our voting guide; the Colorado POY-specific notes below cover the tactics that matter at this scale.

Building the first wave: school and community networks

The first 48 hours of a POY ballot are the highest-leverage window. Put the direct ballot URL — not just the athlete's name — into every network immediately after the ballot goes live.

• Team group chats (athletes, parents, coaches) should receive the link within the first hour of the ballot publishing.
• Booster club email lists — especially at 4A and 5A programmes with formal booster organisations — can reach hundreds of parent households who vote multiple times across weeks.
• Alumni networks: Frederick's POY win demonstrates that a 4A school's extended graduate community can generate a 70%+ winning share if alumni chapters, college-aged former students, and community organisations are activated.
• Post the ballot link on all school and athlete social accounts (Instagram, X, Facebook, Snapchat), framing the vote as a season-defining honour — not just a routine poll.
• Local Colorado prep media: tag SBLive Colorado, Colorado Preps, and local Denver metro sports accounts when sharing the ballot. Re-amplification by these accounts reaches a broader audience that supports Colorado HS sports generally.

At the POY scale — where a winning total can exceed 15,000 — no single tactic is sufficient alone. The most successful campaigns layer school networks, alumni reach, social amplification, and sustained daily voting across the full ballot window. At the point where every reachable organic network has been activated and a meaningful gap to the leader remains, some campaigns supplement organic effort with paid promotion. If you take that route, use a service that delivers paced, genuine votes from real users — our sports fan poll votes page covers the cap-matched delivery model designed for SBLive-style platforms.

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

The Colorado High School Player of the Year is a reader-engagement fan poll administered by High School on SI. It carries no cash prize, no sweepstakes registration, and no CHSAA eligibility consequences — the operative restrictions are the SI/SBLive platform's own technical terms. Those terms explicitly prohibit automated scripts, macros, and bots that generate non-human voting traffic. For a full, balanced treatment of buying votes for online polls, see our complete guide.

Two categories of activity produce entirely different outcomes on this platform:

• Bot scripts and automated tools — mechanical processes that rapidly submit votes at machine speed, typically from the same device fingerprint or IP range. These violate platform terms, are flagged by anomaly detection, and result in vote removal. They represent the specific activity the rules prohibit.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people, using their own devices, casting manual votes within whatever cadence they choose. This is structurally equivalent to a booster email reaching additional genuine voters who choose to participate. The platform's published rules target automation, not the channel through which real voters learn about the ballot.

Whether that distinction satisfies the spirit of a given contest's terms is a judgement each athlete's support network must make by reading the current official ballot page at si.com. The risk profile of this poll — a no-prize fan recognition format with no regulatory framework and no CHSAA eligibility stake — is primarily reputational, not legal. Weigh that honestly against the recruiting and recognition value of a named SI POY credential.

Why does the Colorado Player of the Year vote matter for recruiting?

A Colorado High School on SI Player of the Year win creates a specific and durable asset: a published, indexed article on Sports Illustrated's domain that links the athlete's full name to a named statewide award. That article remains live and searchable for years after the vote closes.

How college coaches find this coverage

College coaches, their staff, and admissions evaluators routinely Google prospect names during evaluation cycles. A si.com article titled "Frederick's Gavin Ishmael Voted High School On SI's 2024 Colorado Football Player Of The Year" appears prominently in those searches — it carries Sports Illustrated's brand authority and provides third-party confirmation of the athlete's standing within Colorado prep sports that season.

For athletes at 4A and smaller programmes that receive less national recruiting media attention than Denver metro 5A schools, a POY win on a nationally recognised platform like SI can be the first third-party credential of any stature in the athlete's digital footprint. That is disproportionately valuable compared to a weekly AOTW mention.

Classes and programmes that benefit most

The award's recruiting value is highest for athletes at:

• Class 4A and below — programmes like Frederick, Palmer Ridge, Mullen, and Air Academy, where national recruiting media coverage is sparse and any SI-branded credential stands out.
• Competitive but under-covered sports — baseball, softball, and soccer athletes who earn a POY credential receive a type of recognition that is rare outside football and basketball.
• Late-emerging prospects — athletes whose junior or senior seasons elevated them into serious recruiting consideration but who lack extensive prior media presence.

The combination of a nationally branded platform (Sports Illustrated), a statewide Colorado audience, and a permanent indexed article makes the POY a stronger long-term credential than any number of weekly poll wins. For more context on how contest votes translate to visibility, see our how-to guide on building an online voting campaign, and our Colorado hub for related Colorado prep recognition events.