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

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

The Delaware High School Player of the Year is an annual fan-vote award published at si.com/high-school/delaware — the Delaware vertical of High School on SI, a national prep sports platform powered by SBLive and operated within Sports Illustrated (Arena Media Brands). Each year after the DIAA football playoffs conclude, the platform opens a public vote inviting Delaware fans statewide to name the season's standout player.

• The award is sport-specific — the football edition crowns the state's top prep quarterback, running back, or defensive standout based on season performance and fan support.
• It is statewide in scope, covering all DIAA divisions (Division I, II, and III) and all three counties — New Castle, Kent, and Sussex.
• SBLive's national network reaches more than 30 million monthly readers, giving a Delaware POY winner national-platform visibility beyond local prep coverage.
• The 2024 edition confirmed 27,027 votes cast, according to the winner announcement at si.com/high-school/delaware.
• Unlike the weekly Athlete of the Week poll at delawareonline.com, this award is awarded once per season and specifically recognises the Player of the Year — a higher-profile credential tied to peak season performance rather than a single week's result.
• Winners appear in a published SI/SBLive article, searchable nationally, with the athlete's name and school permanently indexed alongside a verified vote count.

Recent Delaware football Player of the Year winners — confirmed results

The most thoroughly documented Delaware Player of the Year result is the 2024 football edition, which produced a confirmed vote total of 27,027 — among the highest ever recorded for a Delaware HS fan poll. The table below lists confirmed and publicly reported POY results from recent seasons at si.com/high-school/delaware.

Derian Cunningham's 2024 performance illustrates why the fan vote and on-field credentials aligned: trailing 24–12 in the DIAA Class 3A state championship against Salesianum, the Middletown junior completed 30 of 48 passes for 319 yards and three touchdowns, engineering a 30–27 comeback. That state-title heroics story gave Middletown supporters a compelling narrative to rally behind during the post-season fan vote — a key driver of the record total.

Which Delaware schools appear most often in POY voting?

How does the Delaware Player of the Year voting work at si.com?

The poll lives on the Delaware section of si.com/high-school/delaware, operated by SBLive — a national scholastic sports data and content platform integrated with Sports Illustrated. After the DIAA football championships conclude (typically November), the editorial team selects a field of nominees based on season-long performance and opens a public vote. For a broader explanation of how fan-vote award polls function across digital platforms, see our guide to online contest voting.

There is no stated per-device hourly cap on the Delaware POY vote, unlike weekly newspaper polls. The open voting window typically runs for several days to a few weeks, and the nominee with the highest total at close is named the winner and profiled in a published article on si.com/high-school/delaware — giving the winner national-platform recognition.

Voting requires no account, no subscription to Sports Illustrated, and no registration. Any visitor to the poll page can vote immediately. Because SBLive's platform is nationally indexed, the winner article often ranks in Google searches for the athlete's name, providing long-term recruiting visibility beyond Delaware prep media.

The poll is accessible from any device — desktop, mobile browser, or the SI app. Supporters outside Delaware can vote just as easily as local fans, which opens the award to out-of-state family and alumni networks that a weekly local-media poll would rarely reach.

How is the Delaware Player of the Year winner chosen?

The winner is determined entirely by fan-vote total — there is no editorial panel weighting, no coaching vote component, and no statistics formula applied after the ballot closes. The SBLive/SI editorial staff controls which athletes appear on the ballot (typically 4–8 nominees representing a mix of state champions, statistically dominant players, and multi-division standouts), but once the poll is live, the vote count alone decides the outcome.

1. Nomination window: the SBLive Delaware editorial team compiles nominees from season stats, all-state lists, and DIAA playoff performance following the state championships.
2. Poll published: nominees are listed with brief bio details and their season stats on the Delaware section at si.com/high-school/delaware; voting opens immediately.
3. Open community vote: fans across Delaware — and beyond — vote freely during the window. Live totals are visible, which allows campaigns to benchmark their standing and make tactical decisions about when to push harder.
4. Winner announced: SI/SBLive publishes a winner article naming the vote count, the athlete's key stats, and a brief season narrative. This article is permanently indexed and linked from the Delaware HS section.

Because the award is annual and sport-specific, winning carries more weight than a weekly recognition — it is the single Player of the Year credential for Delaware football that season. The published SI byline, carrying national media authority, is particularly valuable in college recruiting communication compared with local newspaper mentions.

Building a winning vote campaign for Delaware Player of the Year

The annual POY format differs from weekly polls in one critical way: the window is longer (often 1–3 weeks), vote caps are absent or minimal, and the total votes needed to win can scale into tens of thousands. Derian Cunningham's 27,027 votes in 2024 illustrates the ceiling. Tactics that move weekly polls by a few hundred votes may be insufficient here; the playbook needs to operate across multiple networks and sustain momentum across the full window. For general vote-getting principles, see our how-to guides; the Delaware-specific notes below cover what actually drives results in this market.

Delaware's small geographic footprint is a double-edged factor. On one hand, the entire state prep sports community follows a handful of shared Facebook groups and local media outlets — a single viral post can reach most active fans within hours. On the other hand, schools with large enrollments and well-organised boosters (Middletown, Smyrna, Appoquinimink in New Castle County) have structural advantages over smaller programmes even when those programmes produce statistically better athletes.

When all organic networks have been activated and the nominee is still trailing, some Delaware families and booster clubs supplement their outreach with a paid real-voter promotion service. The key is finding a service that delivers genuine paced votes rather than bot-generated traffic, which can be detected and removed. Our sports fan poll votes service is built around authentic, compliant delivery for exactly this scenario.

Poll rules and the paid-votes question for Delaware Player of the Year

The Delaware High School Player of the Year at si.com/high-school/delaware is a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize and no Delaware prize-promotion law implications. The platform's own terms govern acceptable participation — primarily addressing automated tool usage. For a balanced national overview of online poll rules, see our buy-votes guide; the notes below apply specifically to this award.

Two categories of activity are relevant to understand:

• Bot scripts and automated click tools — software that generates rapid-fire non-human requests. These violate standard platform terms, create detectable traffic fingerprints, and result in vote removal when identified.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people, reached through a promotion channel, who visit the poll and vote personally. This is structurally identical to a booster-club email reaching additional real supporters — more voters, different channel.

Whether paid outreach satisfies the spirit of the contest's own rules is a judgement each entrant must make after reading the current official poll terms. In a fan-vote recognition poll like the Delaware POY — no monetary prize, no formal sweepstakes structure — the risk is reputational rather than legal. Athletes, families, and coaching staff should weigh that honestly.

Delaware Player of the Year season timeline and DIAA football calendar

The Delaware POY fan vote is tied directly to the DIAA football calendar. Understanding when the poll opens and how it maps to the season helps supporters plan their campaign window. The DIAA administers high school athletics for all Delaware public and private schools through the Delaware Department of Education.

The December window is significant. Delaware schools are typically in end-of-semester exam preparation during this period, which means student attention is split — but parents, alumni, and community supporters are often more active on social platforms during the holiday season. The best-performing campaigns target the parent and alumni layer first, then use student shares to amplify within the school building in the final week.

For context on how Delaware's annual sports awards fit within the broader prep landscape and the Delaware voting contests hub, or to browse all US contest pages at the USA contest guide index, use the linked resources. For general vote-building tactics applicable to any annual POY poll, visit our how-to section.