Courtney Pedroza of The Leaf Chronicle of Clarksville, Tenn., won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2018 contest in Feature Story for the D Division.
Her story about gender identity and non-traditional high school football players finished just ahead of Joel Reichenberger of Steamboat Pilot & Today of Steamboat Springs, Colo.
Sports editors in the D Division submitted 83 feature story entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest chair Todd M. Adams and fellow APSE officers John Bednarowski, Lisa Wilson and Dan Spears prepared entries, which included online links to stories for the first time this year.
In February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Orlando, Fla., and off-site around the country, selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10 separately on a secret ballot. Entries were given 10 points for a first-place vote, nine points for second and so on down to one point for a 10th-place vote. The final 10 were given to a second judging group, which ranked the entries 1-10 in the same fashion.
The winner and final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
Pedroza will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2019 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Omni CNN Center in Atlanta on June 19. The second- through 10th-place writers will receive frameable certificates.
Feature stories were required to be one single article, not a series, and could not include sidebars. Judges were instructed to emphasize human interest, reader interest, quality of writing and thoroughness of reporting.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries..
1. Courtney Pedroza, The Leaf Chronicle, Clarksville, Tenn., 58 points (3 first-place votes)
2. Joel Reichenberger, Steamboat Pilot & Today, Steamboat Springs, Colo., 57 points (2)
3. Brad Elliott Schlossman, Grand Forks Herald, 54 points (2)
4. Amie Just, The Missoulian, Missoula, Mont., 41 points
5. Sam Blum, The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Va., 34 points
6. Jane Allison Havsy, Daily Record, Rockaway, N.J., 33 points
7. Jonas Pope IV, Durham Herald-Sun, 21 points
8. Greg Woods, The Manhattan Mercury, 30 points
9. Ron Morris, Durham Herald-Sun, 28 points
10. Brady Keane, Denton Record-Chronicle, 19 points
