The association's most venerable contest, the Jesse Abramson Award for writing, is now open for submissions. We are also excited to announce the creation of two new awards this year.

Our plan is that all the awards will be presented at the TAFWA breakfast, to be held in Eugene during the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, June 25-28. With all the awards, one may nominate oneself, or nominate someone else. The contest is open to TAFWA members; this may be a good opportunity to renew your membership along with your entry.

Further details about the 2009 awards:

1. The Jesse Abramson Award, won last year by John Meyer of the Denver Post. Please submit five samples of track and field/running writing for 2008 — at least one feature, at least one meet/competition story, and three other articles of your choosing. Tear sheets, printouts or PDF copies all admissible.

Please send to Scott Davis, 4432 Snowbird Circle, Cerritos, Calif., 90703, or email to ssd@aol.com. The deadline is May 10.

2. Our first-ever award for photography, which we are calling, with his permission (and thanks), the Rich Clarkson Award.

A longtime TAFWA member, Rich Clarkson has worked in photojournalism for over 50 years. His professional career has included the positions of director of photography and senior assistant editor of The National Geographic Society, assistant managing editor/graphics of the Denver Post and director of photography of The Topeka Capital-Journal. He has worked over the years as a contract photographer for Sports Illustrated, has photographed at least seven Summer Olympics and a Winter Olympics, and was manager of photography in the main stadium of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

He has been not only a leading photographer, but a leader in the profession, as well as a mentor to young photographers. He’s very, very deserving of this recognition. Hopefully, he’ll be in Eugene to present the award himself; heck, he might even wind up presenting it to himself.

Please submit five track and field/running photographs from 2008 — at least one feature photo, one action photo, and three other photos of your choosing. (Prints or jpegs).

Please send to Rob Romig, Graphics director, The Register-Guard, 3500 Chad Drive, Eugene, Or., 97408, or email to rob.romig@registerguard.com. The deadline is May 10.

3. Our first-ever award for track and field blogging. Name to be determined, as this is probably an award that will evolve in the coming years.

An eligible nominee is a person for whom the blog is the primary outlet, as opposed to writers with other forums (newspapers, magazines). A "blog", for the purposes of this award, is an online publication where articles are dated and time-stamped, and allow readers to respond directly to individual articles.

Please submit links to five samples of your work from 2008. If a sample includes a series of posts, please indicate which posts are to be considered.

Please send to Parker Morse, pjm@parkermorse.net. Deadline is May 10.

Now, on other news of interest:

1. Michael Reilly, UO assistant athletic director, says the setup for the USATF meet in Eugene will be similar to that for the Olympic Trials, except on a scaled down version. The media tent won’t be as large, as they expect to be able to accommodate all the writers in the West Grandstand. But the general traffic flow will be the same, in terms of the location of the mixed zone and interview tent, and they plan to have the temporary staircase leading directly from the West Grandstand work area to the mixed zone area.

2. Finally, nonprofit groups are always in need of new, energetic leadership. Ideally, we’d get a team in place, with a line of succession (new president and first vice president and even second vice president) shortly after the USATF meet, to work with Ed Gordon and others who have been the glue holding this together. Please let President Ron Bellamy know if you are willing to make a commitment of time and ideas to TAFWA.