Just like last year, RotoWire took six of the trophies given out by the FSWA on the first day of the FSTA’s winter conference.

As RotoWire president Peter Schoenke walked up to accept the awards for his company and staffers, emcee Matthew Berry met him with comments such as “I wouldn’t go too far” and “you might want to just start walking up now, Peter.”

That second one came as the nominees for Best Online Football Article were displayed: a category composed solely of RotoWire submissions.

Derek VanRiper’s victory over two colleagues in that category marked the second straight year that RotoWire has taken that award. Chris Liss’ entry took the online article prize in 2009.

RotoWire also repeated as top baseball magazine, claiming that trophy for the third year in a row. The company also saw Mark Taylor repeat as the top racing writer but saw the top writer honors in golf, baseball and college sports go to other sites (after claiming those three in 2009.

Other victories came for best basketball writer (Andre Snellings, another previous champion, though not in 2009), best baseball Web article and best baseball series (both David Regan).

Here’s the full list of finalists (with winners in bold) for those six categories …

Best Online Football Article
Dalton Del Don, RotoWire
Jeff Stotts, RotoWire
Derek VanRiper, RotoWire

Best Fantasy Baseball Publication
Fanball
Fantasy Baseball Index
RotoWire

Best Online Baseball Article
John Rakowski, Sports Grumblings
David Regan, RotoWire
Scott White, CBS Sports

Best Baseball Series
Jason Grey, ESPN
David Regan, RotoWire
Mark Strausberg, RotoExperts

Basketball Writer of the Year
Cory Elfrink, Fanball
Tom Lorenzo, RotoExperts
Andre Snellings, RotoWire

Racing Writer of the Year
Scott Engel, RotoExperts
Brian Polking, Fanball
Mark Taylor, RotoWire

Like its auto racing counterpart, the FSWA award for top fantasy basketball writer will not see a repeat winner. It will definitely, however, go to someone from one of the industry’s most-visited sites.

The honor has been given out for the past two seasons, and neither of the two honorees — Andre’ Snellings of RotoWire and some dude you’ve probably never heard of from ESPN — shows up among this year’s finalists.

Instead, the Best Basketball Writer category comprises Steve Alexander of Rotoworld, Matt Buser of Yahoo! and Sergio Gonzalez of CBS Sports.

The FSWA awards will be announced on the first day of next week’s FSTA winter business conference in Florida.

The Fantasy Sports Writers Association is accepting nominations through the end of the year for its fifth annual writing awards.

The awards encompass football, baseball, basketball, hockey, auto racing, golf and now college sports. The FSWA selects a writer of the year in each of those sports and also presents several awards for top articles and running features in the premier fantasy fields of football and baseball.

This is the first year that the FSWA has included college sports in the list. According to FSWA president Mike Beacom, the recent growth of fantasy college sports helped to spur increased interest in the FSWA that was already evident last year at awards time.

“The 2007 FSWA Awards witnessed a record number of nominations and we are confident this year we will top that mark,” Beacom wrote in the association’s November newsletter, which announced the nomination period. “The FSWA welcomed close to 100 new members during the course of the past year.”

Writers must be enrolled in the FSWA to nominate candidates or win an award. Author names and affiliations are removed for the judging process, and winners are ultimately determined by independent college journalism professors, according to the FSWA. Those interesting in submitting nominations can use the online form any time before the end of the year. Anyone submitting for Magazine of the Year in baseball or football should mail three copies of the publication to the following address:

FSWA
c/o Mike Beacom
P,O, Box 296
Amherst, WI 54406

Awards will be presented at the 2009 Fantasy Sports Trade Association winter business conference in Florida on Jan. 27-28. Last year’s winners included Rotoworld’s Gregg Rosenthal for top football writer, Rotowire’s Jeff Erickson for top baseball writer, Rotowire’s Andre’ Snellings for basketball, Rotowire’s Janet Eagleson for hockey, ESPN’s Christopher Harris for auto racing and CBS Sports’ Ross Davenport for golf.