The high school football season is beginning to wrap up across the country and we start to take a closer look at player of the year awards.

But first, we want to let the fans decide on who they believe are the players most deserving before we here at High School On SI start naming the top performers of the 2024 season.

We continue to the West region and to the great state of Idaho and we ask the question: Who was the 2024 Idaho Football Player of the Year? 

This list consists of five worthy candidates and we’re asking for your help as the fan to vote on who you believe had the best season this fall.

Voting will end on December 31st, 2024.

SBLive voting polls are intended to be a fun way to create fan engagement and express support for your favorite high school athletes and teams. Unless expressly noted, there are no awards for winning the voting. Our primary focus is to highlight the abilities and accomplishments of all the athletes and teams included in our poll. You can vote as often as you wish and are encouraged to share our polls with others. – SBLive Sports

Here are the nominations:

Chosen as the state’s Gatorade Player of the Year, there’s a lot to like about the 6-foot-4, 275-pound lineman from Rocky Mountain. In his junior season, the bulldozer of a lineman paved the way for Rocky Mountain’s offense in a major way, compiling an astounding 115 pancake blocks. Don’t think because he plays in Idaho that he’s not getting any national attention, as Tanner already has offers from Boise State, Boston College, BYU and Michigan among them.

Named the 6A Offensive Player of the Year, Symons put up some terrific numbers for the Vikings this past 2024 campaign. The junior 6-foot-4, 190-pound signal caller completed 194-of-294 passes for 2,869 yards and 25 touchdowns. When it came to passers, no one threw for more yards than Symon this past fall.

Another signal caller that put up some terrific numbers during the 2024 campaign was Garcia from Skyline. In helping lead the team to a successful 10-3 campaign, Garcia led the way on offense by completing 140-of-226 (61 percent) for 2,301 yards, 27 touchdowns through the air. On the ground, Garcia rushed for 448 yards and four scores.

No running back put up the kind of numbers Weil racked up throughout the 2024 season for Lakeland. The workhorse running back carried the rock 269 times for 1,945 yards and found pay dirt 30 times. Averaged an impressive 7.2 yards per carry, nearly setting up 2nd and short situations aplenty for the Lakeland offense.

Just a sophomore this past season, Vidlak made an impression on the Idaho high school football scene and recently received an offer from Stephen F. Austin. Vidlak was named conference player of the year after leading Fruitland to a quarterfinal playoff game and throwing for 2,649 yards and accounting for 33 total touchdowns.

Follow High School On SI throughout the 2024 high school football season for Live Updates, the most up to date Schedules & Scores and complete coverage from the preseason through the state championships!

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— Andy Villamarzo | villamarzo@scorebooklive.com | @highschoolonsi

China’s communist government moved last week to ban exports of three key energy minerals – gallium, germanium, and antimony – to the United States as tensions between the two world powers continue to escalate during the presidential transition period. The three minerals at play in this US/China trade war have a wide range of applications, including for the military, batteries, and renewable energy.

“In principle, the export of gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials to the United States shall not be permitted,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a written directive published December 3.

An Escalating US/China Trade War

China’s latest move to limit exports of rare earth and critical energy minerals with military applications to the US market came a day after the Biden administration announced enhanced semiconductor export controls specific to China, the third such crackdown in the past three years. The US limits will apply to 140 Chinese companies and will limit exports of the kinds of high-bandwidth chips that are crucial for development of AI applications for military and other purposes.

Biden Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a release that the latest move is intended to prevent China from “advancing its domestic semiconductor manufacturing system, which it will use to support its military modernization.”

The US has become self-sufficient in producing some of the minerals in question in times past. But the decision by policymakers and regulators in the US and other OECD nations to make the approval of new mines near-impossible starting in the 1970s put an end to that, enabling China to move to dominate the mining, processing, and supply chains for these key minerals over the last 40 years. As a result, these countries and others have become largely reliant on imports from China for their needs.

An Opportunity Related To Antimony

Where antimony is concerned, this could all be about to change. As a reference for those unfamiliar with this critical mineral, I detailed the myriad military and technological applications for antimony in a story published in May 2021. That is one of a series of stories I’ve written here since 2021 about the efforts by mining company Perpetua Resources to restart the mothballed Stibnite Mine in central Idaho.

Originally established as a gold mining operation in 1927, the Stibnite mine later discovered a large store of antimony, and was able to supply over 90% of the antimony – crucial to the production of tungsten steel – required by the US military during World War II. Output from the mine went into a gradual decline following the War, and it was mothballed in 1996. Recognizing a growing need for new domestic resources of antimony, Perpetua Resources acquired the mine and has been working for well over a decade now to obtain the federal state and federal permits needed to reopen its operations.

In addition to the again-rising needs of the military, antimony is also a critical ingredient in most modern technologies, including those critical to the success of electric vehicles and wind and solar power development. From a national security standpoint, it is now obviously problematic that the U.S. is now unable to supply the vast majority of its antimony needs. Perpetua Resources believes that, once reopened, the Stibnite Mine can provide up to 35% of US needs of this critical mineral.

In a timely coincidence of events, relief could be on the way. The U.S. Forest Service announced in September the publication of a draft record of decision (ROD) authorizing Perpetua to start up operations at the Stibnite mine. If all goes to schedule under the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act, the final decision could come before the end of December.

Anticipating that positive outcome, and in response to the rising trade war between the US and China, Perpetua Resources announced Monday it has entered into a non-binding agreement with Sunshine Silver Mining & Refining to explore the potential for the domestic processing of the antimony recovered from he Stibnite mine.

“Stibnite gold project is the only identified domestic reserve of antimony, and with final federal decisions expected in a matter of weeks, Perpetua is ready to work with US companies to help secure domestic production of antimony,” Perpetua CEO Jon Cherry said.

A wise person once observed that timing is everything in life, and the looming completion of this complex permitting process related to the Stibnite Mine seems a prime example barring further delays. It could become a fortunate example of one door flying open as another closes.

But it is key to remember that the US has to this point been sourcing the vast majority of its antimony needs from China and that it will take months if not years to bring this single mine to full production. Then there’s the fact that antimony is but one of an array of rare earth and critical energy minerals for which similar supply issues will now exist in the wake of the Chinese embargo.

The Bottom Line: A Big Mess To Clean Up

As he ramped up his administration’s attempt to force a heavily subsidized energy transition on the American public in 2021, Joe Biden famously committed to mount a “whole of government effort” to secure new supply chains outside of Chinese domination for these mineral needs. To date, these efforts have been sporadic and largely unsuccessful. This reality, combined with this accelerating trade war between the US and China and the interminable state and federal permitting processes now threaten to fully stall an already slowing transition.

When he assumes office on January 20, President-elect Donald Trump and his appointees are going to have one big mess on their plate where these minerals are concerned unless this US/China trade war is quickly resolved.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal appeals court is expected to hear arguments Tuesday afternoon over whether Idaho should be prohibited from enforcing a strict abortion ban during medical emergencies when a pregnant patient’s life or health is at risk.

The state law makes it a felony to perform an abortion unless the procedure is necessary to prevent the death of the patient. President Biden’s administration sued Idaho two years ago, contending the law violates a federal rule called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, because it prevents doctors from performing abortions that save their patients from serious infections, organ loss or other major medical issues.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case earlier this year, but bounced it back to the lower court on a procedural issue, leaving unanswered questions about the legality of the state abortion ban.

Idaho officials have argued in court filings that the state abortion ban doesn’t violate EMTALA. Instead, they say the fetus or embryo should be considered a patient with protections under EMTALA as well. They also argue that doctors have enough wiggle room under the law to use their best judgment about when to treat pregnant people with life-threatening medical conditions.

“Taking EMTALA for what it actually says, there is no direct conflict with Idaho’s Defense of Life Act,” attorneys representing the Idaho Legislature wrote in court filings earlier this month. “Nothing in EMTALA requires physicians to violate state law. And nothing in Idaho law — whether in EMTALA-covered circumstances or beyond — denies medical care to pregnant women.”

About 50,000 people in the U.S. develop life-threatening complications during pregnancy each year. Those complications can include major blood loss, sepsis, or the loss of reproductive organs. In rare cases, doctors might need to terminate a pregnancy to protect the health of the pregnant person, especially in cases where there is no chance for a fetus to survive.

But some state abortion bans have made medical decisions that once seemed clear feel particularly fraught for emergency room physicians. Complaints that pregnant patients were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“These harms are not hypothetical,” Idaho’s largest hospital system, St. Luke’s Health System, wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief in October. “In all of 2023, before Idaho’s law went into effect, only one pregnant patient presenting to St. Luke’s with a medical emergency was airlifted out of state for care. Yet in the few months when Idaho’s new abortion law was in effect, six pregnant St. Luke’s patients with medical emergencies were transferred out of state for termination of their pregnancy.”

One of those patients had severe preeclampsia — a condition that causes dangerously high blood pressure that can be fatal if untreated — and the others had premature rupture of their membranes, putting them at risk of life-threatening infections, St. Luke’s said.

“The stakes could not be higher,” ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project Deputy Director Alexa Kolbi-Molinas said Monday. She noted recent news reports in Texas about women who died after being denied appropriate treatments for incomplete miscarriages. “The reality is, exceptions don’t work. They don’t actually protect the health and rights of pregnant people regardless of what is written on the page, and that is just the reality when you threaten physicians with criminal penalties.”