Sometimes in this line of work, all you get are small victories. Maybe it’s a subtle “nice story,” from a bystander at the ballparks or a “great picture in the paper today,” from people who mistake me for Geoff Griffin, but it does feel good when my work – something I never refer to as hard because I love it – gets recognized.

In the last few months though, there was a major win I could’ve gotten that seemingly slipped through my fingertips. When the Best of the Best ballots went out, the best local columnist category was brought back and I just knew my loyal readers would push me to the top. It turns out Bethany Porter – a rival I never knew I had – was the winner.

The revenge tour must start now. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m super happy for Bethany. I was reminded just this week on Facebook when I won the award as a young writer in 2011, with ‘Simmons Says’ unseating Duane Sherrill’s ‘Taking a Stand’ as the top local column, how nice it is to get that notoriety. Then, I was the youngster collecting hate mail by the day every time I took aim at somebody – or some team or school – in my column.

So, in some ways, this feels like the baton being passed. The only problem is I’m not ready to hand over the crown. Instead, I’m going to do everything in my power to take it back. 

Does that mean I’m going to steer back into controversial topics that elicit strong reactions? Maybe. Maybe not. Being funny is usually my go to instead, though humor through columns sometimes doesn’t come out the way it is intended, especially from somebody as sarcastic as I am.

I’ve actually decided over the last few years that there’s really not a lot of sports topics, particularly locally, that get people fired up anymore. One reason may be that we’ve been winning in the majority of sports lately, so nobody has found a good ax to grind. 

Another reason is the majority of our WCHS coaches are all from Warren County. For better or worse, local fans around here give a lot longer leash to homegrown coaches than they do to out-of-towners.

Lastly, and probably the major reason why I’m just second place this year, is that I am an admitted sunshine pumper of all Pioneer sports. I want Warren County to succeed at everything and like to find the positives in everything, so much so that I retired the somewhat controversial ‘Good, Bad and Ugly,’ years ago. 

Rarely do people get angry about reading good news. I’m actually thankful for that and even more thankful Warren County’s teams have been providing plenty of wins to fill up pages for the last year. 

So if I’m going to beat Bethany next year, I may have to come up with a different strategy. I did jump into A section on the opinion page for the first time a few months ago writing about politics, so maybe I could lean right into that more. Or maybe I could stop talking about doing a podcast and actually start talking on a podcast so I can build an audience to flood the ballots next year.

One way or another, I’m going to make this work. Bethany will not go back-to-back next year because that is what Simmons says.