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

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

The Hawaii High School Player of the Year is an annual sport-by-sport fan-vote recognition series produced by SBLive Sports and published under the High School on SI banner at si.com/high-school/hawaii. After each HHSAA season wraps, the SBLive Hawaii editorial staff compiles a ballot of standout performers from across the five island leagues and embeds a free public poll in a dedicated article.

• Organized by SBLive Sports, a high school sports media company operating nationally under the Sports Illustrated / Maven digital umbrella.
• Covers all five HHSAA island leagues: ILH (Interscholastic League of Honolulu), OIA (Oahu Interscholastic Association), BIIF (Big Island Interscholastic Federation), MIL (Maui Interscholastic League), and KIF (Kauai Interscholastic Federation).
• Separate polls run for each major sport after its season concludes, including football, boys and girls basketball, baseball, softball, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls volleyball, and other HHSAA-sanctioned sports.
• Voting is completely free; no account or subscription to Sports Illustrated is required.
• The poll runs statewide online, meaning supporters on every island and Hawaii alumni on the mainland can vote equally.
• The Gatorade Company separately gives its own annual Gatorade State Player of the Year by sport in Hawaii, and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser runs its own editorial All-State teams and year-end awards; the SI/SBLive fan poll is the primary public vote format in the state.

Who are notable Hawaii High School Player of the Year winners by sport?

SBLive and its predecessor platforms have recognized Hawaii standouts across multiple sports since the late 2010s. The table below lists confirmed notable POY honorees and Gatorade State Players of the Year by sport, drawn from publicly reported award announcements. Gatorade awards are editorial selections; SI/SBLive awards are decided by public fan vote -- both are listed here for context because they often honor the same athlete.

Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele of Saint Louis School is the most prominent recent honoree -- he set Hawaii's all-time career passing record previously held by Dillon Gabriel (now a multi-year NFL Draft prospect) and was named the state's football player of the year following the 2024 season. Saint Louis and Punahou are the schools that have produced the most statewide POY candidates in recent cycles, reflecting the ILH's historically deep talent pool at the top division.

Note: SBLive Hawaii POY fan-vote results are sometimes not separately archived by the platform once the poll closes. Where a confirmed editorial Gatorade State POY is the best-documented record for that sport and year, it is listed above. For the current active poll and nominees, always check si.com/high-school/hawaii directly.

How does the Hawaii Player of the Year fan vote work?

Each poll is embedded directly inside a sport-specific article at si.com/high-school/hawaii -- there is no separate voting portal. The article headline typically follows the format "Vote: Who is the Hawaii High School [Sport] Player of the Year?" The poll widget appears within the body of that article and displays each nominee with a vote button. For a broader primer on how online contest polls like this one function, see our guide to online contest voting.

There is no fixed per-vote hard cap on the SI/SBLive poll format. Unlike hourly-capped newspaper polls, the SI platform does not publicly enforce an "one vote per hour per device" rule in the same explicit way. The practical limit is detection: repeated identical submissions from the same device fingerprint or IP block can be filtered. Supporters who vote multiple times from the same device may find subsequent votes not counted.

Voting works on all standard desktop and mobile browsers; no Sports Illustrated subscription is required. The poll is accessible from outside Hawaii -- family members and alumni on the mainland or abroad can vote as easily as local supporters on the islands.

How is the Hawaii Player of the Year winner chosen?

The SBLive Hawaii editorial team controls the nomination stage: staff writers and contributors compile the ballot based on season-long statistics, team success, all-league and all-state recognition, and coach nominations submitted through the platform. Once the article and poll go live, the outcome is determined entirely by the fan vote total at the time the poll closes at 11:59 p.m. PT on the published date.

1. Season-end editorial review: After the HHSAA championship season concludes for a given sport, SBLive Hawaii staff evaluate standout performers across all five island leagues and select three to five nominees for the ballot.
2. Poll publishes: A dedicated article appears at si.com/high-school/hawaii with the embedded vote widget. The headline, nominee names, and close date are all visible on the page.
3. Fans vote freely: Any visitor can cast votes for their preferred nominee without creating an account or logging in to Sports Illustrated. The running tally may or may not be displayed publicly, depending on the poll configuration for that sport-season.
4. Winner announced: Once the poll closes, SBLive publishes the winner in a follow-up article at si.com/high-school/hawaii and distributes results via its social media channels. The athlete earns a named byline credit on one of the most-trafficked national high school sports platforms in the country.

How do you get more votes for a Hawaii Player of the Year nominee?

Because the SI/SBLive poll has no published per-vote hourly cap, the primary strategy is reach -- getting the direct poll article link in front of the largest possible authentic audience as quickly as possible after the poll opens. For full tactical depth on online contest vote-building, read our complete guide; the Hawaii-specific patterns below are what move the needle in this market.

Hawaii-specific mobilization patterns

Hawaii's island geography concentrates alumni and community networks in distinct, highly connected ways. ILH schools -- Saint Louis, Punahou, Kamehameha-Kapalama, Iolani -- maintain large, highly engaged alumni bases with national reach; many graduates live on the US mainland but follow Hawaii prep sports closely. A single alumni Facebook group post or a message to a campus group chat can reach thousands of former students who will happily vote for a current athlete representing their school.

OIA public schools -- Kahuku, Campbell, Mililani -- draw from large residential communities in Central and West Oahu and on the North Shore. These schools have strong Facebook and Nextdoor community group presences in their home communities. Neighborhood group posts that name the athlete, school, sport, and include the direct SI poll link consistently outperform generic sharing.

The single highest-impact move for any Hawaii POY campaign is activating mainland Hawaii diaspora communities. Hawaii has a large, closely networked population living across Southern California, Nevada, and the Pacific Northwest who maintain strong ties to their home state's sports. Many of these communities have dedicated Facebook groups, Discord servers, and group chats where a single message about a hometown nominee can generate hundreds of votes from people who otherwise never interact with si.com.

What are the rules -- and can you buy votes for the Hawaii Player of the Year?

The SI/SBLive platform is a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize, no sweepstakes structure, and no Hawaii prize-promotion law framework. The relevant restrictions are the platform's own terms, which prohibit automated tools and bot scripts. For a full, balanced discussion of legality across online polls generally, see our buy-votes guide; the notes below are specific to this poll format.

Two types of activity have meaningfully different risk profiles:

• Automated scripts and bots -- software that submits rapid-fire requests from the same device fingerprint or cycles through proxies to multiply submissions. These violate SI/SBLive platform terms, are detectable through traffic pattern analysis, and result in vote removal.
• Paid outreach to real human voters -- real people casting genuine votes from their own devices through their own connections. This is structurally identical to a booster club email reaching several hundred additional families -- fans voting, reached through a different channel.

Whether that distinction fully satisfies the spirit of any particular poll's rules is a judgment each supporter must make after reading the current official poll page. For a reader-engagement fan poll with no prize and no formal contest law structure, the practical risk is reputational rather than legal.

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

The Hawaii POY series does not run on a fixed calendar date -- it runs on a sport-season schedule tied to the HHSAA competition calendar. Each island league may conclude its season at slightly different times, so SBLive typically waits until all HHSAA championship rounds are complete before opening a POY poll for that sport. The table below maps sports to their typical HHSAA season-end windows and the approximate POY poll timing.

Each individual poll closes at 11:59 p.m. PT on its published deadline, which is stated in the article hosting the poll. Because Hawaii is 2-3 hours behind Pacific Time (HST = UTC-10, no daylight saving), a 11:59 p.m. PT close corresponds to roughly 9:59 p.m. or 8:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time. Local supporters should note this time-zone difference when planning a last-hour push.

For context on how the Hawaii high school athletic year fits into the broader landscape of Hawaii voting contests and statewide recognition programs, see our state hub. For the full index of US contest guides, visit the USA contest guide.