SARASOTA - Marco La Manno wins first place in the sunshine state awards, a statewide journalism awards ceremony put together by the Florida chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

The virtual ceremony took place Saturday evening. Marco was a finalist in the light feature reporting category, along with photographer Jazz Goldberg.

The story is called "Video games strengthen real relationships in virtual worlds in the age of Covid." It showed the story of how a Suncoast man used video games to stay connected with friends during the Covid pandemic, and how video game sales surged as a result of stay-at-home orders.