By Bill Burt
Sports Editor
Sportswriter Dave Dyer has won Wrestling USA Magazine’s prestigious Schoolboy Sportswriter of the Year.
The national college and high school wrestling magazine, which has an estimated 483,000 readers, noted Dyer’s coverage of the sport at the high school level in the Merrimack Valley and Southern New Hampshire.
Dyer, who is a staff writer for the sports department of the Eagle-Tribune Publishing Company, the Gloucester Daily Times parent company, beat out Pat Galbincea of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Paul Adamski of the Green Bay News-Chronicle, the other finalists for the honor in 2005.
Letters of recommendation on Dyer’s behalf were sent in by several area coaches, including Timberlane Regional’s Barry Chooljian, Greater Lawrence’s Tony Sarkis and former Methuen High coach Bob Fitzgerald. The nomination was then forwarded by both the New Hampshire and Massachusetts state coaches associations to the magazine’s New England editor.
“I had heard a lot about Dave’s coverage for The Eagle-Tribune, “said Wrestling USA New England editor Tom Bartosek. “But you can’t really understand it until to you see it. He really focuses on getting information and the names of wrestlers out there.”
Dyer’s own invention, “King of the Ring, “in which he ranks the top three wrestlers at each weight class, was a favorite among the coaches with each mentioning it in their recommendation letter. His weekly notebooks and features as well as his daily meet coverage was unmatched, according to Chooljian.
He was also noted for the complexity of covering two states, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and how Dyer continually is able to pull it off.
Dyer will be formally issued a plaque by the magazine at the Massachusetts All-State Meet next February.
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