Paul Schwartz with Gail Saplin, the wife of the late Stan Saplin, during Tuesday night’s awards ceremony at The Armory. Photo by John Nepolitan

Paul Schwartz, of Wyckoff, N.J. was honored as the 2017 winner of the Armory’s Stan Saplin Award for media excellence Tuesday night at The Armory’s New Balance Track & Field Center during the 83^rd Eastern States Indoor Championships.

The Stan Saplin Media Award is named after the late athletics journalist and statistician Stan Saplin who died in 2002. 

“This is exciting,” Schwartz said Tuesday night about winning the award. “I knew or know most of the people on the board (winners of Stan Saplin Awards) and I knew Stan and it’s really an honor to be in the same company with all these people.

“I’ve always loved coming to The Armory. The very first indoor track meet I covered was in the old Armory 40 years ago, with the old finish chute and wooden track. I love this building. The way they’ve put it back together is fabulous.”

After attending Daniel Carter Beard Junior High School P.S. 189 in Flushing, Queens, and Stuyvesant High School, when it was an all-boys school and located on 15^th Street on the Lower East Side, Schwartz’s family moved to New Jersey when he was 16. He graduated Teaneck High School Class of ’69.

Schwartz got his start during the New York City newspaper strike of 1963, when he was in 6^th grade. “Some friends of mine at school and I started an alternative newspaper. We called it the Transylvania Gazette. It had typical 12-year-old-boy monster stuff, but we started putting regular news in as well. We printed 500 copies a week and sold it for a nickel.

“That piqued my interest in writing.”

While still at P.S. 189, Schwartz began reporting on his junior high school’s basketball team for the Long Island Star-Journal. “I’d call in the results. They paid me 5 bucks a story.”

After finishing at Teaneck High and while attending American University, in Washington, D.C. – from which he graduated in political science in 1973 – and NYU law school, Class of ’76, he also became a part-time sportswriter.

“I started working for The Record in July 1971, got my first byline the day after my 20^th birthday,” Schwartz said. The Record -- also known variously as The Bergen Record and the Bergen Evening Record -- covers Bergen County, N.J. Schwartz had been a part-time staff reporter for the paper for more than 40 years, while at the same time working full-time as a workers-comp lawyer in North Jersey. He continues his lawyer position to this day, maintaining an office in Ridgefield, N.J.

“My dad used to take me to all the track meets at the Garden,” Schwartz said. “That’s how I became a fan.

“Gary Gubner (the shot putter) was a distant cousin. But I never got to meet him.”

In 1975, girls’ sports were beginning in New Jersey. “The Record needed someone to cover girls’ track, so they asked me to do it. That’s how I started covering track and cross country.” He has been a regular on the Armory sidelines ever since, covering more than 70 high school track teams from Bergen and Passaic counties.

“My first meet at the Armory was in the late ‘70s. It was the Bergen County Championships. That’s when I met Lou Molino, who was coaching Ramsey, and Mike Glynn, who was coaching Paramus Catholic.

“They had the two best milers in the country, Kevin Byrne at Paramus Catholic and Roger Jones at Ramsey.

“The old wood-floor Armory had a finish chute in those days, but Roger miscounted the laps and went into the finish chute a lap too soon. So Kevin won the race.”

Past Stan Saplin Media Award winners from 2007- 2016 include Frank Litsky (The New York Times), William J. Miller (The New York Times), Bill Moore (Amsterdam News), Ed Grant (New Jersey Track), Walt Murphy (Eastern Track), Elliott Denman (Asbury Park Press), Marc Bloom (The Runner Magazine and The New York Times), Peter Gambaccini (Runner's World), Derek Alvez (Staten Island Advance) and George Kochman (Staten Island Advance) and Nancy Haggerty (The Journal News).

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Visit the Eastern States Indoor Championships meet page for results, photos, videos and more news.