Here is the Rockford Register Star's Athlete of the Week winner for May 27-June 1
Jay Taft
Well, that's a wrap, as the final Rockford Register Star high school Athlete of the Week poll of the 2023-24 school year is closed.
And North Boone softball standout Lauren Stefek ran away with the honors for the week of May 27-June 1.
More Rockford-area sports:Register Star All-Area Girls Soccer: Here is the 2024 MVP and full 12-person team
Stefek helped North Boone's softball team to a second-place finish at state, especially down the stretch when she smacked a two-out, two-run single in the bottom of the fifth to give the Vikings the 4-3 lead in the super-sectional, and crushed a homer in the state semis that North Boone wound up winning 2-0.
The senior shortstop then singled down the leftfield line in the third inning to kickstart one of North Boone's biggest rallies in last Saturday's state championship game. She added a diving catch and two other nice defensive plays, and she went 1-for-2 in the finale.
She followed all that up by earning more than enough votes to cruise to the win in the final AOW poll of the year for Rockford-area athletes.
Other nominees were: Auburn's Jayden Moss; North Boone's Cami Carter; and Hononegah's Owen Rollinson, Dani Franz and Aislyn Palmer.
Jay Taft has been a Rockford Register Star sports reporter since 2000. Email him at jtaft@rrstar.com and follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at . Sign up for the Rockford High School Sports Newsletter . Jay has covered a wide variety of sports, from the Chicago Bears and Blackhawks to local youth sports.