Every field has pioneers, and AWSM is proud to honor its own. The Mary Garber Pioneer Award annually recognizes those who have paved the way and serve as role models for women in sports media.

Award recipients are nominated by AWSM members. They are selected by a panel comprised of past Pioneer Award winners and AWSM board members, and they are honored at AWSM's annual convention. Recipients can be male or female.

The award has been given annually since 1999 to those who have distinguished themselves in the field while reflecting and advancing the values and mission of AWSM. The first award recipient was Lesley Visser, the NFL's first female beat writer and the first female commentator for “Monday Night Football.”

The award was renamed the Mary Garber Pioneer Award in 2006 to honor one of the industry’s original pioneers.

Read more about past Pioneer Award winners and this year's winner.

Mary Garber began her trailblazing sports journalism career in 1944, when the sports editor of the Winston-Salem Journal (then the Twin Cities Sentinel) joined the Navy and Garber replaced him.

"Not because I had any ability in sports," Garber once told the Women's Sports Foundation, "but because it was the war, and every man was in the armed forces."

What the woman who grew up playing baseball and football might have lacked in ability, she made up for in determination. Even though she was banned from locker rooms and forced to sit with the players' wives instead of in the press box, Garber lobbied to continue covering sports after World War II ended.

She first gained access to a locker room at the ACC basketball tournament in 1974, 30 years after her sportswriting career began. She retired from the Winston-Salem Journal in 1986 but continued to work there part-time until 2002.

Garber credited much of her success to covering stories that others wouldn't. During the 1950s and '60s, for example, when North Carolina schools still were segregated, Garber covered black high schools and colleges.

Garber served as president of the Football Writers Assocation of America and the Atlantic Coast Sports Writers Association, groups that initially denied her entry. In 2005, she became the first woman to win the Red Smith Award, the Associated Press Sports Editors' highest honor, given to someone who has made major contributions to sports journalism.