Arizona Republic High School Football Play of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Wednesday at 5 p.m. — and why it changes everything

Three days. That is the window. The Arizona Republic publishes the Play of the Week ballot Monday or Tuesday, closes it Wednesday afternoon, and that compressed timeline separates this poll from every comparable state prep-football vote in the country.

For context: the SI / SBLive Dallas / North Texas ballot — same format, same fan-vote mechanic — closes Monday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific, giving DFW campaigns five days from game weekend. The comparable Texas statewide polls run to Sunday night. Arizona runs to Wednesday afternoon, MST, which Arizona holds year-round because the state does not observe daylight saving time. In early September, when most of the country has shifted its clocks forward, Arizona's 5 p.m. close arrives an hour earlier relative to Mountain time than it appears — a detail that catches out-of-state supporters who convert the time wrong.

The second thing worth knowing is what kind of vote this actually is. Not a player vote. A play vote.

The Republic's staff nominates specific moments — a 99-yard kickoff return by Jeyvon Tuipulotu of Hamilton, a one-handed leaping interception by Crew Leavitt of Queen Creek, Spencer Heath of Highland blocking a punt and taking it to the end zone — and the ballot description next to each name is the ballot. A voter reading "defensive lineman interception, Sebastian Aranki, Horizon" is making a different evaluation than a voter looking at a stat leader board. That framing matters for campaigns: the narrative the Republic writes for your nominee is part of your campaign asset, not just a label.

Both facts together — Wednesday close, play-specific frame — make this poll structurally distinct from every SI / SBLive ballot in the same state. Plan for it accordingly.

What the confirmed ballot fields actually show

No weekly Play of the Week winner is publicly confirmed by the Republic. The paper writes up results, but does not aggregate them in a searchable format. That is the honest limit of what the record shows. What the confirmed 2024–2025 ballots do reveal is the full editorial range.

Read the play-type column. Special teams and defense appear in every confirmed field — not as token inclusions but as plays the editors chose over available offensive stat lines that same week. Noah Morrison of Tucson Pusch Ridge, a smaller-classification school two hours south of Phoenix, was nominated alongside East Valley Open Division programs in a semifinals week ballot. That did not happen by accident; the Republic editors decided an offensive lineman recovering a fumble for a touchdown in a playoff semifinal was worth a ballot slot.

That selection pattern is useful information for anyone trying to get a play nominated. The editors will credit a remarkable moment from a 4A school in southern Arizona the same week they nominate a 99-yard return from an Open Division powerhouse. Classification does not determine the editorial shortlist here — the play does.

AIA divisions on a statewide ballot

Arizona's Interscholastic Association runs seven football divisions for 11-man play in 2025–2026: Open (roughly 16 elite programs by invitation), 6A (29 teams, largest enrollments), 5A (49), 4A (59), 3A (32), 2A (57), and 1A. Every one of them is eligible.

The East Valley corridor — Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Scottsdale — dominates Open and 6A. Hamilton, Chandler, Chandler Basha (the 2025 Open Division state champions, who beat Chandler 34-7 at Mountain America Stadium on December 6), Liberty, Pinnacle, Desert Mountain, Desert Edge, and Queen Creek are the names that recur in both playoff results and play nominations. Tucson programs like Salpointe Catholic and smaller schools like Pusch Ridge appear when their plays are genuinely exceptional, not on the strength of proximity to the Republic's Phoenix newsroom.

What the division structure means for the fan vote is this: enrollment caps nothing, but community density caps everything. Pusch Ridge, a 4A school in Tucson's Oro Valley, carries roughly 1,400 students; a Chandler 6A program like Hamilton or Chandler itself pulls from a student body of 4,000 or more. On the field those enrollments determine roster depth, practice quality, and recruiting pull. On the Poll.fm ballot, they mean something almost opposite: the Tucson school winning a statewide vote in 72 hours requires mobilizing nearly its entire student body — every player texting every contact, the coaches sharing the link, the local boosters posting Monday and again Tuesday night — while the East Valley 6A program can reach the same vote count by activating a fraction of its base and still win. That asymmetry is why organization matters more than raw size, and why a remarkable play from a smaller school can absolutely hold a lead if the community around it is disciplined about the Wednesday close. The division gap is real on Friday night; on Poll.fm it stops mattering the moment the article goes live.

Running a campaign in 72 hours

Monday afternoon: the article posts. Wednesday 5 p.m.: done. That is your window, and most of it disappears if you don't start Monday.

The Poll.fm widget allows repeat submissions, so the instinct is to grind from a handful of motivated phones. That instinct is wrong. The better move is reach — every player texting their own contact list the day the article goes live, booster accounts sharing the link Monday afternoon and again Tuesday night, the athletic department putting the azcentral.com article in their official channels rather than just naming the player. By Wednesday morning the window to move the number meaningfully is closing fast.

One thing this ballot has that most comparable state polls don't: a Yahoo Sports mirror. The same Poll.fm ballot appears on Yahoo at a separate URL, and both feeds count toward the same total. A school with a committed recruit whose recruiting audience spans multiple states can route votes through Yahoo without anyone needing the azcentral.com paywall to load. That is a real distribution channel the East Valley schools use by accident — their highly recruited players draw national follower bases who will click a Yahoo Sports link.

For a week when your nominee faces a well-organized Open Division program with thousands of local followers, structured vote-support campaigns exist for exactly this kind of compressed public ballot. The how-to guide covers the weekly cadence common to open fan polls. More Arizona prep contests are listed at /usa/arizona/, and the full national directory is at /usa/.