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

Two polls, two deadlines: the map before the vote

Most states with a High School on SI football fan vote have one weekly ballot. Washington has two that run at the same time, in the same market, with the same class-mixing premise — and they close three days apart. That structural fact shapes everything else on this page.

The field-size difference is meaningful beyond aesthetics. On SI's ~20-name ballot, votes scatter across twice as many nominees; winning percentages are lower and a motivated mid-size community can move the needle with less absolute turnout. On VarsityWA's 10-name field the vote concentrates faster — a school that comes in organized can own a third of the field before most communities have posted the link once.

The overlap matters too. Chace Webster of Olympic appeared on both the SI Week 7 ballot and VarsityWA's Week 7 ballot in the same week. If your player lands on both, you are running two campaigns with two deadlines — the Friday noon VarsityWA close arrives before most SI supporters have started their Monday push. The two polls require separate mobilization plans, not a single shared one.

What the 2025 VarsityWA winners reveal about how Washington votes

Four confirmed VarsityWA winners from 2025 give the clearest picture of what actually decides these polls.

Blake Moser of Lake Stevens won Week 1 on a game-winner — a 15-yard TD pass with under a second remaining in a 31–28 win over Sumner. He won Week 12 on volume — 342 pass yards, 5 TDs, and 82 rush yards in a 76–41 state quarterfinal over Moses Lake. Those are two completely different types of performance that both produced wins. The consistency across the season reveals something about Lake Stevens as a community: a fan base that voted in September returned in November, months later, to vote again. Back-to-back 4A state championships in 2022 and 2023 built a following that treats the weekly ballot as part of following the program, not a one-off favor.

Ta'a Malu of Annie Wright won Week 8 on a stat line that could only come from a true two-way lineman: a tackle for loss, two QB hurries, a fumble recovery, and three pancake blocks in a 20–0 shutout of Lynnwood. He holds a University of Washington defensive line commitment. A player winning a weekly fan vote on a lineman's stat sheet is unusual on any ballot in any state — it points to a VarsityWA field construction that genuinely considers defensive and interior performances, and to an Annie Wright community that organized fast enough to out-poll skill-position nominees in the same week.

Gage Williams of Chiawana won Week 7 — the same week Webster appeared on both ballots. Chiawana is in Pasco, in the Tri-Cities area east of the Cascades. East-side programs and west-side programs appear on these statewide ballots together, and the east has demonstrated it can win. Geography does not predict outcomes here; organized turnout does.

The WIAA class landscape: six tiers on one ballot

Washington's six WIAA classifications run from 4A (1,201+ enrollment in grades 9–11) down to 1B (1 to 104). The SI Week 7 ballot placed Jayden Stoddard of Wahkiakum and Caleb Cummins of Neah Bay alongside Blake Moser of Lake Stevens — programs separated by hundreds of students and completely different football scales, on the same voting list.

That range is the point. The fan-vote format is where enrollment disappears as a variable. A 1B program in a town of a few hundred, where every family with a student in the building knows the nominee personally, can mobilize a higher participation rate than a 4A school with a sprawling, loosely connected alumni base. The absolute ceiling on votes is lower for a small school; the activation rate is often higher. Tumwater's multiple 2A titles and Anacortes's back-to-back 2A championships (2024–2025) show what sustained community investment looks like at that level — and those communities know how to move together.

For campaigns: the question is not what class your nominee plays in, but how fast and how centrally your community actually connects. A 4A school's booster network runs through hundreds of loosely linked sub-groups; a 1A or 2B school may route a link through what is effectively one group text. Both can win. Different windows matter for each.

Running a campaign across two deadlines

If your player lands on only one of the two ballots, the plan is straightforward: identify the close, treat the final day as the decisive one, and widen the circle rather than repeat-voting from a single device. On SI that final day is Monday; on VarsityWA it is Friday morning. Both polls are unlimited, which means the real constraint is reach, not per-voter output.

If your player lands on both ballots simultaneously — as Webster did in Week 7 — the campaigns are distinct. VarsityWA closes Friday at noon, which means your Thursday evening push for VarsityWA is happening at the same time your SI campaign is still in its opening days. Mixing the two deadlines in a single message ("vote for [player]!") without specifying which link sends supporters to the wrong poll or the wrong week's article. The share has to name the platform and the close time.

For Week 7 on SI, Edith Noriega is the listed author covering Washington football for the 2025 season — the article byline is the clearest confirmation you are on the right week's ballot. For VarsityWA, the article title changes when the poll closes to announce the winner; a post still titled "Vote for VarsityWA's Football Athlete of the Week" is still open.

Structured vote campaigns designed for open, unlimited weekly ballots exist for exactly this format. For how the weekly fan-vote cadence works in general, the how-to guide walks through recurring poll mechanics. The broader context for state-level fan votes is at /usa/washington/, and the full national directory is at /usa/.