OU Daily students Mason Young, Austin Curtright and Nick Coppola finished second, fourth and eighth, respectively, in final results announced Tuesday for the Associated Press Sports Editors contest naming the nation’s top 10 college sports reporters.
Northwestern’s Lia Assimakopoulos won first place.
Young, Curtright and Coppola were recognized for work produced from April 2021-April 2022 on beats ranging from OU football to softball to women’s basketball as well as an enterprise piece on the escalation of football coaching salaries. The trio is interning this summer at the Detroit Free Press, Tulsa World and Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, respectively.
Only the University of Missouri placed more students in the top 10, with four. Students from Northwestern, Montana and Texas claimed the other spots in the contest, which is judged by professionals in sports media who evaluated three pieces from each candidate.
Since the contest debuted in 2017, The Daily has seen its students place in the contest 10 times and win it in 2018 (Kelli Stacy), 2019 (George Stoia) and 2020 (Stoia). Like this year, in 2018, The Daily also had three students in the top 10.