Nick Kelly of The Tuscaloosa News won first place in the 2021 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division D Short Feature category.
Kelly will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2022 APSE Summer Conference banquet at The Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis on June 18. Click here to register for the conference.
Alex Zietlow of The Rock Hill Herald finished second, and Mitchell Forde of PowerMizzou.com took third.
Sports editors in Division D submitted 45 Short Feature entries.
Contest chair Jorge Rojas and fellow APSE officers Gary Potosky, Naila-Jean Meyers and Ed Reed prepared the entries. The contest is open to APSE members.
In February, judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10 on a separate ballot. 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 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 voting results and links to the winning entries.
1. Nick Kelly, The Tuscaloosa News, 54 points (2 first-place votes)
2. Alex Zietlow, The Herald (Rock Hill, S.C.), 42 points
3. Mitchell Forde, PowerMizzou.com, 41 points (2 first-place votes)
4. Christina Long, Southwest Times (Fort Smith, Ark.), 36 points (1 first-place vote)
T5. Nathan Dominitz, Savannah Morning News, 28 points
T5. Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 28 points
T7. Tim Buckley, The Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, La.), 26 points (1 first-place vote)
T7. Bennett Durando, Montgomery Advertiser, 26 points
T7. Chapel Fowler, The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer, 26 points
10. Robby General, The Star Press (Muncie, Ind.), 23 points
