South Carolina High School Girls Basketball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the South Carolina High School Girls Basketball Player of the Year?

The South Carolina High School Girls Basketball Player of the Year is an annual fan-vote award administered by High School on SI — the prep-sports platform of Sports Illustrated, operated by SBLive Sports — at si.com/high-school/south-carolina. Each spring, after the SCHSL girls basketball state tournament finishes, the editorial team assembles a ballot of approximately 15 nominees drawn from across South Carolina's five active classifications and invites statewide fans to vote freely.

• Covers all five SCHSL classifications: Class A, AA, AAA, AAAA, and AAAAA (with D-I and D-II divisions at the top level).
• Hosted on the Sports Illustrated / SBLive prep-sports network — the largest multi-state high school sports digital platform in the United States.
• Voting is free and public; no SBLive account, no SI subscription, and no personal data are required to cast a vote.
• There is no hourly vote cap. You can vote as often as the platform permits per session; however, automated scripts and bots are explicitly prohibited by SI's contest terms.
• The poll is distinct from the weekly South Carolina Girls Basketball Player of the Week poll (which runs throughout the regular season). The Player of the Year award is the flagship season-ending recognition.
• South Carolina girls basketball has produced numerous Division I college signees in recent seasons; the POY win is a high-visibility credential for recruitment profiles.

Which South Carolina girls basketball programs produce POY contenders?

South Carolina girls basketball talent is concentrated in the Midlands (Columbia metro) and the Upstate (Greenville-Spartanburg corridor), with several Lower State programs in Class AA–AAA consistently punching above their enrolment. The SCHSL divides competition into five classifications, with Class AAAAA split into D-I and D-II to reduce enrolment gaps. The programs below have produced recent stat leaders, state finalists, and POY-ballot nominees across the sport's modern era in South Carolina.

The Columbia metro — home to Spring Valley, Ridge View, Irmo, Dutch Fork, and Westwood — is the state's densest concentration of competitive girls basketball talent, producing multiple POY nominees in most seasons. Dutch Fork and Irmo share overlapping communities and booster networks within the Harbison/Lake Murray corridor, making those fan bases among the most mobilised in the state for online voting campaigns.

The Upstate's Dorman High School has consistently appeared in AAAAA D-I playoff contention, while Wade Hampton draws from Greenville County's large population base. In smaller classifications, Orangeburg-Wilkinson's tradition in the Lower State represents the historically strong HBCU-adjacent athletic culture of Orangeburg County, where girls basketball has been a community institution for decades.

How does the SC Girls Basketball Player of the Year fan vote work?

After the SCHSL girls basketball state championship games conclude in March, the SI/SBLive editorial desk publishes a ballot article under the title "Vote: Who Should Be the South Carolina Girls Basketball Player of the Year" at si.com/high-school/south-carolina. That article contains the embedded poll widget; voting is open from the moment the article publishes until the stated deadline — typically March 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT for the end-of-season award. For a plain-English primer on how platform-hosted fan polls like this one work in general, see our online contest voting guide.

Key mechanics at a glance

• No hourly cap. Unlike weekly newspaper polls that reset once per hour, the SI/SBLive widget does not enforce a per-device hourly limit — each visit to the page and each submission counts toward the running total.
• No registration required. Anyone with access to si.com can vote — no Sports Illustrated account, no SBLive login, and no email address submission is needed.
• Live totals visible. The widget shows a running vote count for each nominee throughout the window, so supporters can gauge the competitive gap and decide whether additional mobilisation is necessary.
• Automated scripts are explicitly prohibited. SI's contest terms ban bots, scripts, and other automated tools that mechanically generate submissions. Human-cast votes — regardless of volume — are the structurally permissible approach.
• Mobile-friendly. The poll loads in standard iOS and Android browsers; no app download is needed.

How is the South Carolina Girls Basketball POY winner chosen — and what does winning mean?

The winner is the nominee with the highest vote count when the SI/SBLive poll closes — a pure popular-vote result with no editorial panel, no weighted score, and no tie-breaking mechanism beyond raw totals. The SI/SBLive desk controls the ballot composition (which players appear), but once the poll opens, the outcome rests entirely with voters.

1. Nomination stage: the SI/SBLive editorial team for South Carolina selects nominees — typically 10–20 players — drawing on season statistics, state tournament performance, and coach submissions. Not every eligible player will appear; the editorial filter is the first gate.
2. Poll opens: a dedicated ballot article is published at si.com/high-school/south-carolina/girls-basketball, usually within days of the SCHSL state championship. The article includes the players' stats, schools, and a vote widget.
3. Voting window: fans vote freely for the duration of the window — historically closing around March 31 for the primary end-of-season award.
4. Winner announced: SI/SBLive publishes the result on the same platform and across the SBLive South Carolina social feeds. The winner's name, school, and season statistics are featured in coverage that remains indexed on si.com.

A published win on si.com carries search-engine longevity — the article lives permanently at a high-authority domain. College coaches searching a recruit's name frequently encounter SI/SBLive award pages alongside MaxPreps stat sheets and school athletic bios. That persistent digital footprint is the primary value of the award beyond in-season recognition.

Recent SC girls basketball season POY contenders and SCHSL state champions

The South Carolina girls basketball landscape at the AAAAA level has seen intense Midlands-region competition in recent tournament cycles. While a single comprehensive, annually-verified list of all SI/SBLive fan-vote POY winners is not published in one place, the SCHSL state championship record provides a strong proxy for the programs whose players appear most often on the POY ballot — state finalists and champions routinely supply multiple nominees.

The Gatorade South Carolina Girls Basketball Player of the Year — an editorially-chosen award separate from the SI/SBLive fan vote — has recognised players who also appear on the fan-vote ballot in the same season. Lauren Jacobs (2024–25 Gatorade POY, committed to the University of Mississippi) posted 30.1 points, 14.3 rebounds, 5.2 steals, 3.3 assists, and 1.9 blocks per game in her final season, representing the calibre of player the SI/SBLive editorial team draws into the fan-vote nominee pool.

Knowing which programs supply the ballot in a given year lets supporters activate their networks earlier. Schools that made the AAAAA state tournament in the most recent season are the most likely sources of fan-vote nominees — cross-reference the SCHSL bracket at schsl.org with the SI/SBLive ballot when it publishes each spring.

How do you build votes for the SC Girls Basketball Player of the Year poll?

Because the SI/SBLive poll has no hourly cap, the mechanics differ from weekly newspaper polls like the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week. There is no benefit to returning every hour — instead, the leverage is in the total number of people who reach the poll page and cast a vote at least once. Depth of network reach matters far more than timing tricks. See our full vote-building how-to guide for platform-specific tactics beyond the South Carolina context; the notes below are girls-basketball-specific.

South Carolina's AAU girls basketball ecosystem — particularly the programs feeding the SI/SBLive nomination pool — creates natural cross-school social networks. A player nominated for POY almost certainly has current and former travel-team teammates across multiple high schools; those connections are often more responsive than the nominee's own school community because they already know the player personally. A message reaching 30 AAU teammates is worth more than a general school-wide post reaching 500 students who have no personal connection.

The single highest-leverage action is posting the direct poll URL — not just the article title — on the first day the poll opens, before other nominees' supporters build a lead. Early vote leads on SI/SBLive polls tend to compound because voters seeing a large gap sometimes conclude the outcome is settled and don't vote. Capture the early window aggressively. For a deeper playbook on online contest strategies, visit our buy-votes guide.

Rules, fairness, and the paid-votes question

The SI/SBLive fan-vote for South Carolina Girls Basketball Player of the Year is a reader-engagement poll with no cash prize or sweepstakes structure. The relevant restrictions come from SI's own contest terms — primarily the ban on automated tools. There is no South Carolina prize-promotion law implicated because nothing of material cash value is awarded to voters. For a fuller, platform-neutral treatment of legality across online polls, read our guide to buying votes online — the notes below address this specific poll.

There is a practical distinction between two categories of activity that often gets conflated:

• Automated scripts / bots: programmatic requests that ignore SI's terms, generate detectable traffic fingerprints, and result in vote disqualification when flagged. This is prohibited.
• Paid reach to real human voters: real people — reached through an outreach service — visiting the poll page and casting votes themselves, within normal browsing behaviour. Structurally, this is identical to a booster club email reaching additional supporters. It is voters voting, reached via a different channel.

Whether reaching additional real voters through a paid service aligns with the spirit of any particular contest is a judgement each family must make after reading the current official poll terms. The stakes in this format — a fan-vote poll with no prize — are reputational: the recognition value of a win vs. the risk of vote removal if the method is flagged. Our sports fan poll votes service is built for human-delivered, cap-respectful voting consistent with the poll's technical limits.

SCHSL girls basketball season timeline and voting window

South Carolina girls basketball runs as a winter sport under the SCHSL calendar. The SI/SBLive Player of the Year poll is anchored to the end of that season — specifically to the conclusion of the SCHSL state tournament held at Colonial Life Arena in Columbia. Knowing the seasonal structure helps supporters plan their vote-mobilisation campaign well before the poll opens.

Colonial Life Arena in Columbia — home to the University of South Carolina women's basketball program and regular SCHSL championship host — provides the backdrop for the state tournament performances that shape the POY ballot. A standout championship game at Colonial Life carries media visibility beyond the SCHSL context, making it the highest-leverage single event for nomination consideration.

Because the poll window is roughly two weeks (mid-March to ~March 31), there is no advantage in waiting. Unlike hourly-cap polls where pacing matters, this format rewards early, broad mobilisation. Cast votes as soon as the poll article appears and activate all networks on day one. For context on how this contest fits into South Carolina's broader contest and awards landscape, see our South Carolina contest hub and the full USA contest directory.