I was impressed with the literary quality of a story Powell Latimer, a 21-year-old sports journalist whose upside mirrors Ndamukong Suh’s, wrote for The Daily Tar Heel. Latimer’s award-winning feature about two Africans on the North Carolina field hockey team took readers (the story was featured on this site yesterday) inside the complex decisions that an athlete often faces.

These two women forged a friendship that ignored the unsettled issue of race in their ancestral homeland. As strangers in a new world, they discovered they had more in common than they imagined. In a sense, the women formed a sisterhood: one white, one mixed race, their histories rooted in the soils of South Africa.

But Latimer’s feature was deeper than it seemed. Published last fall, the piece showed what a sportswriter, tapping into the resources at his disposal, can do. It was the sort of story you often hope to find in larger dailies but seldom do.

I have read Latimer’s story four times now. Each time I did the feature shined brighter than it did the time before. So I wanted to hear Latimer’s insights into his writing process. I wanted to know how Latimer put this story together and what his challenges were in writing a story of this quality — a story that editors from dailies across the United States judged worthy of a 2010 Hearst award in the Sports category.

For in understanding how Latimer, who will intern this summer with MLB.com, crafted this feature, I know other young sportswriters can take away knowledge that will help their prose reach a higher quality.

QUESTION: When you came up with this idea, did you have a conversation with an editor before you began the reporting? If so, how did that conversation go?

POWELL LATIMER: Well, I was the sports editor, so I didn’t have to pitch it to many higher-ups. I’d read the game stories from the two writers who covered the championship game, and in conversation with Tim Crothers, a professor and former SI writer, the idea for the story came up. He told me to do it, and I liked the idea as well. Pitching to the editors of the paper was relatively easy, because I’d built up several years of credit with them, they all know and trust me. I basically said it was an epic story of friendship (which I already knew from other writers who’d tried to write the story and not gotten deep enough) and threw in the race factor and the foreign factor, and they said go. It helped that it was the end of the semester and the paper was struggling for content.

Q: Your two main characters in the narrative were so candid. How did you get them to open up to you? Are you usually about to do that with other subjects you interview?

LATIMER: I had them both come by the office for about an hour and a half, and talked with them together. I thought if they outnumbered me, they’d be a little more forthcoming and comfortable. I’d also known both of them for some time, from my freshman year and occasional stories. So there was a familiarity there. I like to let one-on-one interviews fall into just a conversation and be as human as possible. I’ll swap stories with the subject and be a little more informal while the recorder runs. That and if I’m really interested, the subjects open up a lot more.

Q: Talk about the challenges you faced with the story. Why did you chose to give one of the two women a stronger voice in the story than the other? Did that concern you as you were writing the piece?

LATIMER: That’s the main problem with this story in my eyes: Dani Forward is such a captivating force that she threatens to overwhelm the story. I was much more interested in Illse Davids’ part of the story, and it was a struggle to keep her from being overshadowed. I tried to direct my focus to Illse in every question, and that seemed to help. Still, it was one of the risks of interviewing them together, and I don’t regret my decision.

Q: Powell, as you know, the lead is the most important part of the story. J-school profs hammer away at the point, and I’m sure the ones at North Carolina are no different. Why did you decide to build your story around a delayed lead? Did you experiment with other options before settling on the final version?

LATIMER: The delayed lead works for me in this case because of the package around it. It’s never just a story — there’s a picture, a design package, a graphic — all the pieces matter. with all the presentation I could afford to take my time with the lede. I also got the story idea from the picture that was used, so that helped drive the lede.

Q: How much is rewriting apart of your writing process? Do you enjoy that aspect of the process?

LATIMER: Not overmuch, I do go back and look at stuff, and I definitely obsessed over this piece a little bit. Usually I’m not one to toy with phrases, but I did agonize in a few places. I have a lot of fun, trying to get the exact right nuance. Most of the time, I don’t have that luxury with deadline writing.

Q: I often wonder how young sportswriters take editing. Did your story get much editing? How welcoming of editing are you? Do you cringe when your stories go to the copy desk or through editors?

LATIMER: I sent my story to so many different eyes I had a rainbow of paintings in the Google document. Everyone I trusted, especially those outside sports, took a look and gave me feedback. By and large the critique was helpful. I’ve never had much trouble with management of the DTH or my editors as a rule — this is The New York Times of college papers, and most everyone is smarter and more capable than me.

If it’s a really important story I’ll make sure I sit with everyone as they go through it, all the way through copy. And copy always has my cell number. That’s a little far to go, but I’d rather just take the extra hour or so.

Q: If you had to redo this story, what would you do differently? Have you dissected the story in your mind and seen areas that now, months later, you don’t like as much as you did originally?

LATIMER: Of course I’d to it differently. I’d take out the “that’s the story” bits; they seem a little trite. But I don’t know if rewriting the story would make it any better. It’d be different, but not necessarily not better.

Q: Finally, what kind of positive feedback did you get? How did you feel after learning the story earned you a Hearst award and $500? Is that your Spring Break stash?

LATIMER: Lots of positive feedback, both when it ran and when it got a Hearst. I built up a tall stack of chips with the athletic department, which will carry into future generations of DTH sports editors, so that’s nice.

I got taken to lunch by a fellow writer at The News and Observer and a veritable outpouring of support from my co-workers at the DTH. And the money is going to go to pay rent.