Shelley Mays and Michael Fant of The Tennessean won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2020 contest in Category B Video.
Mays and Fant will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2021 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on Aug. 18.
Alejandro Tamayo and Annie Heilbrunn of The San Diego Union-Tribune finished second and Ana Ramirez of the Austin American-Statesman was third.
A Video entry is judged, foremost, on the strength of storytelling. Visual and auditory quality will be considered.
Sports editors in Category B submitted 18 videos. 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. Shelley Mays and Michael Fant, The Tennessean, 53 points, 2 first-place votes
2. Alejandro Tamayo and Annie Heilbrunn, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 51 points, 1 first-place vote
3. Ana Ramirez, Austin American-Statesman, 44 points
4. Mykal McEldowney and Kyle Neddenriep, Indianapolis Star, 43 points, 2 first-place votes
5. Dave Morris and Jenni Carlson, The Oklahoman, 36 points, 1 first-place vote
6. Jeff Siner, Charlotte Observer, 24 points
T7. Caitlyn Jordan, Knoxville News Sentinel, 22 points
T7. Salim Michel Makhlouf, Martin Boudros and Brian Linder, PennLive/The Harrisburg Patriot-News, 22 points
9. Skylar Ballard and Lindsey Smith, The Gazette (Colorado Springs), 20 points
10. Derek Gee, The Buffalo News, 15 points
