From the end of a deadly nightmare to the award of a lifetime, Feb. 25 was a memorable day for Seattle Times Sports Editor Cathy Henkel.

It was a Friday, and Henkel was celebrating good news from earlier that week. The Times' sports section was judged among the nation's Top 10 in its circulation category for daily, Sunday and special section. The recognition from the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) was another "Triple Crown" win for Henkel and her crew. That morning, police in Wichita, Kan., had caught the man they believe is the BTK serial killer. Henkel, who grew up in Wichita, knew the fear invoked by the killer's code-name initials, which stood for "Bind, Torture, Kill."

Thirty years earlier, as a young reporter in Wichita, she had gotten a copy of a letter the killer had written and that police had kept secret. In it, BTK described how he had killed a family of four and that he was stalking his next victim.

She had written a story about the letter and immediately got threatening calls. She lived with the possibility that BTK might be stalking her.

"I left this story behind 30 years ago, but it kept haunting me. Once you let a killer like that into your head it stays there."

When she heard of the arrest in Wichita, Henkel wrote a cathartic story that appeared the following day in The Times. Her first paragraph said, "The letter still burns in my hands."

Sometime between hearing of the arrest and writing that story, it was announced that Henkel had been chosen to receive the Pioneer Award from the Association for Women in Sports Media. The group's acronym, AWSM, is pronounced "awesome," and this award truly is that.

It recognizes "an individual who has paved the way for women in sports media and who serves as a role model for its members." There have been just six other winners.

"This is a much-deserved honor for Cathy. As one of the first female sports editors of a major metropolitan daily newspaper, she is in fact a pioneer," said Times Managing Editor David Boardman.

"Over the years, she has weathered gender-based attacks from outside our walls and occasionally from within, always with strength and determination. When she took the position 15 years ago, she had a vision to shape her section into one of the best sports sections in America, and that she has done," he added.

Henkel grew up with sports. Her dad was a high-school coach, but that was before Title IX opened the doors for girls' sports. "You never even thought of yourself as an athlete back then," she said.

Instead, she sold popcorn at games for her dad, watched her brother play sports and soaked up the excitement that way. When she got a journalism degree from Wichita State University she didn't see herself becoming a sports writer or editor.

She started as a news reporter at The Wichita Beacon and later got a master's degree in counseling at the University of Arizona. After that she went to work for The Wichita Sun, where she wrote the BTK story.

In 1976 she headed west, staying with some friends in Oregon. The one newspaper job available was answering phones on Friday nights in the sports department of The (Eugene) Register-Guard.

Henkel soon learned what it is like to drive back roads and take notes inside a clear plastic laundry bag while standing on the sidelines of a small-town football field on a rainy Friday night.

Catcalls from the stands were common when fans realized a woman was covering the game. "I never saw another woman [reporter] anywhere," she said.

The reward was the excitement of high-school sports. "They weren't jaded. They weren't full of clichés. And there was always a winner somewhere."

She was still the only woman reporter around when she was promoted to cover college sports. The first time she walked into the locker room after an Oregon State football game, the noise stopped in an instant.

"It was like the world came to an end. I didn't realize it was me," she said. Until someone grabbed her by the arm and forced her back out.

"I'm just trying to do my job," Henkel would tell them. Eventually she was able to do that. She won people over one at a time, "one human being to another."

She became assistant sports editor at The Register-Guard, and The Times hired her into the same role in 1987. She became sports editor here in 1990, and the section's record is impressive.

We've been a Top 10 Daily section for six years in a row and a Top 10 Sunday section for four years in a row. We've been a Triple Crown winner (daily, Sunday and special section) three times in the past seven years.

In announcing the Pioneer Award, AWSM said, "Cathy Henkel has touched every base as a sports journalist — from reporter, to copy editor to sports editor and even AWSM president."

We're proud Seattle is her home plate.

Inside The Times appears in the Sunday Seattle Times. If you have a comment on news coverage, write to Michael R. Fancher, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111, call 206-464-3310 or send e-mail to mfancher@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists