Sometimes there are awards that call for two winners, like back in the day before the College Football Playoffs system when two schools would sometimes share a national championship. 

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has earned this one for its decision to begin charging for parking, effective March 1 this year. 

Newly elected Haywood County Sheriff Bill Wilke stepped into some big shoes following the retirement of longtime Sheriff Greg Christopher, but earlier this year Wilke showed Haywood County, along with some of its most vulnerable residents, that he wears some pretty damn big shoes himself. 

The classic 1980s dance film Dirty Dancing taught all of us that “nobody puts Baby in a corner.” And if one does, that baby might just erupt from the corner with wild and salacious dance moves. 

Congrats to Macon County GOP’s newest slate of officers. A dedicated bunch who fought hard, and allegedly dirty, to secure their seats. 

This little award may not mean all that much to him — after all, he’s one of Southern Appalachia’s most revered literary figures and has won a number of far more significant awards for his books and plays, including the Book of the Year Award from the Appalachian Writers Association in 2001, the Brown Hudson Award for Folklore in 2006 and the North Carolina Arts Council Award for Literature in 2012 — but we’re going to give it to him anyway because we’ve all been big fans of his work for a long time. 

This one goes to Cherokee voters, who decided in this year’s election to look back to build their future. 

Sharing smokes has proven more difficult than anticipated for the winners of this award, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ cannabis business Qualla Enterprises LLC. 

We can’t say for certain whether Cherokee County Sheriff Dustin Smith backed into a literal bush as the events of Dec. 13, 2022, unfolded, but at this point it’s pretty clear that in the aftermath he did his best metaphorical impression of the infamous Homer Simpson meme.   

This award goes to Cherokee’s Sgadugi Constitution Committee, which, as the namesake band sang in its 1997 classic “Tubthumping,” keeps getting knocked down — but just gets up again.