Mississippi High School Athlete of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the SBLive Mississippi High School Athlete of the Week?

The SBLive Mississippi High School Athlete of the Week is a free statewide fan vote published weekly at si.com/high-school/mississippi by SBLive, the prep sports division operating within Sports Illustrated's High School on SI network. The programme covers Mississippi athletes across all sports and both genders throughout every MHSAA-sanctioned season — fall, winter, and spring.

• Published at si.com/high-school/mississippi, part of the Sports Illustrated digital network reaching millions of prep sports readers nationally.
• Nominations reach the SBLive staff by email at [email protected] or via social tagging at @sblivems on Twitter/Instagram.
• Voting closes every Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT; the winner is announced the following Monday.
• Covers athletes from all 82 Mississippi counties — from Gulf Coast schools in Harrison and Jackson counties to DeSoto County suburban programmes in the northwest corner of the state.
• No subscription, account, or registration is required to cast a vote.
• Past Mississippi nominees have included athletes from schools like Oak Grove, Madison Central, Bogue Chitto, Forrest County AHS, and Meridian — reflecting the poll's true statewide reach.

A win earns the athlete a permanent, searchable mention on the Sports Illustrated High School network — one of the highest-authority prep sports platforms in the country — visible to coaches and recruiters who search the athlete's name.

Which Mississippi schools compete in this statewide poll?

Because SBLive's Mississippi Athlete of the Week is statewide — not metro-specific — nominees rotate across every corner of the state. The table below shows a representative set of frequently appearing programmes, their MHSAA classification, and their region assignment for the 2025–27 cycle.

The MHSAA classifies Mississippi public schools into seven tiers — 1A through 7A — based on enrolment, with 7A reserved for the state's largest schools. The 2025–27 reclassification cycle shifted several programmes between regions; Tupelo and Oxford notably swapped regions within 7A football. The statewide scope of the SBLive poll means a Class 2A athlete from Lincoln County can appear on the same ballot as a Class 6A standout from the Jackson suburbs.

How does the SBLive Mississippi Athlete of the Week vote actually work?

The poll is hosted on the High School on SI platform at si.com/high-school/mississippi and requires nothing from the voter beyond finding the active poll page and clicking a name. SBLive's Mississippi staff selects nominees based on outstanding performances submitted by coaches, parents, and school athletic departments during the preceding week. For a general overview of how fan-vote polls operate online, see our guide to online contest voting.

The mechanics are straightforward: find the current ballot, pick your athlete, click vote, and come back. There is no multi-step verification, no CAPTCHA on entry, and no subscription wall. The widget on the article page shows each nominee's name, school, sport, and a running vote tally that updates throughout the window.

Key timing details

• New polls typically post after the preceding week's results are processed — often mid-week.
• The window closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time (1:59 a.m. Monday Central Time, which is Mississippi's local time zone).
• Winners are announced on Monday in a dedicated article on the Mississippi High School on SI page.
• Voting is accessible from any state or country — family members outside Mississippi can vote just as easily as local fans.

How is the Mississippi Athlete of the Week winner decided?

The winner is whoever holds the highest vote count when the poll closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT. SBLive editorial staff control only which athletes appear on the ballot — the outcome is entirely determined by reader votes, with no panel weighting and no editorial override of the final tally.

1. Performance submission: coaches, parents, and school contacts email highlights to [email protected] or tag @sblivems, covering results from the past week.
2. SBLive staff curation: the Mississippi editorial team selects nominees by judgement — strong stat lines, clutch moments, or meaningful team contributions that stand out across the state's sports week.
3. Poll goes live: nominees appear in the ballot article at si.com/high-school/mississippi, with school, sport, and performance context for each candidate.
4. Voting runs through Sunday: any reader can vote freely. The athlete with the most votes at close wins — no tiebreaker, no editorial weighting.
5. Monday announcement: SBLive publishes the winner on si.com and across the @sblivems social channels, producing a permanent, indexed Sports Illustrated byline attached to the athlete's name.

The SI network byline carries more weight than a local newspaper recognition because it is indexed under one of the highest-authority sports domains on the web — searches for the athlete's name will surface the SI write-up alongside recruiting profiles, which is exactly the kind of third-party visibility that stands out in a coach's inbox.

How can you build more votes for a Mississippi SBLive nominee?

Building a strong vote total for this poll is a math exercise: more devices voting, more consistently, over the full window before Sunday night. The direct poll link — not just the athlete's name — should go into every realistic network as soon as the ballot is live. For a full tactical breakdown of vote-building for online polls, see our step-by-step vote guide; the Mississippi-specific notes below reflect what works in this statewide market.

Two patterns produce outsized results in Mississippi's statewide context. First, rural county schools — Class 1A through 3A programmes in the Delta, south-central, and northeast regions — often punch above their weight in vote totals because tight-knit communities where the local high school is the social anchor respond with exceptional collective energy when one of their athletes is nominated. Second, the Metro Jackson corridor schools (Madison Central, Brandon, Northwest Rankin, Clinton) have large suburban parent networks on Facebook and Nextdoor that convert well when the direct link is provided with clear instructions.

When organic mobilisation has been fully deployed and a gap remains, some families and programmes consider paid real-voter promotion to close that gap before Sunday night. If you go that route, use a service — like our sports fan poll votes service — that delivers paced, genuine votes rather than automated burst traffic, which is detectable and removed.

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

The SBLive Mississippi Athlete of the Week is a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize, no formal sweepstakes structure, and no Mississippi prize-promotion law applying to the outcome. The relevant restrictions are the platform's own technical terms — primarily against automated tools that exploit the poll widget. For a balanced look at legality across online polls generally, see our full buy-votes guide.

The practical distinction that matters:

• Automated scripts or bots — high-volume mechanical requests ignoring standard browser behaviour. These produce detectable traffic patterns and result in vote removal from the counter.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — actual people casting genuine votes from their own devices in normal browser sessions. Structurally, this is identical to a booster email reaching an additional five hundred households — it is fans voting, reached through a different channel.

Whether the second approach satisfies the spirit of SBLive's current terms is a judgement each entrant must make after reading the live poll page. The stakes in this format are reputational, not legal — no cash or scholarship depends on the outcome. Athletes and families should weigh that honestly.

When does the Mississippi Athlete of the Week poll run each year?

The SBLive Mississippi Athlete of the Week follows the MHSAA sports calendar, running weekly through each sanctioned season with a break during the summer off-season. The table below maps the poll to Mississippi's athletic year.

Each weekly poll closes Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT regardless of where it falls in the season. The exact open date varies — polls typically go live Wednesday or Thursday after SBLive staff process the previous week's results. Always check the current Athlete of the Week article at si.com/high-school/mississippi to confirm the poll is still open before voting.

Football season generates the highest vote totals of the Mississippi poll's annual cycle. October weeks featuring Class 6A or 7A matchups — where Metro Jackson schools like Madison Central, Brandon, and Northwest Rankin face regional rivals — regularly produce totals far beyond what spring track or golf weeks see. A competitive spring baseball week might close with 300–600 votes; a major October football week can require 1,500 or more to win.

For other Mississippi voting contests and community polls, see our Mississippi contest guide. For all US state contest guides, visit the USA contest index.