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

What is the Louisiana High School Player of the Year vote on SI?

The Louisiana High School Player of the Year is an annual recognition series produced by SBLive Sports and published on Sports Illustrated's prep vertical, High School on SI, at si.com/high-school/louisiana. Where the weekly Louisiana Athlete of the Week spotlight rotates every seven days, the Player of the Year vote caps each sport's full season with a single cumulative award — one winner per LHSAA class, chosen entirely by fan ballot.

• Administered by SBLive Sports, the national prep-sports network embedded inside Sports Illustrated since 2021.
• Covers all five LHSAA classification levels — Classes 1A through 5A — plus optional offensive and defensive split polls for football.
• Separate polls run sport by sport: football (by class, plus overall Offensive and Defensive POY), boys and girls basketball, softball, baseball, and other LHSAA-sanctioned sports as the editorial calendar allows.
• Nominees are selected by SBLive's Louisiana editorial team based on season statistics, playoff impact, and statewide recognition — not a coaches' or sportswriters' association panel.
• Voting is free at si.com/high-school/louisiana, requires no account or registration, and shows live totals throughout the window.
• The fan vote is independent of the LHSAA's own academic and athletic honours and the Louisiana Sports Writers Association (LSWA) all-state teams — a player can earn both.

Which Louisiana schools and sports run Player of the Year polls?

SBLive's Louisiana editorial team covers all LHSAA-sanctioned sports and runs Player of the Year polls across the full classification spectrum. The schools that surface most consistently as nominees reflect Louisiana's competitive geography — metro New Orleans private-school powerhouses, Baton Rouge public and Catholic programmes, and smaller-class rural schools capable of producing statistically dominant individual athletes.

Makelin Lemoine's 2025 Class 1A win at Elton High School illustrates a consistent pattern in this award series — small-classification athletes who dominate their peers statistically (Lemoine was the first Elton player named LSWA first-team all-state) often generate the most intense fan engagement because their entire community rallies behind a once-in-a-generation local talent.

At the other end of the classification spectrum, Class 5A programmes in metro New Orleans and the Baton Rouge corridor — Edna Karr, Brother Martin, Catholic High, Zachary, and Hahnville — produce a disproportionate share of nominees due to large enrolments, strong booster networks, and consistent state championship contention across multiple sports.

How does Louisiana High School Player of the Year voting work?

Each Louisiana POY vote lives inside a dedicated article on si.com/high-school/louisiana — there is no single hub poll; instead, a separate article and embedded ballot is published for each sport and each LHSAA classification after the season concludes. For a broad overview of how fan-driven online award voting works across prep sports nationally, see our online contest voting guide.

Finding the active poll

Search si.com/high-school/louisiana or the High School on SI Louisiana news feed for articles titled "Vote: Who Should Be the Louisiana High School [Sport] Class [X] Player of the Year?" The article embeds the live poll widget and displays the current vote totals and closing date. SBLive publishes new polls as each sport's LHSAA playoffs conclude — football polls typically appear in December and January, basketball in February and March, spring sports in May and June.

The voting mechanic

The poll widget is free and requires no account or email. There is no fixed per-hour vote cap — the platform allows repeated voting until the published deadline. All voting closes at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the date listed on each poll article. Live totals update throughout the window, so supporters can track the standings and calibrate their mobilisation effort in real time.

How is the Louisiana POY winner chosen, and what does winning mean?

The winner is whichever nominee accumulates the highest fan vote total by 11:59 p.m. PT on the closing date. SBLive editors exercise control only over who appears on the ballot — once the poll opens, there is no editorial adjustment to the count and no weighted scoring formula.

1. Nomination: SBLive's Louisiana sports desk identifies standout season performers — based on statistics, playoff results, and LSWA recognition — and builds the nominee list for each class and sport.
2. Ballot opens: The poll article is published at si.com/high-school/louisiana, and voting is open to anyone with internet access — no Louisiana residency or connection to the school required.
3. Community vote: Family, classmates, teammates, alumni, and local fan communities cast votes repeatedly through the window; the live leaderboard is visible to all voters.
4. Winner announced: After the deadline passes, SBLive publishes a follow-up article naming the winner. The announcement appears on si.com/high-school/louisiana and is shared across the network's social media channels.

Recognition from a Sports Illustrated–branded platform carries meaningful weight for college recruiting portfolios. A published SI win surfaces in name-based searches used by college coaches and is a credible third-party credential distinct from the athlete's own social media or school-issued press releases.

How do you build a winning vote campaign for Louisiana POY?

With no hourly reset to manage, the Louisiana POY contest rewards total network breadth more than technical timing precision. The athlete whose supporters vote the most times across the full window wins — not necessarily the athlete with the largest single-day push. For detailed tactics on fan-poll vote-building, see our voting guide; the notes below focus on what works specifically in Louisiana's prep sports landscape.

Two Louisiana-specific community dynamics consistently outperform statewide averages. First, private and Catholic school alumni networks in the New Orleans metro — Edna Karr, Brother Martin, St. Augustine, Archbishop Rummel — span generations of former students who remain closely connected through parish communities, school-linked social groups, and NOLA prep sports culture. Second, small-town Louisiana parishes (Jeff Davis, Beauregard, Richland) rally intensely around a singular standout athlete — the community has fewer total voters but a higher mobilisation rate, as Makelin Lemoine's 2025 1A win demonstrated.

What are the rules — and can you buy votes for this poll?

The Louisiana High School Player of the Year is a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize and no Louisiana state gaming or prize-promotion law framework. The operative restrictions are the SBLive / SI platform's own terms, which primarily prohibit automated tools that generate non-human or artificially manipulated vote traffic. For a broader discussion of the legal and practical landscape of online poll participation, see our full buy-votes guide.

Two types of activity are meaningfully different under standard poll terms:

• Automated scripts and bots — tools that generate rapid-fire, non-human votes, bypassing normal browser behaviour. These violate platform terms, produce detectable traffic signatures, and result in vote removal.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — services that distribute the poll link to real people who cast genuine votes voluntarily. Structurally this is identical to a booster club email reaching more families — it is real people voting, reached through a paid channel.

Whether paid real-voter outreach satisfies the spirit of any given poll's terms is a judgement each family and booster should make after reading the current official poll page. Given that the award is a media recognition with no cash value, the practical risk is reputational, not legal — and is limited to votes being discounted if flagged.

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

Louisiana POY polls follow the LHSAA sports calendar — each poll launches after the relevant sport's season concludes, so timing varies by sport and by how deep that classification goes in the playoffs. The table below maps the typical publication window for each major sport.

Each poll's exact open date and 11:59 p.m. PT closing deadline are posted on the poll article itself at si.com/high-school/louisiana. SBLive does not send advance notifications — supporters who want to catch the window early should follow the High School on SI Louisiana feed and check for new "Vote:" articles after each LHSAA playoff weekend.

For the broader context of Louisiana high school athletics and other online contests based in the state, see the Louisiana contest guide. For all US-based contest guides, visit the USA contest index.