Hoosier State Press Association - The Indiana Publisher - Better Newspaper Contest
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/96748
Division 3 Best Sports Event Coverage/Category 11 First place First, at last Matt Koesters, The News & Tribune (Jeffersonville) Comments: Great opening, and it just got better. Held my interest throughout. Second place Stop the press! GCHS wins opener Don Jellison, The Times (Noblesville) Comments: Really engaging story, with great quotes. Good work. Third place Sorry, Dad Ray Cooney, The Commercial Review (Portland) Comments: Nice humor to start, and the story didn���t disappoint. Best Sports News or Feature Coverage/ Category 12 First place Finding the finish line Craig Mauger, The Courier-Times (New Castle) Comments: Each of them does a good job telling a story. Second place What���s in a name? Brian Harmon, Daily Reporter (Greenfield) Comments: A story that all of us can tell but many times forget to do so. Like that they tie in the rest of the state too. Third place Self-made man Michael Reschke, The News & Tribune (Jeffersonville) Comments: None given. Best Sports Commentary/Category 13 First place John Hodge, The Courier-Times (New Castle) Comments: None given. Second place Ray Cooney, The Commercial Review (Portland) Comments: None given. Third place Ray Cooney, The Commercial Review (Portland) Comments: None given. Best Editorial Cartoonist/Category 14 See Page 67 for all divisions. First, at last Matt Koesters The News & Tribune (Jeffersonville) The trophy cases in the halls of Our Lady of Providence speak to a rich history of athletic achievement. Over the years, the Pioneers have won sectional and regional championships in nearly every conceivable team sport recognized by the Indiana High School Athletic Association. But since Providence was first founded 60 years ago, one achievement has eluded the school���s sports teams ��� a state championship. No longer. The Class A No. 1 Providence girls��� soccer team earned the first state crown in school history on Saturday at Kuntz Stadium when it defeated Class A No. 5 Mishawaka Marian on penalty kicks, 3-1, after dueling to a scoreless tie through 94 minutes of play. ���This is the best moment of my life,��� Providence junior defender Leah Mattingly said. ���I feel so high on life right now. I���m on Cloud 9. It���s amazing.��� With Providence (21-02) shooting first in the PK decider, Kasey Wallace, Kelsey Rogers and Casey Marlin were each able to get past Marian goalkeeper Makaela Douglas, and the Knights (18-3-1) were unable to get an accurate bead on the goal, with their first one ricocheting off the right post and two more sailing over the crossbar. ���I was praying the Hail Mary,��� Providence keeper Autumn Meyer said. ���That was definitely a sign that God is great and helped me through that. It was intense.��� ���I felt like we had the best keeper. I honestly felt that,��� Providence coach Dave Smith said. ���No knock on them. Their girl was rangy, but I don���t think she has the feet that our keeper had. Our keeper is outstanding. ���We shoot PKs on her all the time and she���s just a beast in the goal. She lays out her body. The ground could be hard as a rock, and she���s diving and smashing her body against the ground. She���s just amazing. I felt really good, really good going into PKs.��� Meyer allowed just one penalty kick to get past her, a low dribbler by Marian freshman D.J. Veldman that snuck under the Pioneer keeper as she dove in the correct direction. ���She made the right dive. She read the play correctly,��� Smith said. ���It was a nice shot. It was nice and low. Those are For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.��� One step at a time Craig Mauger The Courier-Times (New Castle) Almost 20 years later, Chris Bratton still remembers the curtains. When his son, Benjamin, was an infant, hospital employees pulled curtains out around Chris��� family for privacy. Chris knew those curtains meant bad news was coming. Doctors told Chris they were going to pronounce his young son dead because of severe brain damage. Later, they told Chris that Benjamin would never breath on his own. They said Benjamin would never sit up. But Benjamin ��� now 17 years old ��� survived. He breathed on his own. He sat up. And in less than three weeks, Benjamin, who suffers from cerebral palsy, blindness and autism, will compete in his second triathlon in Muncie. Early on in Benjamin���s life, Chris decided that both he and his son had to stay active. be active so he could live a long life and could be there for his disabled son. ���It was important for me,��� Chris said. ���I���ve got to be around. He needs me to be alive as long as I can be alive.��� For his son, good health was necessary to improve his lifestyle and to defeat the odds against him, Chris said. Many people think disabled children can���t do physical activities, so the children sit around and their health deteriorates. But not Benjamin. When he was just in preschool, his training began with the simple task of learning to clap. It took coordination and use of both sides of his body. ���It���s a long road,��� Chris said. Chris, who is a volunteer firefighter and helps design fire trucks, said he knew he had to For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.��� ���What we told you is what it should have been,��� doctors later told Chris. ���And there���s no explanation for why it���s not.��� This week, Chris, 48, of Anderson, and Benjamin sat together at a table in New Castle. Benjamin stared downward, playing the children���s game Bop It as his father talked about the odds his son overcomes every day. Benjamin was born premature and he suffered brain damage at birth. In addition to cerebral palsy and autism, his vision is distorted and he hears out of only one ear. Scenes of tourney defeat John Hodge The Courier-Times (New Castle) The scene was timelessly familiar. I���ve witnessed it at least a hundred times. I���ll see it a few dozen more times, as long as I follow this sport. High school basketball players coming out of a locker room drenched in tears. Parents and friends waiting with hugs and words of consolation. And somewhere off to the side, a coach talking to the press, trying to find something positive to say. It doesn���t matter what decade we���re in, what size school, or whether it���s a girls or boys team. Tournament elimination is just as heart-rending in 2012 as it was in 1962. Last Saturday night, I saw this happen to the Hagerstown girls team. It was the same scene I saw with the New Castle boys team in 2007, after the loss to Indianapolis Brebeuf. Five years before that, I saw Kyle Cox in the locker room, not wanting to take off his Blue River Viking uniform for the last time. It hits especially hard when the team has had a great season and is expecting a long tournament run. Hagerstown entered the sectional with a 19-2 record, a senior-loaded lineup and victories over every other team in the field. Why wouldn���t the Tigers and their fans expect a sectional championship to follow? But in basketball, no two games are exactly alike. Hagerstown���s two victories over Centerville during the regular season were no guarantees that it would be the same the third time around. Evidently the Bulldogs had learned enough about the neighboring Tigers to turn the tables this time. ���Life isn���t always fair,��� Hagerstown coach Chris Oliger told his players. ���Sometimes you���ll do everything right and still not have things break your way.��� Or, as Aslan said to Lucy in ���The Chronicles of Narnia,��� ���Things never happen the same way twice, dear one.��� For seniors, tournament elimination means more than just the end of a season. It means the end of a long relationship with classmates. There will be no spring practice, no summer leagues, For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.��� Page 35