Sandy native Lee Benson joined the Utah Sports Hall of Fame on Monday, Sept. 14, after a decades-long career as a Deseret News sportswriter.

The ceremony at The Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City honored Benson alongside four other inductees in the Class of 2026: Olympic freestyle skier Shannon Bahrke, sculptor Blair Buswell, champion jockey Cody Jensen and wrestler Ben Kjar, the Deseret News reported.

Benson, a Jordan High graduate who went on to attend BYU, was named Utah Sportswriter of the Year 14 times in a 15-year stretch from 1976 to 1990. Over his career he covered 16 Super Bowls, 14 Final Fours, 10 Olympic Games, eight NBA Finals, five World Series, 13 major golf tournaments and one Wimbledon.

That range of assignments put him courtside, sideline and press-box at events few sportswriters ever reach once.

Jeff Call, a former Deseret News sportswriter who spent 26 years at the paper and now manages BYU's sports media lab, wrote on X that the honor was overdue.

@AJeffreyCall: "Congrats to Lee Benson, a grad of BYU's School of Communications, and former Daily Universe sports writer, for being inducted into the Utah Sports Hall of Fame last night. A richly deserved and overdue honor!"

The four other inductees brought varied achievements to the stage. Bahrke, a Park City resident, won Olympic silver in moguls in 2002 and bronze in 2010 before entering the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2023. Buswell, a Weber High graduate, has sculpted more than 130 busts for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, including one of his former BYU teammate Steve Young. Jensen, a Mountain Crest High graduate, won nearly every major quarter horse race as a jockey and is a Ruidoso Downs Hall of Fame inductee. Kjar compiled a 125-6 record as a three-time state wrestling champion at Viewmont High and became Utah Valley's first All-American wrestler.

Benson's path from Jordan High in Sandy to press rows at the Super Bowl and the Olympics now includes a permanent place in the Utah Sports Hall of Fame.