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

What is the Iowa High School Player of the Year award on High School on SI?

The Iowa High School Player of the Year is an annual fan-vote recognition programme run 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. Unlike the weekly Athlete of the Week poll on the same platform, the Player of the Year award is sport-specific and class-specific, crowning a top performer in each of Iowa's five IHSAA classifications at the end of each athletic season.

• Separate award cycles run for football (November–December), boys basketball and girls basketball (February–March), and soccer (spring), among other sports.
• Each poll names finalists within a single IHSAA class — 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, or 5A — so a Class 5A finalist competes only against other 5A athletes, not across all enrolment sizes.
• The platform also runs a combined overall Iowa Player of the Year vote at season's end, drawing from the class-specific winners.
• Voting is free and public at si.com/high-school/iowa — no Sports Illustrated subscription, no SBLive account, and no registration required.
• The poll closes at 11:59 p.m. PT on the announced end date; the candidate with the highest cumulative vote total wins.
• Winners are announced in a published article on si.com/high-school/iowa and shared across the platform's social media channels.

A Player of the Year credential from High School on SI carries genuine recruiting weight because Sports Illustrated's brand is nationally recognised and the award article is indexed, searchable, and enduring.

Recent Iowa Player of the Year winners — who has won?

The following table records confirmed Iowa Player of the Year winners announced by High School on SI (SBLive / SI), covering football and girls basketball from recent seasons. These are real, published awards.

Preston Ries of Monticello was named the 2023 SBLive Iowa Football Player of the Year after leading the state with 57 total touchdowns and 4,485 total yards — 2,559 passing and 1,926 rushing — breaking Iowa's career total-offense record at 12,984 yards. Ries subsequently signed with the Iowa Hawkeyes. Coen Matson of Humboldt won the 2024 overall football vote after completing 64 percent of his passes for 2,616 yards and 28 touchdowns, adding 332 rushing yards and five scores. Jenica Lewis of Johnston secured both the 2024–25 High School on SI Iowa Girls Basketball 5A Player of the Year and the Gatorade Iowa Girls Basketball Player of the Year in the 2025–26 school year, establishing her as one of the most decorated Iowa prep players of her era.

Class-by-class and sport coverage on si.com

High School on SI publishes separate finalist articles and vote polls for each class within a sport. For football, dedicated polls have run for Class 3A and Class 5A with distinct candidate slates, plus a combined overall winner poll. For basketball, preseason and postseason POY polls run per class (1A through 5A) for both boys and girls programmes. The editors also name an editorial POY alongside or after the fan vote, which may or may not coincide — the fan vote is a separate, reader-determined honour.

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

Each Player of the Year poll is published as a standalone article on si.com/high-school/iowa, typically titled "Vote: Who is the Iowa [Class] [Sport] Player of the Year?" or a variant. The article presents a curated list of finalists selected by the High School on SI editorial team, each with a short performance summary. Readers vote by clicking the candidate's name in the embedded poll widget — no login, no email, no SI subscription needed.

Unlike the weekly Athlete of the Week poll on the same platform, the Player of the Year polls do not publish a per-hour vote cap. This means supporters can cast multiple votes in sequence and the window is the primary constraint rather than a cooldown timer. The poll closes at 11:59 p.m. PT on the announced closing date — typically one to three weeks after publication, depending on the sport season and editorial schedule.

Live vote totals are visible within the embedded widget, updating periodically. The leading candidate is displayed prominently, which allows supporters to benchmark how many additional votes are needed to close a gap or protect a lead before the deadline.

Nominations are editorially controlled. An athlete must have strong verified performance data — stat lines, game results, team context — to be selected as a finalist by the High School on SI Iowa editorial team. Submitting highlight information to the team early in the season, or drawing attention to an exceptional performance via the platform's social channels, can help an overlooked athlete land on the ballot.

Which Iowa high schools and conferences appear most often in these polls?

High School on SI's Iowa Player of the Year polls draw nominees from all five IHSAA classifications and all corners of the state — from Sioux City in the northwest to Davenport in the southeast. The table below maps key schools and conferences to their IHSAA classification, illustrating the geographic spread of the programme.

The Central Iowa Metro League (CIML), which governs the largest Des Moines-area schools including Johnston, Ankeny, Southeast Polk, and Dowling Catholic, produces a disproportionate share of Class 5A finalists in basketball and football. The Mississippi Valley Athletic Conference (MVAC) anchors eastern Iowa's larger programmes — Cedar Rapids Kennedy, Iowa City West, Iowa City High, and Dubuque Senior — and is particularly strong in spring sports and swimming.

Smaller-class schools — North Central Conference (3A), Tri Rivers Conference (2A), and the many 1A programmes in rural Iowa — compete in their own classification bracket. The 2023 and 2024 football POY results (Monticello 2A and Humboldt 3A) demonstrate that a well-organised rural community can generate a dominant vote total that outlasts larger suburban schools that spread supporter attention across multiple candidates and sports simultaneously.

How do you increase votes for an Iowa Player of the Year nominee?

Because the Player of the Year poll has no published per-hour cap — unlike the weekly Athlete of the Week poll on the same platform — the core strategy shifts from hourly cadence to sustained volume and network depth. For a comprehensive overview of online voting tactics, see our full contest voting guide; the Iowa-specific factors below drive the practical edge.

Building organic vote volume in Iowa

• Share the direct si.com article link immediately. Paste it into team group chats, booster club emails, and class parent chains the moment the poll goes live. Every hour of delay is compounded vote loss, especially in the first 24 hours when engagement peaks.
• Leverage Iowa's rural community networks. Schools like Humboldt and Monticello have demonstrated that tight small-town communities — where extended families, church congregations, local businesses, and alumni all know the athlete personally — can produce vote totals that overwhelm larger metro schools. A share chain through a small-town Iowa community can reach several hundred unique voters in under an hour via Facebook and text.
• Activate the booster club early. CIML and MVAC programmes with active booster organisations can mobilise a parent email list of 500–2,000 households within minutes of the poll opening. A single well-worded booster email with the direct link consistently produces the highest per-effort return.
• Post to community Facebook groups. Iowa has active county and city Facebook groups — "Ankeny Community," "Humboldt Iowa," "Monticello IA Community," and dozens of school-specific pages — where a poll share reaches local adults who do not follow the athlete's personal Instagram.
• Coordinate a close-deadline push. The 12–24 hours before the 11:59 p.m. PT close is where gaps close fastest. A targeted reminder to everyone who voted earlier — "Poll closes tonight, vote again!" — is the highest-leverage single action in the final day.

When organic reach has been fully activated and the gap remains large, some families and supporters choose paid promotion to reach additional real voters. For this type of award poll, a service delivering genuine votes from real people — rather than automated scripts — is the relevant option. See our sports fan poll votes service and the broader how-to guides for context on what cap-matched, paced delivery looks like in practice.

What are the rules, and can you buy votes for the Iowa Player of the Year poll?

High School on SI does not publish a formal written ruleset for its Iowa Player of the Year polls in the same way a sweepstakes would. The platform is a reader-engagement feature, not a prize contest subject to Iowa prize-promotion law. The practical constraints are the poll widget's own technical terms — which, for Minute Media and SI's infrastructure, typically prohibit automated scripts, bot traffic, and coordinated fraudulent manipulation.

The buy-votes question for this format breaks into two distinct categories:

• Automated bot scripts — rapid programmatic submissions from non-human sources that mimic high-volume traffic. These violate standard platform terms, generate detectable fingerprint patterns, and result in vote removal. They also carry reputational risk for the athlete and family if the manipulation becomes public.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people casting genuine votes from their own devices via a promotion network. Structurally, this is equivalent to a booster club email reaching a larger audience than the family's direct network. The votes are real; the reach is purchased.

Whether the second category satisfies the spirit of any specific poll terms is a call each supporter must make after reading the current official article. For a balanced, general treatment of how online poll legality works across US media publications, visit our full guide.

The practical consequence of flag-and-remove in this format is vote subtraction from the tally, not an athlete disqualification or a legal action — the award carries no cash prize or contractual benefit that would trigger formal contest law.

Iowa Player of the Year voting timeline — sport by sport

The High School on SI Iowa Player of the Year award cycle follows Iowa's IHSAA sports calendar. Each sport's poll opens after its regular season or state tournament concludes and runs for one to three weeks. The table below maps the sports-season flow to the typical POY voting windows based on the IHSAA calendar and High School on SI's published award history.

Football is the most competitive season for High School on SI Iowa POY voting, both in candidate quality and in total votes cast. The 2024 overall football winner Coen Matson (Humboldt) and 2023 winner Preston Ries (Monticello) each generated statewide community mobilisation across their smaller-class home towns. Basketball — especially girls basketball in the Jenica Lewis era — has drawn significant attention to Johnston's Des Moines-metro programme.

Preseason Player of the Year polls also run for several sports — including football (Classes 3A, 4A, 5A) and basketball (per class) — typically in August for football and in November–December for basketball. These follow the same voting mechanics as the postseason awards and are separate, standalone polls rather than rounds of the same competition.

For a broader view of Iowa prep sports contests and voting opportunities — including weekly polls and other statewide recognitions — see the Iowa contest hub. For all US contest guides, visit the USA contest index.