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

Confirmed 2024 Class A nominees and the title-game performances behind the ballot

The 2024 Iowa Class A Football Player of the Year ballot, confirmed on si.com/high-school/iowa, named Brady Bixel and Carter Kunze as nominees — two players whose season culminated in one of the most competitive Class A state finals in recent memory.

Tri-Center's 14-10 win over West Hancock in the 2024 UNI-Dome final was the program's first state championship in school history — a milestone for the Neola community in southwest Iowa. Carter Kunze's 168 rushing yards and scoring run in that game place him among the most productive Class A performers of the 2024 season. AJ Harder — Tri-Center's QB — added 207 pass yards and a TD in the same game.

The vote winner between Bixel and Kunze was not announced in publicly available results at time of writing. The organiser publishes winner articles separately at si.com/high-school/iowa after the November 30 poll close.

Class A football programs — geography, conferences, and first-title stories

Iowa's Class A encompasses the smallest eleven-player programs in the state — schools typically enrolling fewer than 175 students, scattered across small towns from southwest Iowa to the northeast corner. These programs carry an outsized cultural weight: in a community of 800 to 1,500 residents, the football team is often the most visible institution the town has, and a run to the UNI-Dome affects the entire community.

Tri-Center's first-ever championship in 2024 illustrates something central to Class A football culture: the programs that break through to a state title for the first time generate the most intense community response — the first state banner in a school's history is a generational moment for everyone in that community, including alumni who graduated decades ago. That emotional context is the fuel that drives Class A fan-vote participation.

West Hancock — the runner-up fighting back

West Hancock from Britt in north-central Iowa appeared in the 2024 Class A final against Tri-Center. Their path to Cedar Falls — through the North Iowa Conference and the Iowa playoff bracket — represents the kind of consistent Class A program that appears repeatedly on both the state championship stage and the Player of the Year ballot. Runner-up performance is typically the floor for POY nomination, and West Hancock's presence in the final makes their key players strong candidates in future cycles.

How voting works for the Iowa Class A Football POY on High School on SI

The 2024 Class A Football Player of the Year poll was confirmed at si.com/high-school/iowa with a closing date of November 30 at 11:59 p.m. PT. The article was also syndicated to Yahoo Sports (ca.sports.yahoo.com), which shows the poll's reach beyond the core SI platform. Both Brady Bixel and Carter Kunze appeared on the ballot with their stat summaries, and readers voted free — no account, no subscription, no email.

Like the Class 2A and Class 1A football polls on the same platform, the Class A annual POY does not publish a per-hour vote cap — contrasting with the weekly Iowa Athlete of the Week poll that resets hourly. Supporters can cast votes multiple times during the November window. Live totals are visible in the embedded widget, allowing communities to track competitive gaps before the deadline.

Small-town Iowa football culture and what drives Class A fan-vote turnout

Class A is where Iowa's Friday-night football culture is most concentrated. These communities — Neola, Britt, Lisbon, Saint Ansgar — are small enough that the football game is not just a school event but a town event. Bleachers fill because there often isn't a competing entertainment option on a November Friday. The head coach may have graduated from the school they now lead. The announcer might have been the previous coach's quarterback. These are programs where community identity and football identity are inseparable.

That culture translates directly into fan polls in three measurable ways:

• Personal motivation is higher. A supporter voting for a Class A nominee is often voting for someone they know — a neighbour's son, a former teammate's younger brother. Personal connection generates repeat-voting behaviour that impersonal interest doesn't.
• Sharing friction is lower. In a community of 1,000 people, every adult who sees the Facebook post knows who the athlete is. No context-setting is required — the call to action is purely "click and vote."
• Alumni networks activate for milestone moments. A program's first state title — like Tri-Center's in 2024 — pulls in alumni who graduated 20 and 30 years ago. The same dynamic applies to a first-ever POY nomination for a program. These once-in-a-generation moments create voter enthusiasm that sustained programs can't replicate.

When organic community mobilisation reaches its ceiling and a competitive gap remains, some supporters choose to extend their reach through paid promotion — real human votes paced across the remaining window. See our sports fan poll votes service and the full contest voting guide for how that works in practice.

Class A in Iowa's full football picture — the smallest class at the biggest stage

Every November, Iowa's UNI-Dome hosts all seven class championships across two days. The Class A final shares the stadium and the stage with 5A — the same turf, the same lights, the same press box. A Class A program reaching Cedar Falls has navigated the same bracket structure as Iowa's largest schools, with fewer scholarship athletes, smaller coaching staffs, and communities an order of magnitude smaller.

The Class A Player of the Year sits alongside the Class 1A, Class 2A, and overall Iowa Football POY as part of High School on SI's full Iowa football awards structure. Understanding which ballot applies to a specific athlete — and which poll is currently active — is the foundation of any effective fan-vote strategy.

For the full Iowa high school fan-vote landscape — weekly polls, annual per-sport awards, and all-class football recognition — visit the Iowa contest hub. For all US state contest guides, see the USA contest index.