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Lincoln Roch reviews his notes by the Ralphie statue outside Folsom Field. Despite being a rookie on the sports beat, he captured a prestigious Hearst award for a feature story on fan behavior after the Buffs hosted Brigham Young University in the fall. Photo by Hannah Howell.

A year and a half ago, Lincoln Roch walked into a Sko Buffs Sports meeting not knowing what a third down was. The story of how he got from there to winning one of the most prestigious awards for collegiate sports writing is a bigger story than any game he has covered.

In the fall, the University of Colorado Boulder was fined $50,000 by the Big 12 Conference after hateful and discriminatory language targeting The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was chanted from the stands during a football game against Brigham Young University.

Lincoln Roch, a senior studying journalism at the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information, was sitting in the student section at Folsom Field during the game, and could hear fans shouting derogatory chants. When the fine was announced, he wrote about it before moving on to other news.

It wasn’t until later that week that Jake Shapiro (Jour’18), his sports practicum professor and advisor of Sko Buffs Sports, encouraged the class to dig deeper and find a new angle about the human impact. Roch searched BuffConnect and found Institute, a campus organization affiliated with the church.

The group was meeting that night, so he rushed to his apartment to change out of a football jersey and shorts and headed to Wolf Law, hoping someone would talk. When one of the organization’s leaders asked who had been to the game, Lucy Reese raised her hand, and agreed to speak with Roch afterward.

“That’s where I realized this was way worse than I had thought,” Roch said.

This was the first of many conversations that reframed the story: Less than a week after the fine was announced, Roch published featuring firsthand accounts from sources who felt alienated or threatened by the behavior during the game. The article won first place in the sports writing competition of the 2025-26 Hearst Journalism Awards Program.

He credited Shapiro and Harrison Simeon, president and editor-in-chief of Sko Buffs Sports, for pushing him to find a story with deeper meaning and helping him perfect the piece.

A willingness to learn

“Lincoln joined the club with no sports background whatsoever—he didn’t know what a third down was a year and a half ago,” said Simeon, also a senior in journalism. “But what he did was learn. He's our best journalist, in terms of willingness to learn.”

The article is the most-viewed story on Sko Buffs Sports, with more than 8,000 views. The story was also shared on X by the assistant athletic director at BYU and the governor of Utah.

“I’m incredibly proud of the impact it had. It kind of restored my faith to see a lot of dialog between BYU and С���� fans in the comments on social media,” Roch said.

Roch received a $3,000 scholarship for the article and qualifies for the National Writing Championship, in San Francisco, in June, when he has the chance to be one of the top three intercollegiate winners.

For Vicky Sama, associate teaching professor and director of student media at CMDI, this recognition comes as no surprise.

“The Hearst awards are prestigious acknowledgements of student journalism nationwide, so it’s very competitive,” said Sama, whose journalism career included a producer role at CNN and extensive freelance work. “Lincoln shows a lot of promise. He’s going to make the university proud when he graduates.”

Iris Serrano is studying strategic communication and journalism at CMDI. She covers student news and events for the college.