John Holt to receive Art McGinley Award from Connecticut Sports Writers' Alliance

The Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance is pleased to announce that WFSB sports anchor/reporter John Holt has been selected as the winner of this year’s Art McGinley Award. The award, given in memory of a sports editor of the now-defunct Hartford Times, recognizes notable contributions to the Alliance and to sports journalism in the state.

Holt will be honored at the Alliance’s 74th annual Gold Key Dinner on April 26 at the Aqua Turf Club, Southington. Holt is emceeing his fourth straight Gold Key Dinner and has been active annually in publicizing the dinner to viewers of WFSB TV and CPTV Sports.

A 1994 graduate of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Communications, Holt has spent the last 21 years anchoring and reporting on New England sports at television stations in the Worcester, Providence, Boston and Hartford/New Haven markets. In 1997 and 1998, he was a pregame and sideline reporter for Boston Red Sox broadcasts on WABU and in 2001 and 2002 he served as an anchor/reporter for the New England Regional Sports Report on Fox SportsNet New England (now Comcast SportsNet New England).

Holt began as a full time sports anchor/reporter at WFSB in 2003. Since that time WFSB has gained a reputation for its’ dedicated coverage of high school sports through its Friday Night Football and Friday Night Frenzy shows. Next month Holt and his on-air colleague Joe Zone will receive the Connecticut High School Coaches Association’s Joseph J. Fontana Distinguished Service Award in recognition of their support and coverage of high school sports.

Holt is a 6-time regional Emmy award winner, having been recognized 5 times with the New England Emmy for sports reporting. He is also the producer/director of the 2013 documentary “House Family” which chronicles the Hillhouse High School Girls Basketball Team’s 2011-2012 quest for a fourth straight state championship against the backdrop of a city (New Haven) ranked the fourth most violent in the country by the FBI.

John and his wife Gail have 2 daughters, Rilee and Grace.

Former professional hockey player Craig Janney, former Killingly High and Providence basketball standout Tracy Lis, former Derby High and Yale running back John Pagliaro and longtime FCIAC official John Kuczo will receive Gold Keys at the dinner.

Tickets to the Gold Key Dinner, which begins at 4 p.m., are $75 each. They can be purchased by contacting either Alliance President Matthew Conyers of the Hartford Courant at 860-874-4166 or mconyers@courant.com or Vice President Tim Jensen of The Enfield Source at tim@enfieldsource.com. Tickets also can be obtained by mailing checks, payable to CSWA, to Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance, P.O. Box 70, Unionville, CT 06085.