Patrick Obley of The Daily Sun in Port Charlotte, Fla., won first place in the 2021 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division C/D Projects category for his series on the victims in an Ohio State sexual abuse case.
Obley 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.
Greg Hadley and Ben Portnoy of The State finished second, and Adam Fisher, Greg Hardwig and Ed Reed of The News-Press took third.
Sports editors in Division C/D submitted 21 entries in Projects.
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. Daily Sun (Port Charlotte, Fla.) – Patrick Obley 1, 2, 3, 52 points (3 first-place votes)
2. The State (Columbia, S.C.) – Greg Hadley and Ben Portnoy 1, 2, 3, 51 points (1 first-place vote)
3. Naples (Fla.) Daily News – Adam Fisher, Greg Hardwig and Ed Reed 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 43 points (1 first-place vote)
4. Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald – McClain Baxley 1, 2, 3, 35 points
5. The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer – Chapel Fowler, Adam Smith, David Thompson 1, 2, 3, 4, 34 points
6. The Beaver County Times (Aliquippa, Pa.) – Noah Hiles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 33 points (1 first-place vote)
7. The Roanoke Times – Michael Niziolek 1, 2, 3, 4, 31 points
8. The News-Press (Fort Myers, Fla.) – Alex Martin, Dustin Levy and Adam Fisher 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 24 points
9. BamaCentral – Christopher Walsh, Joey Blackwell, Tyler Martin and Edwin Stanton 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 21 points
10. Denton (Tex.) Record-Chronicle – Brett Vito 1, 2, 6 points
