Theo DeRosa won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2022 contest in the Division C Game Story category for coverage of Mississippi State softball in The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus, Miss.

APSE contest winners will be honored at the 2023 APSE Summer Conference banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on July 12. Click here to register for the conference, which begins on July 9 and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of APSE.     

Andrew John of The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.) was second and Joey LoMonaco of The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.) took third.                   

DeRosa will receive a plaque. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frameable certificates.                                                                                   

Sports editors in Division C submitted 48 Game Story entries. 

Contest chair Naila-Jean Meyers and fellow APSE officers Jorge Rojas, Dan Spears and Ed Reed prepared the entries. The contest is open to APSE members.  Click here to join.

Contest results: Sections, digital, video | Writing and photography

In February, judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and remote judges around the country selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10. 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 top 10 is listed below with voting results and links to the winning entries.

  1. Theo DeRosa, The Commercial Dispatch (Columbus, Miss.) 46 points (1 first-place vote)
  2. Andrew John, The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.), 41 points
  3. Joey LoMonaco, The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.), 40 points (3 first-place votes)
  4. Chapel Fowler, The State (Columbia, S.C.), 38 points (1 first-place vote)
  5. Dan Spears, Wilmington StarNews, 35 points
  6. Matt Daniels, The Champaign News-Gazette, 31 points
  7. Tim Buckley, The Daily Memphian, 28 points (1 first-place vote) 
  8. Lou Bezjak, The State (Columbia, S.C.), 25 points
  9. Chris Kwiecinski, Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune 24 points
  10. Michael Cuneo, Wilmington StarNews 22 points