Iowa Class 5A Football Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Iowa Class 5A Football Player of the Year poll?

The Iowa Class 5A Football Player of the Year is an annual fan-vote award published by High School on SI — the Sports Illustrated prep-sports platform that absorbed SBLive Sports in the early 2020s — at si.com/high-school/iowa. It runs at the end of each fall football season, after the IHSAA state championship games at UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls, and is specific to Class 5A: the top tier of Iowa high school football by enrollment, covering the state's largest 36 schools.

Class 5A is dominated by Des Moines-metro programmes in the Central Iowa Metro League (CIML) and eastern Iowa's Mississippi Valley Athletic Conference (MVAC). No school east of Polk County has won a Class 5A football title since Iowa City High in 2009 — a streak that reflects the population concentration and programme depth of the greater Des Moines suburban corridor.

Which Class 5A programmes dominate Iowa football?

Iowa Class 5A football is concentrated in the Des Moines metro suburbs and the CIML (Central Iowa Metro League). The table below maps the consistent title contenders, their conferences, and championship history through the 2024 season.

The CIML's stranglehold on Class 5A football is stark: all five preseason top-ranked programmes in 2024 came from this single conference. Southeast Polk's three-peat (2022-2024) is the most dominant run in recent Iowa big-school history. Dowling Catholic's 2013-2019 seven-title dynasty — accumulated while the school was still classified at the 4A level — remains the benchmark that Southeast Polk is measured against.

What the Class 5A identity means for POY voting

Larger enrollment means larger alumni networks and bigger booster clubs — Class 5A schools like Ankeny, Johnston, and Southeast Polk each enroll 1,500+ students, generating fan communities that dwarf the statewide average. In practice this means Class 5A POY polls tend to attract higher raw vote totals than smaller-class polls, and a coordinated push from a CIML school's booster organisation can produce thousands of votes in a single afternoon. The competitive implication: gaps can open and close quickly, and a late push from a well-organised programme can overturn an apparent lead in 48 hours.

2024 Class 5A Football Player of the Year nominees and season results

The 2024 High School on SI Class 5A Football Player of the Year poll closed November 30. Two confirmed finalists stood out for their on-field production during a season that culminated with Southeast Polk's 38-35 win over West Des Moines Valley in the UNI-Dome championship game on November 22.

Jack Wallace's stat line was the most efficient passing season in Class 5A in 2024 — a 71 percent completion rate combined with 33 touchdown passes and only four interceptions represents elite production at the highest Iowa enrollment tier. The defensive nominee's 12.5-sack campaign also placed in the upper tier across all seven IHSAA classifications that season.

How 5A POY nominees compare across classes

Unlike the combined overall Iowa Football Player of the Year vote — where Coen Matson of Class 3A Humboldt won the 2024 edition with 64.71 percent of the statewide cross-class vote — the Class 5A poll isolates big-school talent. A 5A finalist who might not win the cross-class overall vote because a smaller, more tightly-knit community out-mobilises them can still carry the class-specific recognition. The two awards measure different things: class dominance vs. statewide fan-mobilisation capacity.

How Iowa Class 5A football voting works at si.com

Each Class 5A football POY poll is published as a dedicated article on si.com/high-school/iowa. The 2024 postseason article is at si.com/high-school/iowa/vote-who-should-be-the-class-5a-state-football-player-of-the-year-01jd091n88fy. A 2025 preseason edition has also run at si.com, confirming the programme is at minimum in its second full cycle.

The voting mechanic is straightforward. An embedded poll widget within the article lists each finalist by name, school, and brief performance note. Any visitor — no account, no subscription, no email — clicks a candidate's name and submits. Live vote totals update within the widget, so supporters can track the competitive gap in real time. There is no published per-hour restriction, meaning the window itself is the primary constraint: votes accumulate from opening through the November 30 close at 11:59 p.m.

Voting strategies for Iowa Class 5A football nominees

Class 5A schools operate the largest institutional voter pools in Iowa high school sports — multi-thousand-student enrollments, active booster organisations, and alumni networks that span decades. The tactical advantage in a Class 5A POY poll goes to whichever campaign activates that infrastructure fastest and sustains it across the full window. For a detailed overview of online voting approaches, the contest voting guide covers mechanics applicable to this format.

Where to focus organic outreach for 5A schools

When organic outreach has reached its ceiling and the competitive gap remains significant, vote-promotion services offer an additional lever. For awards of this type — a fan-engagement poll with no cash prize and no formal written ruleset — real-voter sports poll services deliver human votes paced over hours rather than arriving as a detectable burst. See also the how-to guides for a full explanation of cap-matched delivery and how pacing affects detection risk in embedded poll formats.

For the broader Iowa contest landscape — including the overall statewide POY vote that spans all seven IHSAA classes — visit the Iowa contest hub and the national USA contest index.