Steve Politi of NJ Advance Media won first place in the 2021 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division A Long Feature category.
Politi 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.
Matt Stanmyre, also of NJ Advance Media, finished second, and Stephen J. Nesbitt of The Athletic took third.
Sports editors in Division A submitted 68 Long Feature entries.
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. Steve Politi, NJ Advance Media (Newark), 44 points (2 first-place votes)
2. Matt Stanmyre, NJ Advance Media (Newark), 43 points (2 first-place votes)
3. Stephen J. Nesbitt, The Athletic, 38 points
4. Jeff Passan, ESPN.com, 37 points (1 first-place vote)
5. Henry Bushnell and Jeff Eisenberg, Yahoo Sports, 36 points
6. Sam McDowell, The Kansas City Star, 34 points (1 first-place vote)
7. Jeff Eisenberg, Yahoo Sports, 32 points
8. Jeff Miller, Los Angeles Times, 27 points
9. Jeff Seidel, Detroit Free Press, 25 points
10. Tom Schad, USA Today Sports, 14 points
