Geoff Morrow of The Sentinel won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2020 contest in Category D Long Feature.
Morrow will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2021 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on Aug. 18.
Sean Collins of The Manhattan Mercury finished second and Mitch Rupert of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette was third.
A Long Feature entry is a feature story that is more than 1,000 words. This entry is what we commonly call “Enterprise” in our newsrooms.
Sports editors in Category D submitted 40 stories. The contest is open to APSE members.
Contest chair and First Vice President Gary Potosky and fellow APSE officers President Lisa Wilson, Second Vice President Jorge Rojas and Third Vice President Steve Hemphill prepared the entries.
Because this year’s in-person APSE Winter Conference was canceled due to the pandemic, all judging was remote during three weeks in February. Each category had a set of judges examine all entries, choose a Top 10 as a group (in some cases, the ranking includes fewer or more than 10 entries), and each of those judges ranked the finalists individually. A second set of judges in each category then also ranked those finalists.
The winner and 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 links to the winning entries, and voting results.
1. Geoff Morrow, The Sentinel, 47 points, 2 first-place votes
2. Sean Collins, The Manhattan Mercury, 45 points, 1 first-place vote
3. Mitch Rupert, Williamsport Sun-Gazette, 42 points, 1 first-place vote
4. Josh Vitale, Montgomery Advertiser, 40 points
5. Danielle Allentuck, The Daily Advertiser, 33 points, 1 first-place vote
6. Reece Waddell, Denton Record-Chronicle, 29 points, 1 first-place vote
7. Randy Whitehouse, Sun Journal, 26 points
8. Cory Diaz, The News-Star, 24 points
T9. Matt Tait, Lawrence Journal-World, 22 points
T9. Greg Brownell, The Post-Star, 22 points
