By Lauren Campbell / APSE Diversity Fellows
APSE executive director Bill Eichenberger was honored Friday with the Jack Berninger Award for service to the organization.
Eichenberger was presented the award during the APSE Summer Conference in Charlotte, N.C.
Recalling a conversation with Eichenberger, APSE president Naila-Jean Meyers said Eichenberger always said yes to “whatever they asked me to do.”
Eichenberger was APSE president in 2003-04 when he was the sports editor at Newsday, and he currently is an editor at Sportico. Other stops during his career include the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Bleacher Report, the Wall Street Journal, the Akron Beacon Journal and Macon Telegraph.
“Being able to serve in APSE in this role has been an honor,” he said Friday during the Red Smith Award luncheon.
Eichenberger said his wife told him that those in APSE have become his “tribe” and his “people” over the course of his 35-plus years of attending APSE events. But what’s made his time with his “tribe” and “people” so special over time is that it has “become extremely diverse.”
“I remain really optimistic about the future of our profession,” Eichenberger said, noting it’s because of the people he meets everywhere, including Callie Lawson-Freeman — a Diversity Fellow for the APSE’s 12th class.
“I got a lot of friends in this room.”
During Thursday’s opening executive committee meeting, former APSE president Tommy Deas said sponsorship for this year’s event “exceeded expectations” with the help of Eichenberger, which was “above and beyond.”
Jack Berninger was APSE’s executive director for 10 years before he retired in 2017.
Berninger Award winners
- 2024: Bill Eichenberger
- 2023: Glen Crevier
- 2022: Roy Hewitt
- 2021: Herb Stutz
- 2020: Joe Sullivan
- 2019: Ed Storin
- 2018: Colleen Berninger
- 2017: Jack Berninger
