Katherine Fominykh of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, won first place in the Division C short feature category of the 2025 Associated Press Sports Editors contest.
Fominykh’s winning entry told the story of Jameson Gerrity, a wrestler from South River High School in Edgewater, Maryland, who was born with a skull defect and is blind in one eye with vision diminishing in the other, which will likely leave him unable to see at all one day. Somehow, Gerrity piled up a 30-1 record on the junior varsity team the year before and had won for straight matches until an injury sidelined him in December.
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.
Fominykh will receive a first-place plaque. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frame-worthy certificates.
Sports editors submitted 81 entries in the Division C short feature 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 10 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. Katherine Fominykh, Capital Gazette (Annapolis, Md.) (2)
2. Chapel Fowler, The State (Columbia, S.C.) (2)
3. Taylor Eldridge, The Wichita Eagle
T4. Sam Hutchens, Clarion Ledger (Jackson, Miss.) (2)
T4. Adam Engel, Laramie Boomerang
6. Frank Bonner II, The Daily Memphian
7. Dave Eminian, Peoria Journal Star
8. Michael Niziolek, The Herald-Times (Bloomington, Ind.)
9. Rachel Roberts, Idaho Statesman
10. Ethan Hanson, Journal & Courier (Lafayette, Ind.)
