NEW YORK (June 1, 2022) – Oklahoma Christian's assistant athletic director for communications, Murray Evans, received two second-place awards in the annual Fred W. Stabley Sr. Writing Contest, the results of which were announced Wednesday by the College Sports Information Directors of America.

Evans, in his 11th year of service in OC's athletic department, was recognized in the Event Coverage and Season Recap/Preview categories in District 6, which includes universities and colleges of all sizes in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

His story on the first national title won by OC's Ultimate club team in December and a preview piece on the 2021 volleyball season earned Evans the awards. He was the only writer from a non-NCAA Division I school to be recognized with either a first- or second-place award in District 6.

CoSIDA said 387 entries were submitted in the contest. Submissions had to be published between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 in 2021. Committees of CoSIDA members from around the nation judged the district and national portions of the contest.

"The amount of quality submissions in all categories, which our hard-working committee members and judges spent a great deal of time reading through, just confirms that our organization consists of so many great writers and storytellers," said Jeffrey Bernstein, the athletic communications manager at New York University and the chairman of the writing contest committee.

Evans has handled OC's sports information duties since August 2011. His responsibilities include creating content for and maintaining the university's athletic website, producing news releases, serving as the official scorer and statistician for OC athletics, overseeing game operations (such as public address, broadcasting and video streaming) at OC home events, maintaining historical records for OC's 17 varsity and seven club sports, overseeing athletic social media accounts, handling award nominations, leading and serving on OC's Athletic Hall of Fame committee and answering media queries. He's also a contributing writer for the Christian Chronicle, which is published on OC's campus.

Evans graduated from OC in 1989 with a degree in journalism. Starting in 1988, he spent 23½ years as a sports and news reporter, including 13 with The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City (spending much of that time as the newspaper's small-college beat writer) and more than eight with The Associated Press in Lexington, Ky., and Oklahoma City. He won numerous writing awards for his work with The Oklahoman and the AP and has won 19 first-place awards in the CoSIDA contest since 2013.