A seven-student Boiling Point delegation finished off its weekend at the NSPA convention in San Antonio with the paper’s first award for the 2012-2013 school year.  It was a 10th-place Best of Show award in the competitive large newspaper category.

The category is the tough to win an award in because it has all the largest schools in the country, according Logan Aimone, the Executive Director of the NSPA.

“It feels wonderful to be recognized for all those late nights of hard work, staying at the school until 11:30 pm when the security guard needs to kick us out,” said Jacob Ellenhorn, one of the Boiling Point’s Co-Editors-in-Chief.

“The other schools in the category are huge schools that have tons of time to work on their newspapers.  It’s amazing that we’re being recognized with a small staff and only three computers.”

The Boiling Point also picked up its plaque for being a Pacemaker finalist, which is the NSPA’s most prestigious award.  Although they were disappointed that they didn’t win, the nomination is an honor in itself.

“The much  bigger distinction is between finalist and everybody else,” said the Boiling Point’s advisor Joelle Keene.  “Half of the finalists become Pacemakers but only nine out of hundreds of papers made it to finalist.  Nothing could compare to how it felt to be named a finalist.  This is the highest honor the Boiling Point has ever received.”

Along with these honors, the Boiling Point brought home two Honorable Mention certificates in the Story of the Year contest, one in the Multimedia category for last year’s staff coverage of the kaparot ritual on Erev Yom Kippur, and the other in the Diversity category for Leila Miller ’12’s three-story package on Haredi teenagers.