Nicholas Dawidoff of The New York Times won the Explanatory writing award for the over 175,000 circulation category in the 2015 Associated Press Sports Editors contest.
Dawidoff’s piece on the triangle offense in basketball received the most votes, and beat out Andy McCullough of The Kansas City Star and John Branch, also of The New York Times. McCullough’s piece was about how baseball came back to life in Kansas City in the 2014 playoffs. Branch wrote about climbing a sheer rock face in Yosemite.
Dawidoff will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2016 APSE banquet. The banquet and awards dinner concludes the APSE Conference June 22-25 at the Omni-Charlotte in Charlotte, N.C.
The contest is open to all APSE members. To join, click here.
Judging was done in late February-early March at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersbug, Fla.
The top 10 is listed below with links to writers’ Twitter pages, APSE member websites and winning entries.
1. Nicholas Dawidoff, The New York Times, 56 points, (4 first-place votes)
2. Andy McCullough, The Kansas City Star, 50 points
The night Kansas City baseball came back to life
3. John Branch, The New York Times. 43 points (1 first-place vote)
Battling up a shear Yosemite face, seizing a dream, not a rope
4. Jim Baumbach and Laura Albanese, Newsday, 40 points (1 first-place vote)
Helmets and concussions on Long Island.
5. Brent Schrotenboer, USA TODAY Sports, 39 points
Fetal stem cells and the sports heroes they revitalized
6. Pat Forde, Yahoo! Sports, 26 points
That time no one wanted to buy American Pharoah
7. Jeff McLane, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 points
Evolution of a play-caller; Chip Kelly’s curious football mind
8t. Jim Baumbach, Newsday, 20 points
Huge performance bonuses commonplace for NCAA basketball coaches
8t. Adam Kilgore, The Washington Post, 20 points
Daily fantasy sports web sites find riches in Internet gaming law loophole
10. Joe Freeman, The Oregonian. 15 points
Mark Shoff: The rise and fall of Lake Oswego’s boys basketball coach
