LANSING – The Southfield Jay news staff won a flurry of awards at the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association (MIPA) spring conference.

At the annual conference, high school newspapers across Michigan compete in on-site contests and receive awards for submitted photos, advertisement designs, stories, cartoons and videos.

The Southfield Jay newspaper  and its website, Southjay.com, each received the MIPA Gold Award for excellence. The judge of the print edition wrote in the evaluation booklet, “The strength of this paper is that it offers readers new and unique stories discovered by staffers and built from interviews.”

The judge of the website wrote, “You have a knack for covering the interesting angle of a story, and this makes your site very engaging.” In other comments, the judge wrote, “Your site is clean, easy to navigate, and organized.”

In addition to the Gold Awards, six Southfield Jay staff members received individual honors from MIPA:

Seniors De’Enlas Head and Tiffany Harris received first place in Online Breaking News Coverage for their reporting on National Signing Day.

Head also received three other awards:

• 3rd place Environmental Portrait
• 3rd place Sports Feature Story
• Honorable Mention Sports Feature Story

Entertainment Editor Tiffany Harris received two additional awards:

• 2nd Place Advertising Layout
• Honorable Mention Advertising Layout

Co-Editor-in-Chief Katherine Nealy received three awards:

• 2nd place Online Follow-Up News Coverage
• 2nd place Sports Action Photo
• 3rd place Online Breaking News Coverage

Co-Editor-in-Chief Ashley Guinn received an award:

• Honorable Mention Editorial

Staff Artist Parrish Pierce received an award:

• Honorable Mention Editorial Cartoon

News Editor Ariel Walker received an award:

• Honorable Mention Feature Columnist

The Southfield Jay staff as a whole also won second place in Editorial Opinion Page Spread.

Co editor in chief Katherine Nealy said she is very proud of the staff this year and pleased to have won honors herself. “I’m honored to have been recognized for my work. Placing three times for three different categories really means a lot to me, but I’m more proud of our staff.”

Head and Harris worked hard together to receive their first place award; Harris took the photos while Head wrote the story. Harris said, “I put my best foot forward in the work that I do, (but) it is still a surprise when other people notice that effort, and to be able to say I am an award-winning journalist is amazing.”

Head said,”I am just glad to see hard work pay off.”

The MIPA contest received 4,464 total contest entries, according to MIPA’s contest report. The entries were divided into four divisions. Southfield High was entered into Division 3, for schools with enrollments of 815 – 1289, including 21 schools, such as Utica High School, Birmingham Seaholm, North Farmington, Wylie E. Groves  and East Grand Rapids High School.

In a separate journalism competition sponsored by Quill and Scroll, Staff Artist Parrish Pearce won an honorable mention for editorial cartooning.