Geoff Calkins of The Daily Memphian won first place in the 2022 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division C Long Feature category for “Twenty years ago, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and the world came to Memphis.”

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.  

Chapel Fowler of The State (Columbia, S.C) was second, and Michael Lananna of The State was third.                          

Geoff Calkins

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

Sports editors in Division C submitted 54 Long Feature 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.  

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. 

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

  1. Geoff Calkins, The Daily Memphian, 51 points (3 first-place votes)
  2. Chapel Fowler, The State (Columbia, S.C.), 45 points (1 first-place vote) 
  3. Michael Lananna, The State (Columbia, S.C.), 42 points
  4. Noah Hiles, The Beaver County (Pa.) Times, 37 points (2 first-place votes)
  5. Amie Just, Lincoln Journal Star, 34 points
  6. Theo DeRosa, The Commercial Dispatch (Columbus, Miss.), 28 points
  7. Alex Martin, The News-Press (Fort Myers, Fla.) , 26 points
  8. Taylor Eldridge, The Wichita Eagle, 25 points
  9. Kellis Robinett, The Wichita Eagle, 22 points
  10. Matt Vautour, MassLive.com/The Republican, 21 points