When you’re averaging almost 12 awards a year over a 12-year period, the only surprising thing this time of the year is if your station doesn’t haul in at least five.

Well, nobody at Bangor all-sports radio station WZON (620 AM) is surprised or disappointed this year since The Sports Zone has won five Maine Associated Press awards for sports coverage.

Actually, The Zone Corporation’s total haul was seven awards as WDME (103.1 FM), a sister station licensed to Dover-Foxcroft, also won two awards, both second-place honors.

The winning entrants from the 2005 Maine AP Broadcasters Association contest, presented at the annual spring banquet late last month, were announced Wednesday afternoon.

Local radio stations weren’t the only big winners in the sports categories, however, as Bangor CBS affiliate WABI (Channel 5) won two firsts as well as a third, and Bangor ABC affiliate WVII (Ch. 7) took a first and a second.

WABI was first and the only award winner in the TV sports play-by-play category for its high school football state championship coverage and also won honors as the top TV sportscast over runner-up WMTW (Ch. 8) of Portland. WABI also took third for TV sports feature with a story on hockey sleds. WMTW was first in that division.

WVII was the only award winner in the TV sports videography category and was first for its 90-second segment titled Speedzone, which features local drivers and auto racing highlights on a weekly basis. The segment was hosted by Palmyra native and Nokomis Regional High School alumnus Elgin Traylor, who left WVII two months ago to take a news videographer job with WRDW, an Augusta, Ga.,-based TV station.

WVII also had a second-place finish in the sports feature TV category for its Friday night Sports Blitz special segment covering high school football.

Back on the radio dial, WZON finished first and third in the sports feature category for a profile on University of Maine baseball player Curt Smith and a story on UMaine football coach Jack Cosgrove coaching his 200th game, respectively. WDME made it a clean sweep for the Zone Corporation with a second for a feature by Toby Nelson on the Foxcroft Academy football team.

It was also a Zone sweep in thee sports play-by-play category. WZON was first for its coverage of the UMaine hockey team’s rally to pull out a tie against Vermont. The game was called by former Maine sportscaster of the year Dan Hannigan. WDME was second for Nelson’s call of a high school basketball game and WZON was third for a UMaine football overtime win over the University of Rhode Island.

The Sports Zone’s final honor came for radio sportscast as it finished first for the morning show hosted by Clem LaBree and program and sports director Dale Duff.

This is the tenth consecutive year WZON has won at least four AP awards.

“That’s not a bad haul,” Duff said. “Again, it shows that, as I’ve always said, in order to do what we do, we can’t just have one person doing it all. To cover all the teams the way we do, we need to have a good team to do it.”

Another Emmy in the offing?

Fox Sports Net New England has earned its 14th straight New England Emmy nomination, this time for its coverage of the Boston Celtics.

FSNNE also earned nominations for program-campaign, graphics or animation-program, and editor-program. The 29th Boston/New England Emmy Awards Ceremony will take place in Boston Saturday.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net