Lohud Girls Basketball Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Ossining and Eastchester — the axis that shapes every ballot

Ossining's Class AA stranglehold on Section 1 girls basketball is the starting context for this poll. The RedHawks have been the dominant program in the section's top classification for multiple seasons — they produced the March 2026 ballot's nominee during championship week, a player who posted 17 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 steals in a title game. When Ossining is in the sectional finals, the school's community does not need to be reminded that a lohud poll is open. The timing overlaps with the highest emotional moment of the year for that fan base, and the votes follow.

On the other end of the competitive spectrum sits Eastchester — a school whose girls basketball program has won enough recognition to place Deanna Biancardi on a ballot that drew 28,155 confirmed votes. That is the only raw vote total on public record for this poll, and it tells you the ceiling a motivated Eastchester campaign can reach. Eastchester and Ossining are not in the same classification tier, but they share the Section 1 ballot, and on a fan-vote that means enrollment stops being the deciding variable.

Then there are the repeat-nominee schools: Emilee Doherty of Yonkers Montessori appeared on two separate confirmed ballot weeks in the same season. Yonkers Montessori is a smaller school by Section 1 enrollment standards. Its presence on multiple ballots alongside Rye, Albertus Magnus, and Ardsley is its own kind of data — a single standout player from a non-traditional power can return week after week when the performance justifies it, and the school's community can consolidate around that one name.

Wednesday 3 p.m. ET — the close that changes everything

Every other fan-vote poll in this state guide closes on a Sunday or a Monday. Lohud closes Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, and that single structural difference reshapes how a winning campaign is run.

A Sunday-close poll gives you the weekend: a Friday-night game, a Saturday-morning share blast, Sunday afternoon to grind. The lohud ballot opens Monday and ends Wednesday before the work day is over. That is a Monday-to-Tuesday window — two days plus a Wednesday morning — before the clock stops mid-afternoon. There is no Sunday push, no Pacific time buffer, no end-of-day grace period.

The implication is that Tuesday night is the decisive mobilization window here — not Sunday. The team group chat, the parent booster page, the alumni share — those need to land Tuesday evening when there is still time to act before Wednesday's mid-afternoon cut. A campaign that waits until Wednesday morning has two or three hours. One that fires Tuesday night has the full overnight before the close.

What the confirmed nominee weeks reveal about this market

Two full ballot weeks are confirmed in enough detail to read. The March 10, 2025 poll — a five-nominee field — drew Iva Corluka from Ardsley, Emilee Doherty from Yonkers Montessori, Phoebe Greto from Rye, Riley Harold from Albertus Magnus, and Ava Rogliano from Tuckahoe. A five-name ballot that splits between a Class AA suburban program (Mamaroneck-area Rye), two Catholic-adjacent or independent schools (Albertus Magnus, Yonkers Montessori), and two smaller public programs (Ardsley, Tuckahoe) is a clean picture of Section 1's range.

The separate confirmed week included Casey Cummings from Nyack, another Emilee Doherty nomination from Yonkers Montessori, Juliana Manginelli from Tuckahoe, Emma McHugh from Tappan Zee, and Julia Scott from Albertus Magnus. Tappan Zee's appearance is notable: the boys basketball poll has produced multiple Tappan Zee winners (Isaiah Leveille, Jack Piccone, Christian Sanchez in the same season), and the school's footprint in the lohud basketball ecosystem runs across both programs.

What neither of those weeks tells you is the vote margin — only Deanna Biancardi's 28,155-vote result has a confirmed total. That figure is the calibration point for the Section 1 girls basketball ceiling. For broader context on New York's fan-vote landscape, see New York high school sports polls, and the full national directory is at /usa/.

Running a winning campaign on a 48-hour runway

Because the window is Monday-to-Wednesday, the campaign structure is compressed. Getting on the ballot is step one — and it starts before the week's games are played. Coaches and families who want a Section 1 performance recognized by lohud should get a complete stat line to the lohud sports desk before the editorial team builds that week's nominees. A great game nobody flags can be omitted.

Once the ballot is live, the reach question is different here than in a Sunday-close state poll. There is no long tail. The school's strongest mobilization levers — parent group chats, the booster association's social pages, the team's own accounts — need to activate Monday or early Tuesday. The confirmed vote ceiling (Biancardi's 28,155) tells you that the winning total in a contested week is not hundreds of votes; it is tens of thousands, and those numbers come from breadth of reach, not one phone voting in a loop.

For campaigns where organic reach falls short of what a competitive week requires, vote-support services can be structured to deliver volume within the mid-week deadline window. The how-to guide covers the weekly cadence for this kind of recurring fan-vote poll. The single structural priority here is simple: treat Tuesday night as the final push, not Wednesday morning.