After another week of exciting high school sports action, you voted for the Rockford Register Star’s Athlete of the Week, sponsored by Gustafson’s Furniture & Mattress, for the week of Oct. 20-25.
And the winner was Byron quarterback Andrew Talbert. Talbert led Byron (9-0) to a 61-7 blowout of North Boone (5-4), scoring on both of his runs (a 43-yarder and a 25-yard TD run), returning a punt 75 yards for a score, and completing 5 of his 6 passes for 151 yards through the air with three TD passes. Then Talbert earned over 58 percent of the vote on our weekly poll.
Almost every week for the rest of the school year, we will compile a list of athletes from the Rockford area who had standout weeks and let you, the reader, vote on who you think deserves the AOW award. Every week you will be able to find the nominees as well as the poll at rrstar.com.
And every week, we ask that you vote only once per day, to keep the polls fair.
Here are the rest of this week’s nominees:
Abagail Baumann, Lutheran cross country
Baumann continues to set records wherever she goes. For the third week in a row, Baumann set a course record, this time snapping the record at Fuller Forest Preserve while dominating at regionals this past weekend.
Ben Bucher, Belvidere North football
Bucher rushed for 172 yards and three touchdowns during Belvidere North’s dominant win over Harlem last Friday night to secure the NIC-10 title. Bucher also added 12 tackles and a sack on defense.
Cam Jones, Polo volleyball
Jones had 37 assists, 22 digs, 14 kills and 10 aces while leading Polo to the Marcia Thompson Tournament title this past weekend.
Jackson Sternquist, Belvidere football
The sophomore QB for the Bucs completed 5 of his 10 passes for 134 yards and a touchdown during Belvidere’s 8-6 upset win over Hononegah in last week’s regular-season finale.
Molly Webb, Winnebago cross country
Webb once again paced Winnebago’s girls cross country team, finishing second at regionals behind Baumann, while leading Winnebago to 21 points and the regional title.
Aiden Wild, Lena-Winslow football
For the third straight week, Lena-Winslow’s fullback rushed for nearly 200 yards, this time going for 202 yards and two touchdowns in Le-Win’s 40-20 win over Durand/Pecatonica in Week 9.
Jay Taft is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at jtaft@rrstar.com and sign up for the Rockford High School Sports Newsletter here at rrstar.com. Jay has covered a variety of sports, from the Chicago Bears and Blackhawks to local youth sports, since the turn of the century at the Register Star.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Find out who won Gustafson’s Rockford-area athlete of the week poll for Oct. 20-25
Reporting by Jay Taft, Rockford Register Star / Rockford Register Star
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