NATCHITOCHES — Acclaimed Alexandria journalist Bob Tompkins was a major honor winner Sunday at the Louisiana Sports Writers Association Award Brunch held at Merci Beaucoup Restaurant in Natchitoches.
Tompkins won the state “Columnist of the Year” award for work published in the Rapides Parish Journal in 2024. His columns appear each Tuesday in the RPJ.
His three winning entries were about a conversation with golf great Jack Burke Jr., a Sunday afternoon LSU baseball game experience, and a heartwarming return to campus by Tioga High School football legend Chris Williams.
The headlines:
- Thankful for a visit with golf legend Burke
- Feeling the love even in a loss at Alex Box
- Return of a hero: Fitting Tioga honor for LSU great Chris Williams
The contest judge wrote: “Three well-told, human-centric pieces that tell us a story and then go just a little bit beyond that to find the deeper lesson. These pieces were very well-crafted and the writer should be proud of them.”
Tompkins took second place in the “prep columns” division for his piece on retired local basketball coach Alan Tinsley titled “Tinsley had a coaching career worth whistling about.”
The award-winning stories, all in the Class II division for publications with circulations under 10,000, can be found using the RPJ’s search button.
Writers for Journal publications in Natchitoches, Ruston and Shreveport-Bossier collected 21 awards. Content editor and provider Doug Ireland was named the LSWA’s state sportswriter of the year after eight of his stories from 2024 were cited for excellence in the contest, judged by out-of-state sports editors and journalists.