Gene Frenette of The Florida Times-Union won first place in the 2021 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division C Long Feature category.
Frenette will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2022 APSE Summer Conference banquet at The Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis on June 18. Click here to register for the conference.
Noah Hiles of The Beaver County Times finished second, and Drew Hill of The Daily Memphian took third.
Sports editors in Division C submitted 58 Long Feature entries.
Contest chair Jorge Rojas and fellow APSE officers Gary Potosky, Naila-Jean Meyers and Ed Reed prepared the entries. The contest is open to APSE members.
In February, judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10 on a separate 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 final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
The winner in each category will receive a plaque at the summer conference. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frameable certificates.
The top 10 is listed below with voting results and links to the winning entries.
1. Gene Frenette, The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville), 52 points (3 first-place votes)
2. Noah Hiles, Beaver County Times (Aliquippa, Pa.), 45 points (2 first-place votes)
3. Drew Hill, The Daily Memphian, 43 points
4. Tim Benz, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 36 points (1 first-place vote)
5. Theo DeRosa, The Commercial Dispatch (Columbus, Miss.), 33 points
6. Patrick Obley, Daily Sun (Port Charlotte, Fla.), 31 points
7. Eric Blum, Columbia (Missouri) Tribune, 26 points
8. Nick Suss, Clarion Ledger (Jackson, Miss.), 23 points
9. Ben Portnoy, The Commercial Dispatch (Columbus, Miss.), 21 points
10. Larry Bohannan, The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.), 20 points
