The award-winning epiphany

I was sharing this story with Doc Holiday and he thinks it's good enough to share with the main body, so let's try it.
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I literally looked at my office wall one day and said – I need some new decorations.

So the first thing I thought was – win some awards! They add that special something to an office wall that leather bound books and the smell of mahogany do for a man’s apartment. [The sarcasm/reality mix is about 50-50. Just go with it.]

A former colleague is the president of the state press club. I asked her if I could enter the annual writing competition and she encouraged it because the online classification could use a competition upgrade.

Why not? It was either spend the money on that or take shooting lessons.

My classification was merged with the small newspaper classification for sports feature writing and sports column writing. Still was going up against titans such as the South Florida Gay News, Orlando Business Journal and the Coastal Star Weekly for sports reporting. [Insert sarcastic comment here...]

Results came back and I was invited to join many good enemies of the people at the annual banquet. It was a pleasure reconnecting with some old colleagues, meeting some I knew by byline only and enjoying dinner with some new friends, one of which went to our school’s arch-rival. Within 15 minutes, we were talking mutual acquaintances and planned on meeting up at the Classic three weeks later. It was a nice night.

Got crushed in feature writing. It reemphasized that I need to work on that.

Won for best sports column. I smiled. This was a good win – remember I was up against actual sports columnists and this proved that I’m as full as shit as Bianchi and the rest of the ilk. I BELONG IN A BROADCASTED SHOUTING MATCH NOW!

This is the fun part.

Sports reporting—Second place.

If you remember that one thread about running stories from SIDS, I referred to a guy who considers all PR types as “flaks” with an incredible amount of contempt. The best way to describe him as that guy in the newsroom who thinks it’s his coverage of the story, not the story itself.

He won.

WHAT THE FRAK?

My entries were a gamer about an assistant coach making her head coaching debut for a nationally-ranked team while the head coach was back home ready to give birth at any given moment; the story of two relay teams qualifying for the NCAA National Championship and a November blowout story about a power forward who couldn’t finish a coast-to-coast play but still registered his 4th straight double-double.

His entry was about Vince Carter signing with the Hawks, Chipper Jones being enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame and a Daytona 500 recap.

Wow, you can win awards and you don’t have to leave your living room!

I’ll be honest. I had that "Stephen Colbert `I lost to Barry Manilow' at the Emmys moment", then the president came up to me.

“Dan, we don’t know how the hell that happened,” she said with a mix of disbelief and disdain. She’s also had some “fun” times with him as well.

I just started laughing.

“You know what? I asked. "This will keep me somewhat humble. He’s having some health problems. He gets a win. (He had two others, actually.) Good for him! I got a win. Yay Me! And the second place certificate takes up just as much space on the wall as the first place plaque -- which is what I came here for -- and it’s for telling three really cool stories of my student-athletes. It's actually just as good as winning, in this case.

"This has been a nice night. I’m good. Let’s go to the bar!”

Hope this story and my life lesson made sense. The wall looks a little nicer, but I feel even better about the whole experience.

Besides, no award can ever match receiving the kind of universal acclaim on SportsJournalists.com I did for my coverage of the 1988 Nakatomi Plaza Christmas Eve Incident. Yipee-kay-eh, mother f------s!

 

Good on ya for keeping some perspective and having fun with it.
I learned a long, long time ago that there is no rhyme or reason to contests, only consistency. I've seen guys I've worked with who couldn't write their way out of a paper bag win state press association awards for feature stories, guys who barely left the office win awards for reporting, and stories I wrote that I knew were great get shut out completely because some hack in Shelbyville happened to find a local teeball kid with cancer. Those stories seem to get an automatic win every time, no matter how they're written.
It keeps you a little humble, seeing good work you've done finish second. It also infuriates you when you happen to see what beat you. If you let it get to you either way, it can be mind-melting.

 

Winning one of those awards someday would be cool but it's not something I think about or spend any energy on. It doesn't actually matter.

 

Everyone should get orange slices, though.