BamaCentral Wins Three Associated Press Sports Editors Awards

For the third straight year, BamaCentral was recognized by the preeminent organization for daily sports journalism in the United States.

BamaCentral won three top-10 awards in the recent Associated Press Sports Editors contest for the 2022 calendar year, marking the third straight time it landed multiple honors in the prestigious annual contest. 

The site won a Digital Contest award in the "C" Division, in addition to event coverage, and an individual writing award to Katie Windham in the short feature category.

Windham's story, "The Robot That Makes Alabama Football Practice Even More Efficient," was about how the Alabama football ground crew uses technology to save time and create more accurate and aesthetic fields.

The Digital Contest was considered a sports section award, for  the online version of a new outlet. The judging was 85 percent based on five submitted entries and the other 15 percent live. 

BamaCentral was the lone outlet not currently or formerly a newspaper to win in any division in the Digital Contest.

"We're thrilled," BamaCentral publisher Christopher Walsh said. "We couldn't enter the Daily Section, Special Section or the Print Portfolio contests because you have to submit a paper copy. So the Digital Contest was the only 'section' award that we could take a shot at.

"It was very much a team award."

As for the event coverage, it stemmed from the Alabama football loss at Tennessee. Contributing were Joey Blackwell, Windham, Walsh and Mason Smith.

"That's pretty rare to win like that when you're covering the losing side," Walsh said. "We try to have as many, if not more reporters than every other media outlet at every Crimson Tide game, and in this case it certainly paid off."

APSE is considered the preeminent organization for daily sports journalism in the United States, and annually holds national contests to recognize outstanding coverage. 

There are four divisions this year, based on circulation and web hits, with "A" being the largest, and "D" the smallest. The top 10 in each category will go through a second round of judging to determine first through 10th place.

This was the second straight year BamaCentral won for event coverage (Alabama's 18th national championship in 2021). Last year it also placed in the "projects" category (10-year anniversary of the tornado in Tuscaloosa).

APSE used to be solely geared to newspapers, with BamaCentral among the first digital-only media outlets to join in January 2020. During its initial year in the contest, BamaCentral placed in the breaking news and explanatory categories in the "D" division. 

Sports Illustrated, which BamaCentral is affiliated with through The Arena Group, is another recent non-newspaper addition to the organization. Competing in the "A" category it had five top-10 finishes this year. 

Sports Illustrated honors

Beat Writing: Ross Dellenger, college football 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Beat Writing: Tom Verducci, MLB 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Breaking News: Gary Gramling and Alex Prewitt

Explanatory: Julie Kliegman

Long feature: Michael Rosenberg