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

What is the New Mexico High School Player of the Year award?

The New Mexico Mr. Football award is the state's most prestigious annual honour for a prep football player. NMPreps — the dedicated New Mexico high school sports vertical within the On3 Sports Network — administers the award each fall after the NMAA state championships conclude. It is widely described by the NMPreps editorial team as the Heisman Trophy of New Mexico high school football, recognising not just raw statistics but impact, leadership, versatility, and championship-level performance across all NMAA classes.

• Administered by NMPreps at on3.com/sites/nm-preps — New Mexico's primary destination for statewide prep sports coverage, recruiting news, and rankings within the On3 Sports Network.
• Covers all NMAA football classifications — Class 6A, 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, and 1A — in a single statewide award open to any school in New Mexico.
• The seven-day public fan vote is free and open to any reader; NMPreps also incorporates NMPreps Premium Member ballots and X/Twitter community input.
• Separate annual awards include New Mexico Defensive Player of the Year and position-specific honours (Quarterback, Running Back, Receiver of the Year).
• High School on SI (Sports Illustrated/Arena Group) runs complementary position fan polls during and after the regular season, allowing readers to vote on stat leaders by position.
• The Gatorade New Mexico Player of the Year (football and other sports) operates independently as an editorial/selection panel award — no public voting — and covers all sports, making it a distinct award from the NMPreps fan-voted Mr. Football.

A Mr. Football win earns statewide recognition on On3's national platform, which indexes in Google and is routinely cited in college-recruiting profiles — carrying more reach than a local newspaper award for athletes seeking visibility beyond New Mexico.

Who has won New Mexico Mr. Football in recent years?

The award's history tracks the evolution of New Mexico's most dominant programmes — large Albuquerque metro schools, Rio Rancho, and perennial small-school powers like Artesia. The table below lists confirmed recent winners and Defensive POY honourees based on NMPreps records.

Recent NMPreps Mr. Football and Defensive POY winners

Cleveland High School in Rio Rancho has emerged as the dominant programme in recent Class 6A football, with Jordan Hatch's back-to-back individual recognition reflecting the Storm's sustained championship run. La Cueva High School in northeast Albuquerque, Volcano Vista in the Westside Albuquerque metro, and Artesia in the Pecos Valley have historically produced multiple Mr. Football finalists — La Cueva and Artesia are among the most decorated NMAA programmes across all classes.

How does NMPreps Mr. Football voting work?

The NMPreps Mr. Football vote is a layered process, not a pure unlimited-click fan poll. Understanding the structure helps any support campaign direct effort where it actually counts.

How the vote is structured

1. Finalist announcement: NMPreps names a shortlist of finalists — typically three to five — at the end of the NMAA football season based on editorial evaluation of performance, impact, and class-adjusted context.
2. Public fan vote opens: a free poll goes live at on3.com/sites/nm-preps and stays open for seven days. Any reader can cast a vote; no On3 account is required for the public ballot.
3. NMPreps Premium Member ballot: On3/NMPreps paid Premium subscribers get a separate ballot weight, meaning engaged local fans who follow the site closely have added influence beyond the general public vote.
4. X/Twitter community vote: NMPreps solicits the X community's input — typically via a posted poll or quote-tweet thread — adding a social-media dimension that rewards athletes with strong regional followings on that platform.
5. Winner announced: NMPreps editors combine the public fan count, Premium Member votes, and X community results to declare the winner; the announcement article is published on on3.com/sites/nm-preps and distributed across NMPreps social channels.

The public fan vote is the single largest input layer. Premium Member counts are a smaller but consistently engaged segment. For athletes whose support networks are primarily family and local community — rather than statewide social media followings — the seven-day public poll window is where campaigns are won or lost.

For a plain-English explanation of how online sports award polls function and how fan mobilisation generally works, see our guide to online contest voting.

How does High School on SI's New Mexico position vote work?

High School on SI — the national high school sports vertical within Sports Illustrated's digital network — publishes position-specific fan polls for New Mexico football separate from the NMPreps end-of-year award. These polls ask readers to vote for which player will have the best season at a given position, or to vote among the final statistical leaders once the season ends.

Key differences from the NMPreps Mr. Football vote:

• No editorial shortlist: SI position polls draw from a broader pool of stat-prominent players rather than a curated finalist list.
• Position-specific: separate polls run for QB, RB, WR/receiver, and DL — athletes compete within their position group, not against every skilled position statewide.
• Season-long and end-of-season timing: some polls run during the preseason as "who will have the best season" votes; others run post-season against final stat leaders.
• Open reader vote: free, no account required; voting at si.com/high-school/new-mexico.

An athlete listed in a High School on SI position poll gains national visibility even if they don't win — the si.com domain ranks well in national search, and the article title typically includes the athlete's name, school, and the phrase "New Mexico high school football."

Which New Mexico schools and programmes produce the most POY contenders?

Mr. Football and position award finalists come from across all NMAA classes, but certain programmes consistently produce nominees. The table below maps key schools by class and area — the same schools that generate the largest organised vote campaigns each season.

The geographic split matters for fan vote mobilisation. Albuquerque-metro schools — Cleveland (Rio Rancho), La Cueva, Volcano Vista, Cibola — have the largest raw support pools due to population density. Southern New Mexico schools like Centennial (Las Cruces) and small-class powers like Artesia run tighter but deeply organised communities that mobilise effectively across church, agricultural, and regional-pride networks.

For context on New Mexico prep contests and polling culture more broadly, see the New Mexico contest voting guide and the full USA contest index.

How do you build a winning vote campaign for New Mexico POY?

The mechanics are straightforward once you understand that the NMPreps public fan vote is time-bounded (seven days) and typically decided by whoever reaches the broadest real-network coverage fastest. Here is what actually moves the needle in New Mexico prep football communities.

Organic campaign tactics — highest impact first

• Post the direct poll URL immediately when voting opens — not the NMPreps homepage, not the athlete's name alone. Friction kills follow-through; the link must go directly to the vote button.
• Team group chats first, booster club email second — at 6A schools like Cleveland, La Cueva, and Volcano Vista, a single message to the team chat reaches a hundred-plus households; booster email lists at large schools can reach two hundred to four hundred parents within minutes.
• Church and community networks for southern and rural programmes — at Artesia, Roswell, St. Michael's, and similar programmes, church communities and tight-knit agricultural networks share these votes organically at a rate that outperforms social media reach. A message through a parish announcement or a local youth-group chat reaches voters who would never see a Facebook post.
• Retweet the NMPreps announcement post on X — NMPreps posts the vote on X, and their X poll or retweet thread is part of the official input. Getting the athlete's school community to retweet that specific post adds to the X vote layer as well as general awareness.
• Remind the network at the 48-hour and 24-hour marks — most supporters who saw the first message and intended to vote never did. A second or third message with the vote link, the current standing, and the close time consistently generates the highest single-day spike outside of the launch day.

When the organic network has been fully activated and a nominee is still trailing with 48 hours left, some families use a paid real-voter promotion service to reach additional voters beyond their immediate community. If you consider that route, use a service that delivers paced, genuine votes — rapid-fire delivery patterns are atypical of organic fan behaviour and can be flagged. Our sports fan poll votes service is structured around natural delivery timing. For a broader look at how paid vote promotion fits into legitimate contest campaigns, see our how-to guides.

What are the rules — and can you buy votes for New Mexico POY?

NMPreps does not publish detailed written rules prohibiting specific voting tactics for the Mr. Football public poll — the award is a community-recognition initiative, not a formal sweepstakes with cash prizes or legal frameworks. The relevant constraints are practical and platform-level, not regulatory.

The honest framing of the "buy votes" question for this award:

• Automated bot scripts that fire rapid votes from the same device fingerprint or IP address — ignoring any platform cooldown — are technically detectable and produce vote removal when flagged. They are also unlikely to reflect the community intent the award is designed to capture.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — individuals who receive a message about the poll and choose to cast a genuine vote on their own device — is structurally indistinguishable from a booster club email reaching five hundred additional households. There is no rule prohibiting fans from being informed that a vote is open.
• Purchased vote packages from services that use genuine human voter networks occupy an ethical middle ground. Whether it satisfies the spirit of a community recognition award is a personal judgement each family must make. The risk is reputational — if the vote total spikes in a statistically anomalous pattern, the NMPreps editorial team may discount the result or note it publicly.

The most defensible campaign is always organic-first: saturate every real community network before considering external services.

New Mexico POY voting season timeline

The NMPreps Mr. Football and position awards follow the NMAA football calendar closely. The table below maps the typical sequence — confirm exact dates each year at on3.com/sites/nm-preps as the NMAA schedule and playoff brackets shift annually.

The window between state championship Saturday and the Mr. Football vote launch is typically less than two weeks. Support teams that pre-draft their message and have their distribution list ready before the finalist announcement can activate the full network within the first hour the poll goes live — which is when the earliest vote advantage is built.

For weekly New Mexico prep athlete recognition running throughout the school year — distinct from this annual POY — see the Albuquerque Journal Athlete of the Week guide, which covers the Journal's weekly fan poll at abqjournal.com.