Oregon High School Wrestler of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the High School on SI Oregon Wrestler of the Year poll?

Each February, Oregon's high school wrestlers converge on Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland for the OSAA State Wrestling Championships — the defining moment of the state's winter wrestling season. Shortly after those championships conclude, High School on SI publishes an annual fan-vote poll at si.com naming Oregon's Wrestler of the Year for both boys and girls divisions. The 2025-26 edition closed April 22, 2026, with nominees including Tommy Belding and Brody Buzzard on the boys side.

• The poll lives at si.com/high-school/oregon — free to vote in, no account or subscription required.
• Voting is unlimited manual votes per person before a stated deadline; automated scripts and bots are explicitly banned and trigger disqualification of the nominated athlete's entry.
• Nominees are drawn from state championship standouts and season-long performers across OSAA classifications, from 6A down to 1A, selected by the SI/SBLive Oregon editorial team.
• The 2025-26 poll deadline was April 22, 2026 — the poll window runs from late February or March through late April, spanning the gap between the state championships and the end of the school year.
• Separate polls typically run for boys and girls wrestling, reflecting the OSAA's separate weight-class divisions for each.
• Winner announced via a published article at si.com and shared across the @sbliveor social channels.

Oregon's wrestling powerhouses — who competes in this poll?

The Oregon Wrestler of the Year ballot draws from OSAA state meet qualifiers and champions statewide. Wrestling strength in Oregon does not simply mirror enrolment size — programmes at 4A and 5A schools in southern Oregon, eastern Oregon, and the Willamette Valley have historically produced individual state champions at a rate that punches well above their classification weight. The table below maps confirmed wrestling-strong programmes across OSAA classifications and regions.

Southern Oregon stands out as Oregon wrestling's most competitive regional cluster. The Medford-area schools — Crater (Central Point), South Medford, North Medford, and Grants Pass — feed a dense network of wrestling club programmes and produce high-volume state meet qualifiers each February. Crater High School in particular has built a multi-sport powerhouse reputation in the Southern Sky Conference, with wrestling contributing state champions and all-state honourees across multiple weight classes in recent seasons.

Eastern Oregon adds a separate competitive stream: schools like Hermiston (Umatilla County), La Grande (Union County), Baker (Baker County), and Ontario (Malheur County) carry wrestling traditions rooted in agriculture-community culture and produce wrestlers who regularly reach and place at the OSAA state championships. These communities tend to mobilise tightly and uniformly for statewide recognition votes.

Who were the 2025-26 Oregon Wrestler of the Year nominees?

The 2025-26 High School on SI Oregon Wrestler of the Year poll, which closed April 22, 2026, confirmed Tommy Belding and Brody Buzzard as boys candidates on the ballot. Both are documented in public reporting as nominees for the 2025-26 cycle. The table below consolidates confirmed nominee information alongside the broader context of Oregon's recent wrestling recognition cycle.

Important transparency note: Only Tommy Belding and Brody Buzzard are confirmed as 2025-26 nominees from publicly available reporting. The complete 2025-26 ballot — including school affiliations, weight classes, and all additional nominees — should be verified at si.com/high-school/oregon. No finalist results are fabricated on this page; the confirmed winner of the 2025-26 poll had not been independently confirmed in public sources as of the guide's publication date.

For the girls division, the High School on SI ballot in recent cycles has specifically featured state championship titleholders from both the 6A/5A and 4A/3A/2A/1A OSAA wrestling meets — giving athletes from smaller-classification schools across eastern and southern Oregon a direct path to a statewide fan-vote credential. Kylie Gunderson's inclusion as a two-time 2A/1A state champion from Oakridge illustrates this cross-classification design.

How does the Oregon Wrestler of the Year fan vote work?

The annual poll is published in a dedicated article at si.com/high-school/oregon each spring after the OSAA state wrestling championships conclude at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland. Any visitor can cast a vote without registering, creating an account, or paying anything. The embedded widget lists each nominee with their name, school, and a brief description of the season performance that earned them a ballot spot, with live vote totals visible throughout the window.

Vote cap and deadline

Unlike newspaper polls that enforce one vote per device per hour, the High School on SI format allows unlimited manual votes per person during the open window. The only binding constraint is the ban on automated tools: scripts, macros, and bots are explicitly prohibited and result in disqualification of the nominated athlete's entire entry — not just a vote adjustment. Human voters clicking or tapping at their own pace across multiple sessions and devices are fully within the rules. For a broader explanation of how these sports-media fan polls function, see our online voting guide.

Each poll article displays a specific deadline. The 2025-26 boys poll deadline was April 22, 2026 at 11:59 pm PDT. Future cycles will have their own deadlines displayed on the relevant article — always confirm the live close time at si.com rather than assuming a fixed annual date.

Finding the active poll

The fastest routes are si.com/high-school/oregon (the Oregon landing page) or a search for "High School on SI Oregon Wrestler of the Year." The @sbliveor accounts on Instagram and Facebook share each new poll when it goes live. Because the window runs several weeks after the state championships and closes in late April, the poll is accessible to the full Oregon wrestling community — club coaches, alumni, and supporters outside Oregon — for a sustained mobilisation period.

Oregon wrestling season calendar — from the mat to the ballot

The Oregon Wrestler of the Year fan vote is the final chapter of a season that begins in mid-November and climaxes at Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Understanding the full calendar helps supporters know when to nominate athletes, when to expect the poll to open, and how the state championships feed the ballot.

The stretch between the February state championships and the April poll deadline is the primary mobilisation window. Communities that begin organising immediately after their wrestler's state placement — before the poll article goes live — are positioned to activate their networks the moment the ballot opens. Wrestling communities, particularly those in smaller classifications, often have tighter club and regional networks than other sports: the same families who followed their athlete through club wrestling and high school compete for them again in the spring fan vote.

For the full Oregon contest and voting landscape, including school elections, community recognition polls, and other prep sports votes, explore the Oregon contest hub. For all US contest guides, visit the USA contest index.

Building votes for the Oregon Wrestler of the Year poll

Wrestling fan communities in Oregon have a structural advantage that many other sports lack: a tight, multi-layered network spanning club programmes, high school booster clubs, and regional tournament alumni that pre-exists the poll itself. Parents who drove to club tournaments in Roseburg, Medford, Prineville, or Hermiston for years already know each other — that network activates quickly when one of their wrestlers is on a ballot. The steps below translate that network into fan-vote results.

The Henley High School community's 2024 Mr. Football win — a 4A Klamath Falls school out-voting 6A metro programmes — is the directly applicable Oregon case study for wrestling. Klamath Falls is also home to Henley's wrestling programme, and the same community mobilisation infrastructure applies. Southern Oregon programmes at Crater (Central Point), Roseburg, and the Medford cluster of schools draw on a dense tournament-connected network where parents and coaches know each other across conference lines.

The unlimited-cap mechanic means the poll is won by networks that sustain engagement for weeks, not campaigns that fire once and go quiet. A mid-point check two to three weeks into the window — comparing your nominee's total against the leader — lets you decide whether a targeted second-wave reminder to the network changes the outcome. For general vote-building principles see our how-to resource; the wrestling-specific dynamics above are what distinguish this poll from general prep sports votes.

When a campaign's organic network has been fully activated and a nominee is still trailing a larger school, some families and booster clubs use a paid vote service to reach additional real voters. If that path is considered, select a service that delivers genuine, paced votes — not automated scripts that trigger disqualification. Our sports fan poll votes service is built around manual, cap-matched delivery.

Rules and the buy-votes question for Oregon wrestling polls

The High School on SI Oregon Wrestler of the Year poll is a reader-engagement fan poll with no cash prize and no Oregon prize-promotion law framework. The enforceable restrictions come from the platform's own published terms. The core rule — stated explicitly in each poll article — is the ban on automated scripts, macros, and other non-human vote-generation tools, which result in disqualification of the nominated athlete's entry. For a comprehensive balanced look at online poll legality, see our detailed guide.

Two categories of vote-related activity exist and carry meaningfully different risk profiles:

• Automated bots and scripts — vote generation bypassing human interaction. Explicitly prohibited; detectable through traffic-pattern analysis; penalty is disqualification of the athlete's complete entry, not a partial vote removal. This is what High School on SI's platform terms target.
• Paid outreach to real human voters — real people who read the poll article and cast genuine manual votes from their own devices. This is structurally identical to a booster email reaching more wrestling families or a club coach sharing the link to their network. Real voters are what the poll invites.

Whether paid real-voter outreach satisfies the spirit of the contest terms is a judgement each family and booster club must make after reading the current official poll article at si.com. The practical stakes — a sports-media fan poll with no prize — are reputational, not legal. In wrestling specifically, the recognition value of an Oregon Wrestler of the Year title on a Sports Illustrated platform is real: it is indexed by name and surfaces in web searches that college coaches and recruiting services perform on Oregon prep athletes. That credential should be weighed honestly against the disqualification risk of any approach that might violate the platform's terms.