Amelia Hurley and Jaeden Day of The Montgomery Advertiser won first place in the Division D breaking news category of the 2025 Associated Press Sports Editors contest.
Hurley and Day’s winning entry reported that the Alabama High School Athletic Association was discussing a split between public and private schools, with a reclassification model that would have separated private schools into a standalone league, removing them from competition against public schools at least for postseason play.
APSE contest winners will be honored at the 2026 APSE Summer Conference banquet July 18 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Va. Registration for the conference is open; you can register right here.
Hurley and Day will receive a first-place plaque. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frame-worthy certificates.
Sports editors submitted 52 entries in the Division D breaking news category. Contest chair Perryn Keys and APSE officers Paul Barrett, Erik Hall and Tony Maluso prepared the entries.
Contest results: Digital, print and podcasts | Writing and photography
Judges convened in late February, in person at the APSE Winter Conference in Las Vegas and remotely around the nation, to select the top entrants. The committee determined nine finalists, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10. The final 10 were given to a second judging group in late February and March, ranking the entries from Nos. 1 to 10 in the same fashion.
The final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
The top 10 are listed, with first-place votes in parentheses, along with links to the winning entries.
The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
1. Amelia Hurley and Jaeden Day, Montgomery Advertiser (3)
2. Sean Highkin, The Rose Garden Report (2)
3. Emilee Smarr, The Tuscaloosa News
4. Taylor Lyons, The Aegis
5. Shelly Stallsmith, York (Pa.) Daily Record (1)
6. Sarah Clifton, Montgomery Advertiser
7. Dylan Jespersen, Petoskey News-Review
8. Cory Diaz, The Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, La.)
9. Nicholas Coppola, Las Cruces Sun-News
10. Tim Dashiell and Tom Smith, Carroll County Times
