Mike Sielski of The Philadelphia Inquirer won first place in the Division A long feature category of the 2025 Associated Press Sports Editors contest.
Sielski’s winning entry was a deep exploration on what led Drexel men’s basketball player Terrence Butler to commit suicide Aug. 2, 2023, and about his family, friends and teammates’ long search for understanding, even two years after Butler’s death. It was, as Sielski put it, “at once core-shaking to those who knew and cared for (Butler) and, after a few days, just another speck of troubling news during troubling times to those who did not. It marked one of the rare occasions in which someone, especially someone so young, had died by suicide and the manner of death was immediately acknowledged and publicly revealed.”
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.
Sielski will receive a first-place plaque. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frame-worthy certificates.
Sports editors submitted 51 entries in the Division A long 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. Mike Sielski, The Philadelphia Inquirer (4)
2. Brendan Quinn, The Athletic
3. Luca Evans, The Denver Post
T4. Dotun Akintoye, ESPN.com (2)
T4. Chip Scoggins, The Minnesota Star Tribune
6. Christopher Kamrani, The Athletic
T7. Luke Johnson, The Advocate/The Times-Picayune
T7. Matt Stanmyre, NJ Advance Media (Newark)
9. Adam Himmelsbach, The Boston Globe
10. Kevin Armstrong, NJ Advance Media (Newark)
