A Shawnee Mission Northwest High School student is officially the best scholastic journalist in the state of Kansas.
Sofia Ball, a senior and the co-editor-in-chief of the newspaper, is the 2026 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year, and will now face off against the top student journalists from other states for a national title.
On Tuesday, Ball was recognized with a surprise announcement and $1,250 scholarship check from Kansas Scholastic Press Association Director Barbara Tholen in front of some of her fellow student journalists and her family in the Little Theater.
“I’m very obviously proud and excited to share this moment with my staff and my friends and my family,” Ball said.
She’s the latest in a long line of student journalists from the Shawnee Mission School District to earn the distinction of Kansas High School Journalist of the Year.
Tholen, a former journalist who previously served as the student media adviser at Lawrence High School, said Ball’s application and body of work “wowed” her.
“There’s so much detail, a compelling voice and a real maturity of writing that I think really exceeds what I often see at this level,” she said.
Journalist of the Year announcement was a surprise
Ball told the Post she wasn’t expecting to find out she’d won the award when she walked into the theater on Tuesday.
In fact, newspaper and yearbook adviser Christopher Heady had orchestrated a ruse of sorts that involved a supposed discussion with Principal Lisa Gruman and the student journalism staffs about safely covering the planned walkout-style student protests over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that afternoon.
Instead, the whole meeting was all a way to surprise Ball with the news that she’d won.
When she spied the celebratory balloons and caught a glimpse of her family, Ball said she started to get a little suspicious, though she wasn’t sure until Tholen started talking about her and the award.
“I had absolutely no idea,” Ball said. “I was very confused.”
“She has all the tools that a journalist needs.”
To be considered for the award from KSPA, Ball had to submit an application that contained letters of recommendation, an online portfolio, her transcripts and a personal narrative essay.
She worked with Heady, who’d encouraged her to apply, for several weeks on her application, beginning in the fall. He described the process as fairly “extensive” — far more so than when he applied for the same honor in 2012 as a student journalist himself at Shawnee Mission East.
Heady said he sees Ball as more than just a student journalist, but a true journalist who could hold her own in a professional newsroom.
For instance, after finding out she won an award on Tuesday, Ball was out in the field just a few hours later helping cover a student walkout over ICE and the agency’s recent actions.
“She has all the tools that a journalist needs,” he said, describing her as “hypercurious” and “inquisitive about the way the world works,” as well. “She’s very versatile, but she is an incredible reporter, and I think that’s what makes her stand out.”
Heady said, these days, KSPA and other scholastic journalism organizations expect student journalists to be able to do everything; from editing, reporting, photography and video, to design and social media.
In his eyes, her portfolio shows she has all of those skills, but also that Ball is “far and away” the best high school journalist in the state of Kansas.
Heady hopes that seeing Ball put in the work and having it pay off with the highest honor available to student journalists in the state of Kansas inspires some of her peers and newer members of the journalism staff at SM Northwest to follow her example.
“For Sofia to be that person I think is great because she definitely deserves it,” Heady said.
Ball joins a long history of SMSD student journalism excellence
Ball is the fifth student journalist to win the honor from SM Northwest and the 16th to win from the Shawnee Mission School District.
The award has been given out to exemplary high school journalists throughout Kansas for decades, but was recently renamed the Susan Massy Award to honor the longtime and legendary Northwest journalism teacher who retired after Ball’s freshman year.
In addition to her work for the Northwest Passage student newsmagazine, Ball has also written for the Johnson County Post as a freelancer.
She picked up a second-place award from the Kansas Press Association last year for her coverage of the tragic death of Ovet Gomez Regalado, a sophomore football player who suffered a medical emergency at a football practice.
Ball goes onto high school journalism national contest
As the Kansas High School Journalist of the Year, Ball will represent the state in the running for the National High School Journalist of the Year title, given annually by the nonprofit Journalism Education Association.
Ball said she’s eager to move onto the next phase of all of that.
She will learn in the spring if she’s a Top 5 finalist for the national award ahead of the National High School Journalism Convention, where the winner will be named in April.
Riley Atkinson, from Shawnee Mission East, was the last National High School Journalist of the Year from Kansas in 2021. Previous winners of the national title who hailed from Kansas include Julia Poe in 2015, Amanda Allison in 2007 and Libby Nelson in 2005, all of whom attended Shawnee Mission East as well, according to JEA records dating back to 1984.
Keep reading: Susan Massy to retire, ending decorated 42-year run as SM Northwest’s journalism adviser
