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

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

Indiana High School Player of the Year is a sport-specific, season-end fan-vote recognition published by High School on SI — Sports Illustrated's dedicated prep sports vertical, built on the SBLive / Scorebook Live platform — at si.com/high-school/indiana. At the conclusion of each major IHSAA sports season, the High School on SI Indiana editorial staff nominates standout performers from across the state; the public then votes freely with no per-vote restriction until the stated deadline.

• The award covers multiple sports across Indiana's three IHSAA seasons — fall (football, cross country, volleyball), winter (basketball, wrestling), and spring (baseball, softball, track) — with separate polls per sport so athletes compete within their own discipline.
• Every one of Indiana's 400-plus IHSAA member schools across Classes 1A through 6A is eligible; the 2024 football Player of the Year, Jett Goldsberry of Heritage Hills High School (Lincoln City, southern Indiana), showed that a Class 2A programme can win statewide recognition ahead of 6A metro schools.
• Unlike the famous Indiana Mr. Basketball award — a journalists' and coaches' editorial selection that dates to 1939 and carries no fan vote — the High School on SI Player of the Year is decided entirely by public votes, making community mobilisation the decisive factor.
• Vote cap: none — a single supporter can vote repeatedly throughout the window; the poll has no hourly cooldown, no daily limit, and no device-based restriction on genuine human voting.
• A win produces a published article on si.com bearing the Sports Illustrated brand — a searchable, indexed recognition that appears in recruiting searches and college coach correspondence.

Because this poll carries no per-vote cap and spans multiple days, organised community mobilisation from day one — not individual athletic merit — determines the outcome once the nomination ballot is set.

2024 Indiana football Player of the Year — Jett Goldsberry and Heritage Hills

The 2024 fall season Indiana football Player of the Year, as recognised by High School on SI, was Jett Goldsberry of Heritage Hills High School in Lincoln City, Spencer County — a Class 2A programme in southwestern Indiana. Goldsberry's win illustrated a defining feature of the unlimited-vote format: a tightly organised community around a small-school programme can accumulate vote totals that rival or exceed those from much larger metro schools, because every supporter can vote as many times as they choose across the full polling window.

Heritage Hills, located in rural Spencer County roughly 130 miles southwest of Indianapolis, competes in the Springs Valley Conference. The school has a strong multi-sport athletic tradition in southern Indiana, and the 2024 football POY win demonstrated how a programme with an engaged and highly activated local community — fans returning to vote throughout a multi-day window — can compete on equal terms with large urban schools in a fan-vote format.

How does the Indiana Player of the Year voting mechanic work?

Voting occurs through a poll widget embedded inside a sport-specific article published at si.com/high-school/indiana once the IHSAA season concludes. There is no central voting page — each sport has its own article and its own widget. No Sports Illustrated subscription, no SBLive account, no email address, and no personal information are required to vote. For a plain-language explanation of how open consumer fan polls like this one function, see our guide to online voting contests; the Indiana-specific mechanics are below.

What makes this poll different from Indiana's weekly Athlete of the Week?

The Indiana High School Athlete of the Week runs throughout each season on a rolling weekly basis, recognising single-week performances. The Player of the Year is a separate, season-end poll — published once per sport after IHSAA championship play concludes — carrying higher stakes and a longer voting window. The two polls use the same si.com platform and the same unlimited-vote format, but they have entirely different nominee sets, different close dates, and different levels of recognition within the Indiana prep community.

There is no per-vote cap. A single supporter can vote multiple times per session, return to the article URL throughout the day, and vote again without any hourly or daily reset. The only prohibited category is automated traffic — scripts, macros, and bots that generate votes programmatically rather than through genuine human interaction with the poll widget. Real voters returning manually as many times as they choose are fully within the poll's design.

The polling window typically spans several days to two weeks after IHSAA championship play. Live vote totals for every nominee are visible throughout the window — any visitor can see the standings without an account, which makes mid-window monitoring and network recalibration straightforward.

Which Indiana schools and conferences appear in Player of the Year polls?

All 400-plus IHSAA member schools are eligible for every sport. In practice, nominees come from programmes with strong athletic reputations and well-documented performances that the High School on SI Indiana editorial staff can confirm from game coverage. Jett Goldsberry's 2024 win from Heritage Hills — a 2A school in rural Spencer County — confirms that class size is no barrier to nomination or victory when community mobilisation is strong.

The Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference (MIC) anchors Indianapolis-area public powerhouses — Ben Davis, Warren Central, Lawrence North — with enrollments above 3,000 and among the most visible booster networks in the state. Carmel High School, currently independent and rejoining the MIC in 2026–27, is Indiana's largest high school by enrollment and one of the state's most decorated multi-sport programmes across its Class 6A history.

The Hoosier Crossroads Conference (HCC) — Westfield, Hamilton Southeastern, Brownsburg, Avon — serves the fast-growing suburban ring north and west of Indianapolis, where professional-family communities have proven highly capable of activating for online polls. Northwest Indiana's Duneland Athletic Conference (DAC) and northern Indiana's NIC (Penn, Mishawaka, Elkhart) contribute strong nominees in football, basketball, and wrestling from communities with deep working-class athletic traditions. For all Indiana fan contests, visit our Indiana voting contests hub.

When do Indiana Player of the Year polls open and close?

Polls are published after IHSAA championship play concludes for each sport — not during the season. Each sport has its own timeline, so football, basketball, and spring sports polls are active in different months. Multiple polls can be simultaneously open in months like November–December (football) or May–June (spring sports).

The Indiana boys basketball state finals — held at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, one of the most watched events in Indiana's athletic calendar — typically conclude in late March. The Player of the Year basketball poll that follows draws from a state where basketball is culturally central; Indiana's history of Mr. Basketball, the Hoosiers, and Pacers coverage means basketball POY polls generate significant statewide attention each spring.

Always verify the exact closing deadline in the specific poll article on si.com — polls for different sports and different editions close on different dates, and the deadline is stated in the article itself. Supporters who assume one sport's close date matches another's frequently miss the window entirely.

How to get more votes for an Indiana Player of the Year nominee

The unlimited-vote format means every additional activated supporter, voting repeatedly across the full window, compounds directly into the total. A network of 150 engaged fans voting five times per day for a week delivers 5,250 votes — the same calculation that drove Jett Goldsberry's 2024 win from Heritage Hills, a small southern Indiana school that put its community fully behind one athlete. For general vote-building principles that apply across no-cap polls, see our how-to guide; Indiana-specific tactics are below.

Two Indiana-specific patterns produce the most consistent results. First, small-school community density beats large-school size when voters are unlimited: Heritage Hills won in 2024 not because it had more potential voters than Indianapolis schools, but because Spencer County turned out a high percentage of its community at a high voting frequency. A tight-knit rural Indiana community, fully activated for two weeks, will outpace a larger but less organised suburban school. Second, Indiana basketball culture means winter basketball POY polls draw disproportionately large engagement — the sport's historical centrality to Indiana identity (the Hoosiers, Milan's 1954 run, the ABA Pacers) makes basketball nominations culturally charged and communities highly responsive to calls to support a local player on a statewide platform.

When every realistic organic channel has been deployed and the nominee is still trailing, some Indiana families and booster organisations use paid vote promotion services that reach additional real voters at scale. Choose a service that paces delivery naturally across the window. Our sports fan poll votes service is built for the unlimited-cap format; see the pricing page for package options.

Rules, eligibility, and the buy-votes question for Indiana POY

The Indiana High School Player of the Year poll is a consumer media fan-engagement feature — not a regulated sweepstakes, not an official IHSAA award, and not subject to Indiana prize-promotion law. There is no entry fee, no cash prize, and no formal legal framework governing participation beyond High School on SI's own published platform terms. For a full discussion of legality across open fan polls, see our buy-votes guide.

The meaningful practical distinction for Indiana families and boosters considering external help is between two different categories:

• Automated scripts and macros — programmatic vote generation that mimics high-volume traffic without genuine human browser interaction. These are the specific category the published rules target, and they produce traffic anomalies detectable by the platform.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people navigating to the poll article and casting genuine votes within normal browser patterns, as many times as they choose, which the unlimited format explicitly supports. Structurally, this is fans voting — reached through a different distribution channel than a booster email.

Whether paid real-voter outreach satisfies the spirit of any specific poll's terms is a judgement each entrant must make after reading the current official poll article on si.com. Athletes and schools face no formal IHSAA consequence — the association does not administer this poll and has no jurisdiction over its outcome. The risk is reputational, within the Indiana prep sports community, not legal.