The Betty van der Smissen Leadership Award is presented to an individual who is recognized for leadership and vision in the study of legal aspects of sport and physical activity. The 2025 winner is Holt Hackney.
Holt Hackney is the founder of Hackney Publications, which delivers valuable and important information about the legal side of the sports industry. Its overriding mission, through its publications, is to maintain a narrow editorial focus on issues that matter to its subscribers.
Holt Hackney, who has spent more than 30 years writing about sports, business and the law, began covering sports for weekly and daily newspapers in the 1980s. He has been published in the St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Tribune and Fort Lauderdale News Sun-Sentinel, among other dailies.
Later in the decade, he moved on to business journalism, working as a staff writer for New York City-based Financial World magazine. Hackney pioneered the sports business beat in national business magazines, writing stories about such issues as the NBA salary cap, the economic value of hosting the Olympic Games and the sometimes-brutal contract negotiations that take place in the NFL. Hackney was part of the writing team at Financial World that wrote the industry’s first franchise valuation stories.
In the early 1990s, he became the director of communications at the National Golf Foundation, where he wrote and edited Golf Market Today, an industry newsletter as well as authored numerous other publications.
Three years later, he joined LRP Publications, a legal publisher, where he managed five subscriber-based legal publications and their respective editors. After leaving LRP, Hackney continued to maintain a connection to the journalism field by launching Legal Issues in College Athletics (LICA) for Andrews Publications. Introduced in the fall of 1999, LICA has developed a loyal following in both the legal and higher education communities.
In the decade since, Hackney has launched numerous other sports law periodicals, solidifying the company as a national leader in the space.
Hackney is also involved on the corporate side, where he helps companies achieve their corporate communications objectives through the effective use of newsletters through a sister company, Hackney Communications.
The Herb Appenzeller Sport and Recreation Law Association Honor Award is presented to an individual who has given outstanding service to the Association. The 2026 winner is Profesor Gil Fried.
Professor Fried is a specialist in sport law, finance, and facility management. He regularly teaches courses such as sport law, sport facility management, sport analytics, and various other sport management courses. He received his master’s in sport management and his law degree from The Ohio State University. He has written over 19 books on sport risk management, sport facility management, sport analytics, esports, and sport finance. His textbooks are used in over 140 universities in the United States and have been translated into various languages. He lectures nationally on financial risk management, facility risk management, crowd management/venue safety, and sport safety. His books and lecturing are supplemented by writing close to 1,000 industry articles. Besides writing for others, he is also the Editor of both the Sports Facilities & the Law and Legal Issues in Sport Betting newsletters.
Professor Fried coordinates the Patron Management Institute and developed their Certificate in Patron Management Program (CPM). He has a regular YouTube-based training program called the Crowd Management Doctor. He also has a podcast called Venue Visionaries with Matthew Kastel, General Manager of Orioles Park at Camden Yards for the Maryland Stadium Authority. His consulting company, Gil Fried & Associates, LLC has handled many sport/music industry liability cases (over 300) and he has worked as an expert witness in various cases from stadium stampedes to foul ball cases. Some of his most famous include Camp Randall (Univ. of Wisconsin) crowd surge cases, Brian Stow assault case (Dodger’s Stadium), Aurora Theater shooting cases, Astroworld cases, and EA Madden tournament shooting cases. He regularly appears on the news talking about facility/venue safety.
The Lori K. Miller Sport and Recreation Law Association Young Professional Award recognizes a young professional who demonstrates commitment to the study and instruction of the legal aspects of sport and recreation; service to the field and SRLA; as well as the potential for future growth and excellence in those same areas. The 2026 winner is Dr. Rachel Silverman.
Dr. Silverman is an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator for the Sport and Recreation Management Program in the Kinesiology and Sport Sciences Department at the University of Nebraska Kearney. She graduated in March 2024 with her PhD in Sport Management from Troy University. She has her M.A. in Kinesiology and Sport Management from the University of South Dakota. Her bachelor’s degree is from Brandeis University in Studio Art, Art History, and Journalism. Her research agenda focuses on women in sports, including sociological, legal, and ethical aspects of sports. She was the recipient of the 2022-2023 COSMA Graduate Student Grant for her research on the effectiveness of SafeSport. She was also inducted into the Chi Sigma Mu Honor Society at COSMA 2023. She was the recipient of the 2022 Mary Myers SRLA Student Travel Award. She is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
The mission of The Kristi Schoepfer Award for Service-Learning is to recognize a collaborative educational team or individual who conducts a service-learning project that is inspired by the character,courage, and commitment of Kristi Schoepfer. This award will offer a SRLA member the opportunity to engage in a service-learning project that advances the mission of the organization while engaging students in a community-oriented project related to the legal aspects of sport, recreation, and/ or physical activity. The 2026 winner of the Kristi-Schoepfer Award for Service-Learning is Dr. Heather Van Mullem.
The Bernard Patrick Maloy Graduate Student Research Award is given annually to the graduate student who submits the best research paper to the Honors and Awards Committee. Award winners are encouraged to work towards future publication in Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport. The 2026 award winner is Marshall Graves from Southeastern Louisiana University, faculty advisor Joe Sabin, for his paper From One-and-Done to Paid-and-Stayed: The NCAA’s Strengthened Monopsony Power in Men’s Basketball.
The SRLA Research Fellow designation recognizes scholars by honoring their achievements in legal aspects of sport and recreation-related scholarship. Professor Gil Fried from University of West Florida achieved this status in 2026.