Tom Yantz to Receive Art McGinley Award from Connecticut Sports Writers' Alliance

HARTFORD — A longtime sports reporter for the Harford Courant will be honored for his years of service by the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance at one of the state’s most prestigious sports awards dinners.

Tom Yantz, who recently retired after a 42-year career at the newspaper, has been selected the recipient of the Art McGinley Award, named for the late sports editor and columnist of the Hartford Times and also a popular toastmaster in Connecticut.

Yantz covered high school, college and professional sports since being hired at the Courant in 1975. He was a beat reporter for the Boston Red Sox, covering Major League Baseball from 1982 to 2008, and spent many years covering the professional golf tournament currently known as the Travelers Championship.

The Berlin resident has won numerous writing awards, including a pair of Associated Press national awards for enterprise reporting. He was inducted into the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2014.

Yantz will be honored at the 77th Gold Key Dinner at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington on Sunday, April 29, 2018. Gold Key Award recipients will be PGA golf professional Dennis Coscina, former Granby Memorial High School field hockey coach Dot Johnson, New Canaan High School football coach Lou Marinelli, newly-retired UConn women’s soccer coach Len Tsantiris and Olympic ice hockey gold medalist Gretchen Ulion Silverman.

Tickets to the Gold Key Dinner are $75 apiece, and may be reserved by contacting CSWA President Tim Jensen of Patch Media Corp. at tim.jensen@patch.com or 860-394-5091, or Vice President Rich Gregory of the Danbury News-Times at rgregory@newstimes.com or 203-705-8625.

Proceeds from the event benefit the Bo Kolinsky Journalism Scholarship, named after a longtime Hartford Courant sportswriter and past CSWA president who died unexpectedly in 2003.