AUSTIN, Texas — The Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting
jury named Dave Kindred and Chris Ballard the 2018 award winners.
Kindred won the Lifetime Achievement award while Ballard was honored
for the best sportswriting of the previous year.
This is the second year these national awards have been presented, and
they are named in honor of the legendary Texas sportswriter, Dan
Jenkins, to celebrate the craft and culture of sportswriting he has
personified through his storied career. For more information see
www.jenkinsmedal.com.
The winners will be honored and will receive their medals – presented
by Jenkins – at a banquet on Sept. 21, hosted by The
University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Sports Communication &
Media and emceed by Mary Carillo of NBC Sports.
Kindred, a beloved fixture in the sportswriting community will be
honored with the Jenkins Medal for Lifetime Achievement in
sportswriting. Kindred has been a sportswriter across seven decades.
He has written 11 books. He has been a columnist at the Louisville
Courier-Journal, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and
Golf Digest. He is a winner of the Associated Press Sports Editors Red
Smith Award and the ESPN/PEN America award for Lifetime Achievement in
Literary Sportswriting. A native of Atlanta, IL Kindred is a graduate
of Illinois Wesleyan University.
“Dave Kindred has been a standard-bearer for sportswriting for nearly
half a century,” said Dr. Michael Butterworth, director of the Center
for Sports Communication & Media. “Whether as a columnist or book
author, he has consistently displayed a gift for bringing stories—and
people—to life. His gift for language and his love of the poetry
inherent in sport make him an ideal recipient of this award.”
Ballard, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, will be awarded the
Jenkins Medal for Best Sportswriting of 2017 for his profile of NBA
coach Monty Williams. Ballard’s winning article topped a field of 13
writers shortlisted as candidates for Jenkins Medal for Best
Sportswriting. He was also a finalist for the inaugural Jenkins Medal
for Best Sportswriting.
In addition to his work at SI, Ballard is a lecturer at the UC
Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and the author of four books,
most recently “One Shot at Forever.” He has written for The New York
Times Magazine, and his work has been anthologized in The Best
American Magazine Writing and The Best American Sports Writing. He is
a National Magazine Award finalist and six of his stories have been
optioned for film. He writes features, columns and longform stories
for Sports Illustrated. After attending Pomona College, he received a
Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University.
“Chris Ballard’s winning piece beautifully captures the humanity of
sports and its ability to forge relationships,” Butterworth said. “As
a testament to loss, forgiveness, and resilience, it is an exemplar of
contemporary sportswritng.”
Winners of the 2017 Jenkins Medals were Frank Deford in the Lifetime
Achievement category and Wright Thompson in Best Sportswriting.
The Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence is awarded by a jury of renowned
sportswriters and editors from across the country, including co-chairs
Sally Jenkins and Michael MacCambridge. Jury members for lifetime
achievement in sportswriting include Karen Crouse, Chuck Culpepper,
Vahe Gregorian, Will Leitch, Joe Posnanski, Steve Rushin, and Seth
Wickersham. For best sportswriting of the previous year, jury members
include Kirk Bohls, Bryan Curtis, Tracee Hamilton, Melanie Hauser,
Kathleen McElroy, John Walsh and Gene Wojciechowski
Dan Jenkins’s 24th book, “Sports Makes You Type Faster” will be
released later this month. The volume is his 12th work of nonfiction
to go along with his 12 novels. After beginning his career at the Fort
Worth Press and the Dallas Times Herald, Jenkins gained national
prominence during his nearly quarter-century spent as the most
prolific writer in the history of Sports Illustrated, where he became
the nation’s best-known writer on college football and golf, and
authored “Semi-Tough,” the first in a series of best-selling novels.
Jenkins has received the Red Smith Award from the Associated Press
Sports Editors Association, the Ring Lardner Award from the Union
League of Chicago, the PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing and
the lifetime achievement award in sports journalism from the PGA of
America.
The Center for Sports Communication & Media (CSCM) in the Moody
College of Communication sponsors the Jenkins Medal. The center brings
together interests in the instruction, practice and scholarship of
sports journalism, broadcasting, media production and human
communication. CSCM sponsors programming such as the McGarr Symposium
on Sports and Society, which includes the annual Frank Deford Lecture
on Sports Journalism. In addition to these lectures and events, the
Center seeks to connect students to peers, faculty and industry exerts
by developing professional networks and hosting educational programs
on campus.
