(BATON ROUGE, La.) — The Paper Wolf and The Guerilla Wolves descended on LSU’s campus on Nov. 13, 2014, for the annual Louisiana Scholastic Press Association (LSPA) Conference for a day of learning and competition, returning with 15 awards.

“LSPA was a great experience. We got to do a lot of workshops that helped strengthen our skills. It was great to be able to bond together as a staff,” said Nick Ashton, News Editor for The Paper Wolf.

Ashton won the on-site News Writing competition at the conference, facing off with student journalists from around the state.

“It was a competition that had a lot of great writers, and to be able to be recognized among them is a great honor for me,” said Ashton, who also went to Louisiana Scholastic Journalism Institute (LSJI) on LSU’s campus over the summer, which is a week-long version of LSPA, and saw many of the same people at LSPA.

“I’m really proud to be a part of The Paper Wolf, and I think that we are better as a group because of what we did there,”  said Ashton.

All of the students that went to LSPA feel that their skills were sharpened and that the experience really did help them become better writers.

“LSPA was an interesting experience, seeing all the types of journalism that you can do and the things you have to do to become a well rounded journalist,” said Turner St. Romain, who won honorable mention for his sports photo of the Aqua Wolves in action.  “I was surprised that I won, and I was happy that I won, and it feels good that all my hard work is paying off.”

St. Romain also feels very proud that so many of his peers also achieved success and is excited to see the progress that The Paper Wolf staff can achieve.

“The experience was pretty awesome. It was great to be recognized for what I have done. It was cool to see other journalism programs and see SPS sweep the awards,” said senior Turner St. Romain.

The Guerilla Wolves film club also represented SPS well, placing in four of the five categories they entered. Brandon Gallego and Parker Layman placed first in videography for  “The Reagan Hill Story”. Gallego also won third in video editing in the on-site competition. As a group, the Guerilla Wolves won third place in newscasting. Casey Fitzmaurice and John Larson got honorable mention in sportscasting.

The Paper Wolf got 11 total awards. The Paper Wolf won first place in Online/Digital Newspaper. Nick Ashton won first place in the on-site news writing competition. Parker Layman also won first place in the on-site photo editing competition.

Chase Whittington won second place in the sports photo competition for The Missed Penalty Call. Casey Fitzmaurice won second place in sports writing for St. Paul’s Aims to Knock Out Concussions. Trey Couvillion won second place in the one-site headline and cutline writing, he also won second place in news writing for Big House to Begin Saving Local Dogs.

Kole Gorney won third place in the on-site photo editing. Ross Allbritton won third place in feature writing for Ukrainian Conflict Hits Home. Turner St. Romain won honorable mention in sports photo for Aqua Wolves. To wrap up the award ceremony, The Paper Wolf staff won honorable mention for best overall newspaper.

“It’s impressive that The Paper Wolf won honorable mention in overall points when they were unable to enter in 20 percent of the categories, which are reserved for printed newspapers,” Principal Bro. Ray Bulliard, FSC, said when presenting the awards during his assembly. “If you have not yet subscribed to The Paper Wolf, you should.”

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(Slide show photos courtesy LSPA.)