By Joe Sullivan, Boston Globe
Peter Baugh and Nick Kelly, two Missouri undergraduates, were working together on The Maneater, the independent student publication last year.
It was Kelly doing the writing and Baugh the editing. “He was probably too nice at times,’’ said Kelly, the writer. “I said, ‘Peter, it’s OK you don’t have to use kid gloves here.’ ’’
That’s because Kelly wanted to improve and his editor took notice.
“He’s good,’’ said Baugh, the editor. “Clean copy. You could just watch his writing grow; he definitely got better as the semester went on.’’
These are two Missouri-trained journalists who are going to succeed in sports journalism and they are both winners of the 2017 APSE Scholarships. The Tigers have been designated as winners of the Tim Wheatley Memorial Scholarship and the Jack Berninger Scholarship.
Laura Ordonez of San Francisco State has been awarded the Roy Hewitt Scholarship and the final winner is Jordan Horrobin of Ohio University, who is the first Canadian to win the scholarship.
Ordonez, 30, is a single mother of a 9-year-old boy. She is determined to succeed in sports journalism despite the massive obstacles she has encountered, including losing her full-time job because it interfered with classes.
“I want to be in sports,’’ she said. “My long-term goal would be to write about travel and women’s issues.’’ One of her stories in her scholarship application was an excellent piece about athletes’ negative treatment of women.
Horrobin is working this summer for mlb.com covering Detroit Tigers home games in the city across the river from his hometown of Windsor, Ontario. He also has a familiar mentor in APSE member Justice Hill, who is on the faculty at Ohio. Not surprisingly, it was a hockey story that was also an intense personal story – of a deceased brother – that was the highlight of his application.
Baugh is having quite a summer, using the semester to study in Belgium along with interning at Politico. But enough politics, it’s back to sports in the fall.
“The internship made me realize how much I love sports and how much that’s what I ultimately want to be covering,’’ he said. His writing connected sports to some excellent personal stories.
Kelly has a summer internship at the Post-Bulletin in Rochester, Minn., and then will work at the Columbia Tribune in this academic year. He’s been covering the Rochester Honkers of the Northwoods Baseball League.
He’s also done work for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he wrote this neat story about a remarkable athlete.The APSE Scholarship committee is made up of Noreen Gillespie of the Associated Press; Erik Hall,
The APSE Scholarship committee is made up of Noreen Gillespie of the Associated Press; Erik Hall, freelancer for Outsports and other publications; Julie Jag of the Santa Cruz, Calif., Sentinel; Jeff Kuehn of the Oakland, Mich., Press; Jason Murray of the Syracuse Post-Standard; Joe Schiefelbein of the Baton Rouge Advocate; Lisa Wilson of ESPN and Joe Sullivan of the Boston Globe.
