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

What is the High School on SI Texas Wrestler of the Year award?

The Texas High School Wrestler of the Year is an annual fan-voted honour published by High School on SI / SBLive Texas, the prep-sports vertical of Sports Illustrated operating under Maven Inc. The poll runs at si.com/high-school/texas at the conclusion of each UIL winter wrestling season and covers boys and girls programmes across all UIL classifications — 6A through 1A — as well as TFA (Texas Folkstyle Alliance) independent programmes that fall outside UIL jurisdiction.

• 81,000+ votes have been recorded across recent boys and girls Wrestler of the Year polls, reflecting deep statewide fan engagement during the winter sports window.
• The most recent confirmed boys winner is Keagan Sieracki of Southlake Carroll, one of the DFW Metroplex's highest-profile prep wrestling programmes.
• Separate polls typically run for boys and girls, each drawing nominees from top UIL performances and TFA state placers.
• No account, subscription, or email address is required to vote — the poll is a free public fan ballot on si.com.
• Texas UIL wrestling is a winter sport; the UIL state tournament is held at the Berry Center in Cypress each February, anchoring the nomination window.
• The TFA folkstyle state championships, typically held in March, extend the competitive window for non-UIL programmes seeking poll recognition.

Which Texas wrestling programmes dominate the Wrestler of the Year ballot?

Texas prep wrestling power is clustered in three geographic corridors: the DFW Metroplex, the Greater Houston area, and the San Antonio/Hill Country region. UIL 6A programmes in Allen, Southlake Carroll, and Katy Taylor have produced the state's most consistent wrestling POY contenders across recent seasons. The table below covers key programmes by classification and region that appear most frequently in UIL state tournament results and SI/SBLive nomination pools.

UIL classification structure and the TFA layer

Texas UIL wrestling is divided by school enrolment into six classifications (6A, 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, 1A), each with its own regional and state qualifying structure. Boys compete in 14 weight classes ranging from 106 lb to 285 lb (heavyweight); girls compete in 12 weight classes ranging from 95 lb to 235 lb. The UIL state tournament, held at the Berry Center in Cypress each February, is the premier performance benchmark and the primary source of Wrestler of the Year nominees.

Beyond UIL, the Texas Folkstyle Alliance (TFA) organises independent non-UIL programmes — primarily private and charter schools not governed by UIL — under its own folkstyle ruleset. TFA's state championships typically run in March. Top TFA performers are periodically included in SI/SBLive's POY nomination pool, giving the award genuine statewide scope beyond the UIL framework alone.

How does the Texas High School Wrestler of the Year fan vote work?

The poll lives at si.com/high-school/texas within the High School on SI / SBLive Texas wrestling coverage section. High School on SI staff assembles a nomination list of standout wrestlers based on UIL state tournament results, individual season performance, and SBLive's statewide prep coverage; those nominees appear as selectable candidates on the fan poll widget. No account, email address, or login is required — any visitor to si.com can open the poll and vote.

Unlike some newspaper polls with explicit hourly caps, the High School on SI poll format does not publicly state a per-device vote cap. The poll runs for a set window with a published close deadline visible on the poll page itself. Fans vote by clicking their preferred nominee and submitting — live totals are visible on the page, allowing supporters to track standings and time their mobilisation efforts before the deadline. For a broader overview of how online fan polls like this operate, see our guide to online contest voting.

Because the poll covers the entire state rather than a single metro market, the competitive dynamics differ markedly from a regional weekly poll. A wrestler from a smaller city — Wichita Falls, Brock, Liberty Hill — can win if their community mobilises effectively against a DFW or Houston programme with a larger raw addressable audience. Vote totals in the 81,000+ range reflect that genuine statewide competition between fan bases.

How is the Texas Wrestler of the Year winner chosen?

The winner is the nominee with the highest fan vote total when the poll closes — there is no editorial panel, no weighted performance score, and no coaching-association ballot involved. High School on SI / SBLive exercise editorial control only at the nomination stage, selecting which wrestlers appear on the ballot based on UIL state performance and statewide coverage. Once the ballot is live, the outcome is determined entirely by the public.

1. Nomination: SBLive Texas reporters and editors identify top wrestlers based on UIL state tournament placements, season win-loss records, and notable individual performances across 6A–1A and TFA. Both boys and girls nominees are curated separately.
2. Poll opens: the ballot goes live at si.com/high-school/texas with a published close deadline; any fan can vote immediately without registration.
3. Fan voting window: votes accumulate publicly across the full window; live tallies are visible to all visitors throughout the period.
4. Winner announced: High School on SI publishes the Wrestler of the Year winner as part of its Texas wrestling season-wrap coverage, distributed across si.com and SBLive's social channels.

Past winners have used the SI platform recognition in recruiting correspondence — a Sports Illustrated byline carries national name recognition that a strictly local poll cannot replicate. For a wrestler being evaluated by DI or DII college programmes, an SI-published Player of the Year distinction provides third-party credibility beyond conference-level accolades.

Recent Texas High School Wrestler of the Year winners and contenders

High School on SI / SBLive Texas has run Wrestler of the Year fan polls for the 2023–24 and 2024–25 UIL seasons, with the 2025–26 cycle underway. The confirmed winners and notable contenders from recent cycles are shown below. Where complete historical records are not publicly archived, the table reflects confirmed data from SI/SBLive coverage.

Wrestling POY season timeline — UIL winter calendar

How to build votes for your Texas wrestling Wrestler of the Year nominee

Because the High School on SI poll draws from the entire state of Texas, the vote-building calculus is different from a metro-level weekly poll. Raw geographic population is not the decisive variable — organised network activation is. A wrestler from Liberty Hill or Brock with a tightly coordinated community effort can outpoll a 6A Dallas-area contender whose supporters are less organised. The direct poll link, placed in front of the right networks fast, is the single most important move. For general tactics applicable to any online fan poll, see our how-to vote guide; the notes below are wrestling-specific.

• UIL weight-class community: every weight class has a tight-knit community of competitors, coaches, and parents who follow results statewide. A targeted message to the 160-lb or 215-lb community across Texas — via wrestling-specific Facebook groups, Reddit's r/TexasHighSchoolSports threads, or NHSCA connections — reaches a genuinely invested audience.
• Wrestling club alumni networks: most Texas UIL 6A wrestlers also compete through USAWS clubs and USA Wrestling Texas feeder programmes year-round. Club coaches, travel-team parents, and club alumni form a ready-made vote network beyond the school itself.
• Team group chats and booster outreach: wrestling programmes at Allen, Katy Taylor, and Southlake Carroll have active booster clubs; a single message from the head coach or booster president to the programme's communication chain reaches hundreds of families within minutes.
• Social media timing: wrestling fans are most active online in the 48-hour window after UIL state concludes — momentum and engagement are at their peak. Opening the vote campaign while community attention is already on wrestling results produces the fastest early accumulation.
• Paid vote promotion: when organic networks have been fully tapped and the margin in the live standings remains wide, some campaigns use a paid promotion service to reach additional real voters. See our sports fan poll votes service for cap-aware, paced delivery.

Rules and the buy-votes question for the Texas wrestling POY poll

The High School on SI / SBLive Texas poll is a fan-engagement ballot with no cash prize and no formal Texas Prize Promotion Act framework. The practical restrictions are those imposed by the SI / Maven poll platform itself — primarily prohibitions on automated scripts and bot tools that artificially inflate vote counts. For a balanced treatment of legality across online polls generally, see our buy-votes guide.

Two categories of activity are meaningfully distinct:

• Automated scripts and bots — rapid-fire submissions from the same fingerprint or IP block that mimic votes faster than any human voter could. These bypass poll-platform integrity checks and, when detected, result in those votes being stripped from the count.
• Real-voter outreach campaigns — genuine people casting genuine votes, reached through a paid promotion channel. Structurally this is identical to a coach sending the poll link to a regional wrestling Facebook group with 12,000 members — it is fans voting, reached through a different distribution mechanism.

Whether that distinction satisfies any specific contest platform's rules is a judgement each family and campaign team must make after reviewing the current official poll page. For a poll at this scale — statewide, high-profile, Sports Illustrated branding — the reputational stakes of a contested result are higher than for a local weekly poll, and that weighs in any honest risk assessment.