Bennett Durando won first place in the 2022 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division D Beat Writing category for his coverage of Auburn athletics for the Montgomery Advertiser.

APSE contest winners will be honored at the 2023 APSE Summer Conference banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on July 12. Click here to register for the conference, which begins on July 9 and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of APSE.     

Jane Allison Havsy of the Daily Record (Rockaway, N.J.) was second for her local sports coverage, and James Crabtree-Hannigan of the Asheville Citizen Times was third for his coverage of high school sports.   

Durando will receive a plaque. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frameable certificates.                                                                                            

Sports editors in Division D submitted 37 Beat Writing entries. 

Contest chair Naila-Jean Meyers and fellow APSE officers Jorge Rojas, Dan Spears and Ed Reed prepared the entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.

Contest results: Sections, digital, video | Writing and photography

In February, judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and remote judges around the country selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10. 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. 

Beat writing is a collection of five pieces by a single author that shows authoritative, newsy and innovative coverage of a beat. Each writer was required to submit one breaking news story, one event or game coverage story and one enterprise story. The final two pieces were left to the writer’s discretion and could include multimedia presentations.

The top 10 is listed below with voting results and links to the winning entries.

  1. Bennett Durando, Montgomery Advertiser (Auburn athletics) 1 2 3 4 5, 49 points (2 first-place votes)
  2. Jane Allison Havsy, Daily Record (local sports) 1 2 3 4 5, 43 points (2 first-place votes)
  3. James Crabtree-Hannigan, Asheville Citizen Times (high school sports)  1 2 3 4 5, 39 points 
  4. Tyler Dunne, Go Long (NFL) 1 2 3 4 5, 38 points (1 first-place vote)
  5. Marc Weiszer, Athens Banner-Herald (Georgia athletics) 1 2 3 4 5, 37 points 
  6. Nick Kelly, The Tuscaloosa News (Alabama football)  1 2 3 4 5, 34 points
  7. David Eckert, Hattiesburg American (Southern Miss athletics)  1 2 3 4 5, 27 points (1 first-place vote)
  8. Andrew Abadie, The Pine Belt News (Southern Miss athletics)  1 2 3 4 5, 22 points
  9. John Canzano, JohnCanzano.com (Pac-12 sports)  1 2 3 4 5, 21 points 
  10. Tony Tsoukalas, Tide Illustrated (Alabama football)  1 2 3 4 5, 20 points

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