The 2014 Fall sports season has just about ended. Last month, two athletes stood out by showing exceptional leadership and talent qualities and were chosen to be “Spotlight’s Athlete of the Month”.  Two juniors took their opportunity to play and ran with it. Ethan Fleming and Katie Evans led their teams through their contributions on and off the field.

Fleming is standing out this season by leading the Tigers in receiving yards and touchdowns including the first touchdown of the season against East Longmeadow. Success did not come easy for Fleming. In the offseason he suffered from a knee injury that resulted in surgery. “It interfered with my summer baseball league, but not football, I was back the first day of practice.”

The Tigers are off to an intermediate beginning of the 2014 season, but Fleming is staying optimistic. “I think we have a chance to make it as far as possible if we keep playing like we did [yesterday] against Amherst,” Fleming said. “We played more as unit instead of individuals and that was the key to our success.”

Unlike Fleming, Katie Evans was not chosen for her success on the field, but for her leadership qualities. Evans was named a captain this year, which proves she’s worthy of taking her team to victory. Evans was shocked when she learned she was a captain. “He [Coach Woods] threw the band at me and I caught it, and my jaw just kind of dropped” Evans said.

Although this was a huge accomplishment, this was not the best moment in Evans’ soccer career. “The other night, we had our first home night game against Belchertown, we beat them 1-0 and they were a really good team so it was a really good accomplishment,” Evans said. The Lady Tigers have been exceptional so far this season and will surely make the playoffs if they continue to play this way. Evans agrees, she said they will go, “definitely into the postseason, I’m not sure how far, but I’m definitely feeling it.” This won’t be an easy rest of the season and this is where Evans’ leadership comes into play. “As a team I think we need to work together more. Our communication definatly needs to be upscaled, and me personally, I need to work on my left foot a lot,” Evans stated.

After demonstrating their outstanding efforts so far this season, Ethan Fleming and Katie Evans have shown that hard work does really pay off in the long run.

Wright may be reached at [email protected]

Oliveira may be reached at [email protected]