Scholastic Journalism Awards

SPORTS WRITING CATEGORY

1^ST Place

Christopher Barrett

South Kingston High School

'FIaherty Wins Rare Division I Scholarship'

"This is an excellent story idea. Whereas I half expected a light feature on Jake Flaherty, written with (justifiable) pride at a South Kingstown athlete earning a Division I scholarship. Instead this piece took a long, hard look at how extremely difficult it is for any high school student to earn an athletic scholarship... and how unrealistic it is to count on one. Along the way, the writer examined academic requirements and recruiting services and how an athlete should plan for the future. And all the while, he still managed to profile Flaherty and the accomplishments that earned him a free ride to Syracuse. I was very impressed. Excellent work!"

2^nd Place

Erik Uustal

North Kingstown High School

“This was the year”

"It isn’t often that a scholastic columnist can bring insight to a professional or national event that hasn’t already been touched upon by the mainsteam media, but Erik - by virtue of his age (there weren’t any high school -vintage professional journalists commenting on the 2003 ALCS) produced something you couldn’t read elsewhere. And he did a fine job. The heartbreaking defeat, he realized, enabled him to swear himself in as a true member of Red Sox Nation, and then he cemented his citizenship by admitting that, win or lose, he’s hooked on the Sox. (“Like it or not... I’m stuck with them”) It was an effective piece, starting right from the beginning when he compared the heartbreak that he’d experienced (Boone) to watershed moments of Red Sox misery (Dent, Buckner) that he hadn’t lived through. And the two cliches that bookend the story — 'So this is how it feels' at the start and 'there’s always next year' at the end — work perfectly. Nice work!"

3^rd Place

Christopher Estrada

Burrillville High School

“Football team aims to win state title”

"A story flows from its lead. The opening paragraph sets the tone for what follows, and the best stories stay on the track that’s laid out at the beginning.  — in many ways an excellent piece, one of the best that was submitted —The lead is that most 7-3 teams make the playoffs, yet Burrillville didn’t.   This is a well-written, well-researched piece and has a very nice focus on the victory over Hendricken, which many writers might have ignored or downplayed because it was a non-league game. "