North Carolina High School Baseball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the High School on SI North Carolina Baseball Player of the Year?

The North Carolina High School Baseball Player of the Year is an annual statewide fan-vote award administered by High School on SI — the prep sports vertical of Sports Illustrated, operated by SBLive under parent company Minute Media. Each spring, at the close of the NCHSAA baseball regular season and playoffs, the SI editorial team compiles a ballot of roughly 15 standout performers from across all four NCHSAA classifications (1A, 2A, 3A, 4A) and puts the decision to North Carolina fans.

• The poll is published at si.com/high-school/north-carolina — a nationally distributed platform that also runs week-by-week NC Baseball Player of the Week polls throughout the spring season.
• Candidates span pitchers, position players, and two-way players from small rural 1A programmes through large suburban 4A powerhouses — any NCHSAA class is eligible.
• The 2025 ballot closed June 8 at 11:59 p.m. PT, with 15 candidates shortlisted from schools across the state.
• No account, subscription, or email address is required to cast a vote — the poll is a fully public reader-engagement feature.
• High School on SI also runs a separate NC Baseball Preseason Pitcher of the Year fan vote each February, giving fans a second baseball-specific vote opportunity before the season begins.
• This award is distinct from HighSchoolOT Honors (the WRAL-run multi-sport statewide programme) and from the Prep Baseball Report's editorial NC Player of the Year — it is a pure, public fan-vote conducted by a national sports media brand.

Which NC baseball programmes produce Player of the Year candidates?

North Carolina prep baseball draws from a state with six NCHSAA regions and more than 400 member schools fielding varsity baseball programmes. The SI ballot consistently rewards both elite 4A suburban programmes and small-school 1A and 2A stars — classification does not gate a player from being shortlisted, which means powerhouse schools and perennial state champions naturally generate disproportionate ballot appearances.

The western mountain region (Buncombe County, Henderson County) and the central Piedmont corridor (Wake, Rowan, Randolph counties) produce the highest concentration of SI ballot nominees. T.C. Roberson's three consecutive 4A titles from 2023 to 2025 are the most sustained run of dominance in any NCHSAA class over that period, and the programme regularly supplies both the annual POY shortlist and the weekly Player of the Week polls during spring.

Small-school programmes like Uwharrie Charter (1A, four titles since 2019) and East Rutherford (2A) demonstrate that the SI ballot draws from across the classification spectrum — a dominant 1A pitcher with elite per-inning stats can appear alongside a 4A shortstop committed to a Power Five programme.

How does voting work for the SI North Carolina Baseball Player of the Year?

The poll lives inside the North Carolina section of si.com/high-school, published as a standalone article titled "Vote: Who should be the North Carolina high school baseball player of the year?" Each candidate is listed with their school, position, and key stats for the season. Readers click their chosen athlete's name in the embedded poll widget and submit — no Sports Illustrated subscription, account, or email is required.

Unlike newspaper athlete-of-the-week polls with an hourly vote cap, the SI/SBLive poll does not publish a stated per-hour vote-limit. The poll operates on a per-session basis — closing the browser tab and returning counts as a new session on most devices. The practical implication is that dedicated supporters who return multiple times across the open window, and who share the direct link broadly, can meaningfully move the vote totals for their candidate.

The poll remains live for roughly one to two weeks after the NCHSAA baseball season concludes. The 2025 poll closed June 8 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time; in prior years the close date followed a similar late-May to early-June window aligned with the NCHSAA state championship series. Always verify the close time on the live poll page, as SI adjusts it by season and playoff scheduling. For a broader overview of how online fan-vote sports polls function, see our guide to contest voting.

Recent NC baseball POY candidates and winning profiles

The High School on SI NC Baseball POY ballot takes shape each May, once the NCHSAA state championship bracket is decided. The following table shows confirmed ballot candidates from the 2025 poll alongside the Prep Baseball Report's editorial NC Player of the Year for prior seasons — the two sources together sketch the calibre of player the award typically rewards.

Two patterns emerge from this data. First, catchers and two-way players — athletes who contribute both offensively and on the mound — have dominated recent NC baseball POY recognition. Second, standout players from 2A and 3A programmes compete directly with 4A stars; batting averages above .500 or ERAs below 0.50 in a full season are the statistical markers that put a player on the shortlist regardless of school size.

The SI ballot also includes prospects already committed to ACC, SEC, and Power Four programmes — a sign that North Carolina's prep baseball talent pipeline is nationally recognised. East Rowan's Cobb Hightower (2024 POY) and Wake Forest's Luke Stevenson (2023 POY) both played at programmes with long track records of producing Division I players.

NC baseball season timeline and when to vote

The NCHSAA baseball calendar runs from mid-February through late May, with the state championship series in late May and early June. The High School on SI POY poll opens shortly after the season concludes and closes within one to two weeks. Supporters who want to vote — or mobilise a network to vote — should mark the end of the NCHSAA state championship series as their activation point, because that is when the poll typically goes live.

The weekly SI NC Baseball Player of the Week polls that run throughout the spring season matter for the POY as well. A player who wins multiple Player of the Week awards during the regular season builds name recognition among SI voters before the annual POY ballot even opens — the weekly polls function as an informal qualifying track. For the full picture of North Carolina's voting contest landscape, see the North Carolina contest voting hub.

How do you get more votes for a North Carolina Baseball Player of the Year candidate?

Vote-building for the SI NC Baseball POY follows the same network-expansion logic as any public fan poll, but the baseball-specific context shapes which channels work best. The core asset is the poll's direct article URL — not the si.com homepage — shared with the candidate's actual statistical story attached.

Organic network priorities for NC baseball supporters

North Carolina prep baseball communities tend to be tight-knit within their classification. A 1A or 2A school with a dominant pitcher will have a concentrated alumni base; a 4A suburban school draws from a larger but more diffuse population. Tactics differ slightly by school size:

• Team and class group chats — share the direct poll link on the day the ballot opens; include the candidate's key stat line so recipients can evangelise without hunting for context.
• Parent booster and athletic association emails — reach adults who check email regularly and have broader networks than current students; ask the athletic director or head coach to endorse the send.
• Twitter / X and Instagram — baseball recruiting communities are active on both platforms; a post tagging the school's official accounts and the SBLive NC account can earn a retweet that multiplies reach significantly.
• Church, community, and county Facebook groups — particularly effective for smaller-county 1A and 2A programmes where community ties run deep; Randolph County, Rowan County, and Greene County groups are active.
• Local newspaper and radio coverage — a story in a county paper (Salisbury Post, Rowan County) or local radio mention can drive a volume of votes that school networks alone cannot.

For a complete tactical breakdown of building vote totals on online sports polls — including timing windows, message framing, and multi-device strategies — see our how-to voting guides. When every organic channel has been activated and a candidate is still trailing in the final days, some supporters turn to paid sports fan poll vote services for a supplemental push; if you go that route, choose a provider that delivers paced, genuine votes aligned with the poll's session structure.

Poll rules, fairness, and the buy-votes question

High School on SI does not publish a detailed ballot-integrity rulebook for its fan polls, but the platform's standard terms of service prohibit automated tools, scripts, and bot-generated traffic. The practical enforcement mechanism is vote-removal when anomalous patterns are detected. For a balanced, plain-English treatment of the legality and ethics of vote promotion across online polls generally, see our full guide; the points specific to this SI poll are below.

There is no cash prize attached to this award. The consequence of the vote outcome is reputational — a published SI credential that appears in web searches, recruiting profiles, and college coach correspondence. That reputational value is real, particularly for players already on Division I radar: an SI mention reinforces a recruitment case in a way a local newspaper item does not, given the national reach of the Sports Illustrated brand.

• Bot traffic / automated scripts — violate platform terms; detectable via session fingerprinting; result in vote removal. Do not use.
• Multi-device organic voting — phones, tablets, and computers each constitute a new session; a household or team group voting across multiple devices is standard fan engagement, not a rule violation.
• Paid outreach to real voters — reaching a broader pool of genuine human voters via a promotion service sits in a grey zone; structurally identical to a booster email reaching 500 families, but read the current SI poll terms before proceeding.

The competitive context matters: the 2025 NC Baseball POY ballot included multiple Power Four commits with sub-1.00 ERAs and batting averages above .500 — these are players with organised, well-connected recruiting networks already active on social media. Organic vote campaigns for candidates at smaller schools without those national-profile networks may face a structural disadvantage that some families choose to address through supplemental outreach. Visit the USA contest voting index for context across other statewide sports awards.