Pittsfield's Mooney, Monument Mountain's Stone Earn Weekly Honor

This week's Athletes of the Week closed out the Berkshire County swim season with a bang on Sunday, each swimming the anchor leg of their team's victorious 400-yard freestyle relay quartets at the Berkshire County Individuals Meet.

 

And each has more work to do, starting with next Sunday's Central/Western Mass sectional championships at Springfield College. But their busy final week of the regular season was noteworthy.

 

Pittsfield's Liam Mooney started the week with a pair of wins and a big 4-by-100 free relay win to cap a 50-44 win over Monument Mountain in the teams' final dual meet of the season.

 

On Saturday at Simon's Rock, he missed first place by 22 hundredths of a second in the 200-yard freestyle and won the 100 butterfly before closing the day's last event to help the Generals earn a 1.56 second win over Monument in the 4-by-100.

 

Monument Mountain's Asa Stone was on top of the podium four times for the Spartans on Saturday and was a big reason Monument was on top of the league all winter.

 

In Tuesday's dual meet finale, she won the 200 freestyle and the 100 backstroke to help the Spartans finish the season 10-0 in duals.

 

Four days later, Stone led off the BC Individuals by swimming the backstroke on Monument's winning 200 medley relay quartet, won a couple of individual titles in the 200 IM and the 500 and, of course, finished things off with the anchor leg in the 4-by-100.

 

Stone talked about what it takes to win in the distance event.

 

"It's having the support of everyone, and it's a lot of mental stuff," Stone said. "It's also physical preparation, but when I'm out there, I just tell myself I can do it and that I'm in the right mindset. It's a lot of help from [Monument coach Jill Svirida] because she's really into that mindset stuff."

 

The iBerkshires.com Athlete of the Week is sponsored by Bedard Bros. Auto of Cheshire.