For the second straight year, The Hatchet took home the best non-daily newspaper award for the mid-Atlantic region at the Society of Proffesional Journalists’ regional conference.

The award puts The Hatchet in contention to repeat as the nation’s best non-daily paper. The SPJ will announce national winners at its annual September convention, held this year in Las Vegas.

The independent newspaper’s staffers received 13 individual awards at the organization’s Saturday regional conference in Towson, Md., surpassing the 11 Mark of Excellence awards they won last year. The mid-Atlantic region includes schools from D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina.

Sports editor Alan Siegel led the newspaper with three first place awards, getting top honors for sports column writing, general news reporting and sports reporting.

Editors and writers also got first place awards for editorial writing, feature writing and sports photography.

-Michael Barnett