Tampa Bay High School Football Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Three Florida polls, one Sunday close — what sets Tampa Bay apart

The Oct 28, 2025 Tampa Bay ballot put an interior defensive lineman on the same field as a 332-yard running back and a back who scored on 5 carries. That is Errol Demontagnac III of Armwood — 9 tackles, 4 tackles for loss, 2 sacks — alongside Kameron Battle's 38-carry day for Carrollwood Day and Hezekiah Davis's 151-yard, 1-TD line for Tampa Jesuit. The SI Florida desk did not narrow the Oct 28 field to the biggest offensive number. That is the most useful single fact about this ballot before building a nomination.

High School on SI runs three independent regional football polls in Florida — Tampa Bay, South Florida, and Central Florida — all closing Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific. They share nothing beyond the close time. A Tampa Bay nominee never competes against a Miami-Dade star or an Orange County quarterback in the same week.

The Tampa Bay ballot is most distinctly itself when compared with South Florida. Chaminade-Madonna and St. Thomas Aquinas carry alumni networks that extend across multiple states — a structural mobilization advantage the SI Florida desk cannot equalize by editorial design. Tampa Bay's private programs, Tampa Jesuit and Carrollwood Day, carry real community loyalty within the Tampa metro, but their reach is local rather than national. That means the Tampa Bay race is generally more open: when a well-organized Hillsborough public school and a well-connected private school face each other on the ballot, the gap is not predetermined the way it can be in South Florida.

Why this poll and not the others — when the Tampa Bay ballot matters most

The most important structural fact about the Tampa Bay ballot: it is the only confirmed Florida regional poll where an interior defensive lineman made the field. Errol Demontagnac III of Armwood made the Oct 28 field with a pure pass-rush line — 9 tackles, 4 tackles for loss, 2 sacks — alongside a running back with 332 yards on 38 carries (Kameron Battle, Carrollwood Day) and a tailback who scored on a 151-yard, 5-carry game (Hezekiah Davis, Tampa Jesuit). The SI Florida desk was not awarding the ballot to whichever position produced the biggest number; it was selecting performances that defined their games, regardless of position. That is worth knowing before a nomination submission is built around offensive yards alone.

The second structural fact: the Dec 2 ballot fell during the FHSAA semifinal-or-championship window. Armwood's safety Dmontae Tims put up his line in a 42-0 win — a scoreline you see only in deep playoff bracket play. Tampa Jesuit's dual-threat quarterback Will Griffin appeared in the same week with a combined passing-and-rushing game. When two playoff-bound programs both produce ballot nominees in the same week, their supporters are already emotionally invested in following results. That context produces the highest organic engagement of the season for any weekly POTW poll.

Confirmed 2025 nominees — what the record shows

The confirmed 2025 Tampa Bay season ran at least six weeks of polling, from the August preseason opening through the December state-championship window. The two most fully documented weeks are Oct 28 and Dec 2.

Two patterns in this data are worth naming. First, Armwood and Tampa Jesuit each appeared twice — in different positions each time. A program that surfaces multiple nominees across separate weeks, in different roles, is producing consistent individual excellence across phases, not one breakout game. Second, Conway's Dec 2 efficiency — 9-of-11 passing with 4 touchdowns, a near-perfect decision rate — sits in sharp contrast to Griffin's higher-volume dual-threat line in the same week. The SI Florida desk put both on the ballot, which means two very different quarterback archetypes competed for the same recognition in a single playoff week.

Additional polls on Aug 18, Oct 21, Nov 18, and Nov 25 are confirmed but with less nominee detail in the available record. Those weeks exist and produced winners; the names and stats are not documented in the same depth as Oct 28 and Dec 2.

How the Tampa Bay fan network actually operates

Hillsborough County runs one of the largest public school systems in Florida, and the programs that surface on the Tampa Bay ballot draw from recognizably different community structures. Understanding which type of program a nominee comes from tells you how a vote campaign is likely to move.

Plant, in the heart of Tampa, is a historic Hillsborough County public school with a football program that consistently competes for state recognition. Its fan base is wide and Tampa-rooted — current families, alumni spread across the metro, and locals for whom Plant football is a reference point in the city's sports calendar. Armwood in Seffner draws from east Hillsborough County, where school-community identity is tighter and more geographically concentrated — a profile similar to how small-town programs operate in other states, except Armwood is a large public school rather than a rural one. It has produced NFL-level talent and carries the kind of booster loyalty that shows up fast when one of its players is on a poll.

Tampa Jesuit operates differently: a private, Jesuit-affiliated school in central Tampa whose alumni network is genuinely cohesive and organizationally active. A Jesuit family is often part of an alumni association, a booster organization, or both — channels that receive a poll link and act on it the same day. Carrollwood Day, a private north-Tampa school, runs a smaller but similarly connected parent-and-alumni base.

The result is that the Tampa Bay ballot is not predictable by school size alone. Armwood's confirmed two-week presence in the 2025 poll record — including a Dec 2 appearance during a 42-0 playoff win — reflects a community that organizes for these moments. Tampa Jesuit's back-to-back appearances with different players shows a program whose network turns out whether the nominee is a running back in October or a dual-threat quarterback in December. Plant and Lakeland, the two powerhouses most often named as regional standards, carry the weight of long football tradition behind any poll campaign their supporters choose to run.

Because this ballot is open, uncapped, and settled entirely by turnout before Sunday night, the race belongs to whichever community reaches more real voters in time. Services such as vote-support campaigns exist for weekly polls like this for exactly that reason. More Florida contests are at /usa/florida/.