Ralph Walter: My, oh my! Spokesman-Review’s sweep of awards shows the value of teamwork

Grand slams are a special feat in baseball. Same with newspaper contests.

That’s why it seems fitting to turn to the late, great Seattle Mariners broadcaster, Dave Niehaus, to help announce The Spokesman-Review sports department’s recent haul in the annual Associated Press Sports Editor’s contest honoring the best work of 2020.

‘Get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma. It’s grand salami time!’

Four categories, four Top 10 national finishes.

The APSE contest pits newspapers of similar sizes against each other. Judges weigh overall sports coverage and creativity among a selection of mandatory and optional Sunday print sections, non-Sunday print sections, special sections, as well as each newspaper’s website.

In addition to The S-R, only three other newspapers achieved perfection across all four categories: The Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Our winning sections covered a range of topics: Washington State football and Gonzaga basketball game coverage; the return of Klay Thompson to the WSU campus to have his jersey retired; the news of coach Mike Leach’s departure to Mississippi State; and the sudden end of college basketball due to COVID-19. In addition, our special section focused on WSU football, specifically the roots of Nick Rolovich’s run-and-shoot offense, and a look at the pass-happy history of Cougar football.

Just like the sports we cover, this was definitely a team effort.

Deputy sports editor Madison McCord’s talent, passion and hard work are on display each day as our lead designer for both print and online; web producer Tyler Grippi is pivotal in keeping our website humming and our social media buzzing; and ace copy editor Chris Derrick doubles as one of the best headline writers in the business.

No matter the story, hard-working reporters Jim Allen, Ryan Collingwood, Theo Lawson, Jim Meehan and Dave Nichols each bring a unique style, tireless versatility and high level of care to their beats everyday.

In addition, there are several news-side editors – Gene Warnick, Lindsey Treffry, Ryan Horlen, Mike McGarr, Rob Kauder and Katharine Kumangai – always willing to chip in. Artist Molly Quinn turns our wildest ideas into beautiful covers. Larry Weir offers commentary, insight and local interviews with his Press Box Podcast. And our crew of part-time writers (Dan Thompson, Peter Harriman, Justin Reed, Kevin Dudley, Vince Grippi and Chuck Stewart) and copy editors (Jason Shoot, Luke Byrnes, Angela Schneider, Connor Gilbert, John Kafentzis, Tom Green, Michelle Caldwell and Phil Thompson) is absolutely invaluable to our success.

And of course, there’s the “retired” John Blanchette, who earned another Top 10 award for his column writing. If there was a Spokesman-Review Hall of Fame, it would be named after him. He’s absolutely the GOAT.

But don’t take my word for it. This email, one of many I get each year regarding Blanchette, came from a longtime reader earlier this week. “John Blanchette is as good a sportswriter I’ve read in my 60-plus years of reading sports.”

Blanchette’s award was one of several individual Top 10s for our staff.

Lawson, who covers Washington State athletics, picked up two honors, one for breaking news (last August’s Rolovich-Kassidy Woods controversy), and one for his overall WSU beat coverage.

Nichols was honored in short feature writing for his story on high school football returning to Coeur d’Alene last August. Photographer Tyler Tjomsland won a first-place award for his photo from that season-opening game. Tjomsland also earned a Top 10 for a photo from a WSU-Oregon football game. Tjomsland is just one part of our incredible photo staff, which includes Liz Kishimoto, Colin Mulvany, Dan Pelle, Kathy Plonka and Libby Kamrowski.

Our Northwest Passages team of Kristi Burns and Jesse Tinsley produced a video of me reading one of my columns that even earned an award.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Who knew Ralph could read?”

‘My, oh my!’

The clean sweep marked a first in Spokesman-Review history, but make no mistake: former sports editors Jeff Jordan and Joe Palmquist have their fingerprints all over this achievement – from the obvious (they hired most of our current staff) to the unseen (a culture of teamwork and dedication they developed over four decades that our department strives to maintain to this day).

The day they stop taking my calls for guidance will be the day I call it quits.

‘Fly, fly away!’

These honors are obviously a wonderful distraction from the angry calls I get from time to time, suggesting I take a flying leap. (And that’s just from family members.)

Obviously, we’re not perfect. We still make mistakes and we can’t always please everybody. But we’re doing our best.

And these awards allow my crew to take a well-deserved victory lap. They’ve earned it.

I probably won’t be able to convince the bosses that a team-building trip to Vegas in August for the ASPE convention is necessary to collect all of the hardware.

But I’m fairly certain they’ll cover our grand salami sandwiches when we gather in the next couple of weeks to celebrate.