The Daily took second place for general excellence among college dailies at the Illinois College Press Association this weekend and racked up 15 wins in other categories, including best in-depth story for Fall Quarter’s mental health series.

“I think the whole staff would agree that we’re most proud of taking first place for the mental health series,” Editor in Chief Adam Williams said. “It allowed people to understand The Daily is willing to be that open forum for ideas and be willing to talk about things — be it mental health or some other issue.”

Managing Editor Kimra McPherson, who edited the seven-day series, said she is happy about the award but that she didn’t need a plaque to know the project was valuable.

“It’s nice to know other people recognized not just the time and effort that was put into it but also that we saw a need and were able to do our part to fill it,” said McPherson, adding that community support made the series possible.

The second place general excellence ranking improves on last year’s third place finish, but the overall number of awards fell from 19 to 16. Still, the breadth of categories where The Daily won expanded, Williams said.

“I think the diversity of categories in which we placed shows how we’ve been focusing on all aspects of improving our newspaper,” he said. “All the desks got something.”

The Daily took first place for editorial writing and front-page layout design, and the Forum page took second place among opinion pages. PLAY won an honorable mention for entertainment supplements.

In sports David Sterrett won second place in feature writing and Andrea Cohen took second for column writing.

In the news story category, The Daily took second place for its coverage of former Gov. George Ryan’s blanket clemency of death row inmates. And the newspaper also garnered an honorable mention for two stories about Eli Quick, a boy found in Evanston who was mistakenly thought to be a kidnapped boy from North Carolina.

The Daily competed among 38 college newspapers statewide. The Daily Illini of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign took first place overall by having more consistent quality in design and photography, according to the critique received.

“The goal of our next editor in chief is to work on the visual aspects of the paper,” Williams said. “You’ve already seen our work on this during this academic year, and she’s going to continue to work in that direction.”