Six current and former Inquirer staff members walked away with awards at the state-wide Journalism Association of Community Colleges’ yearly conference from April 11 through April 13 in Sacramento.

The winners at this year’s conference included a third place finish for Matthew Emmanuel and Sebastian Rene for best broadcast/webcast story, honorable mention for Julia Kinkela and fourth place for Karin Jensen for the on-the-spot sports photo contest, and third place for on-the-spot audio slideshow project for the team of Samantha Chiu, Rachel Ann Reyes, and Julia Kinkela.

Editor-in-chief Joshua Knoll was very satisfied with his staff’s work.

“I was immensely proud of the work that everyone did,” said Knoll, “They deserve it.”

Karin Jensen said she felt “kinda awesome” about winning her award. The on-the-spot contest, said Jensen, entailed the participants being taken to a roller derby match where they were tasked with taking the best photo.

Samantha Chiu said she felt immense pride for her team when she found out they won.

“This was the first time any of us had entered anything like this,” said Chiu. “We didn’t have any experience in things like sound editing or the team feature competitions.” Despite the unfamiliarity, they still managed to place and she said it was still a good experience overall – even if they didn’t get first.

The Inquirer adviser and JACC president Mary Mazzocco, said that she was very proud of the effort put forth by her students. Mazzocco also took home the California Journalism Education Coalition’s Educator of the Year award, much to her surprise at the time.

“I actually feel more humble than honored,” said Mazzocco. “When you look at the people who have won in the past it’s a very distinguished group of instructors and I just hope I can live up to their example.”

The conference was attended by about 500 delegates from more than 40 California community colleges.