By Erik Hall
Ira Gorawara, a recent UCLA graduate, is this year’s winner of the Associated Press Sports Editors Student Contest.
“It’s really humbling, and I’m just really, really grateful, and it’s a really cool way to kind of end off my college career,” Gorawara said.
Students submitted three pieces of work as a portfolio. Entries were from undergraduate or graduate students enrolled at a college or university during the summer 2025, fall 2025, or spring 2026 academic terms. Work covered the period from April 11, 2025, through April 11, 2026.
Gorawara’s three entries came from an internship with The Athletic. She submitted “Meet the 66-year-old retired accountant living his dream in the LSU marching band,” “Jerry Neuheisel, UCLA turned ridicule into Rose Bowl miracle in upsetting Penn State,” and “When sorority influencers meet Alabama football, game days turn into a campus-wide catwalk.”
All three were part of her internship writing about national college sports.
“Honestly, one thing that I learned at the beginning of my internship that really stuck with me is like, write what people are talking about,” Gorawara said. “And it sounds so basic, but once I really started thinking about that in all parts of my life, it really helped me.”
Gorawara, who grew up in Hong Kong, moved to the United States to attend UCLA, where she earned dual bachelor’s degrees in economics and communications earlier this month. In August, she will start a full-time role at The Athletic as a college sports writer.
She entered UCLA intending to become a sports journalist and had long been a basketball fan. But football was a blind spot, and she only began learning about it after arriving at UCLA.
Garawara recalled, “At first I was like, like, geez, how am I going to learn all this?”
But she received help from an editor at the Daily Bruin and, in a way, from John Madden.
“I remember sitting down with one of the editors being like, ‘I need you to teach me football,’” Gorawara said. “So he came with like a pencil and paper and started drawing out like different things I needed to know, and I started playing Madden on my phone to learn.”
The lessons paid off. She joins the ranks of previous winners of the annual APSE student contest, including George Stoia (Oklahoma), Kelli Stacy (Oklahoma), Emily Giambalvo (Georgia), Lila Bromberg (Maryland), Lia Assimakopoulos (Northwestern), Evan Gerike (Indiana), Colin Beazley (Villanova), and last year’s co-winners Wynton Jackson (Hampton) and Shelby Swanson (North Carolina).
“I feel like it’s just such a perfect way to like wrap up these four years and start, you know, my career,” Gorawara said. “Thank you to all the judges for just recognizing my work and trusting it.”
This year’s student contest judges were Bill Bradley, Jenni Carlson, Iliana Limon Romero, Mark Selig, Paul Skrbina, and Marcus Vanderberg.
The final top 10 ranking for the 2026 APSE Student Contest is:
1. Ira Gorawara, UCLA | 1 2 3
2. Noah White, Florida | 1 2 3
3. Aiden Stepansky, Syracuse | 1 2 3
4. Jack Albright, Marquette | 1 2 3
T-5. Trevor McGee, Tennessee | 1 2 3
T-5. Riley Orovitz, Florida | 1 2 3
T-7. Alex Carpenter, Tennessee | 1 2 3
T-7. Ben Geffner, Maryland | 1 2 3
9. Jessica Garcete, Florida | 1 2 3
10. Joaquin Diego Ruiz, Cal-Berkeley | 1 2 3
