Athletes of the Week: Stump & Jourdain

Nate Stump, Drury

There were football players who put up bigger Week One numbers, but arguably no team needed a big night more than the Drury Blue Devils, who went 2-6 last year and finished 2013 with four straight shutout losses. Senior Nate Stump took over under center and directed the Blue Devils to three scores, including on on a 50-yard pass. Stump also started on a Drury defense that stifled Greenfield in an 18-6 opening-night win.

He is one of eight players from St. Joseph Central High School who are making the trip up from Pittsfield to participate in the first year of a co-operative agreement between the two schools, and Stump says the partnership could not be stronger.

"We've got two teams here, but it's really one team, one family," he said.
 

Emma Jourdain, Lenox

It would be hard to single out one runner on a team that turned in as dominant a performance as Lenox did in Wednesday's season-opener ... except that Jourdain was far and away of the field. The Lenox sophomore ran the 4-kilometer course at Mount Greylock in 16 minutes, 19 seconds — 33 seconds ahead of the next-fastest runner and 1:10 ahead of the first runner not wearing a Lenox uniform. With five runners in the top six, Lenox's performance at the six-team turned a lot of heads. The Millionaires' coach knew her team was good but did not expect a day like the one it had.

"We knew this summer, the number of kids who had been working so hard training, a lot of them since track season — we expected good things today," Jeanne Teasdale said. "We didn't know until we got out here because in Berkshire County there are a lot of good teams, especially Mount Greylock, Monument and Hoosac."

iBerkshires Sports and Capital Region Honda Dealers, including Bedard Honda in Cheshire, will be spotlighting two Berkshire County high school athletes each week, a boy and a girl, who best excelled in their sport or boosted their teams' efforts.