Everyone was feeling wonderful. Well, who wouldn’t if you’d just beat a team by a score of 36-8. But Joe McKee, East Hampton High’s football coach, once the applause had died down, told his junior varsity charges that they would meet much tougher teams than Center Moriches down the road, and that there was much work to do.
What work, specifically, he was asked as his happy players walked off the field in the gathering darkness? Tackling and blocking for starters, he said. “And we have to be able to run inside. . . . We’ve got to be able to run inside and tackle better.”
A big test looms on the horizon, the homecoming game the morning of Oct. 5 with William Floyd, which has one of the best football programs on the Island. Meanwhile, the Bonac jayvee, which now numbers 35, is 2-0.
As for Monday’s game, the news was good, though not from the very beginning. East Hampton went three-and-out in its first possession. But then, after Michael Moret tackled the runner in the backfield on fourth-and-one at the visitors’ 25, Kevin Bunce Jr., on his second try, ran for a first down at the 14, after which Wayne Street, about whom more later, ran the ball in for a 6-0 East Hampton lead. Topher Cullen, the quarterback, threw a pass in the flat to Bunce on the extra-point play, but he was stopped well short of the line.
Before the first quarter was over East Hampton scored again, a 30-yard touchdown pass to Street capping a 13-play drive that began on Bonac’s 8-yard line.
This time, East Hampton converted as Cullen, on a keeper, ran into the Red Devils’ end zone, upping the lead to 14-0.
The quarter ended as Danny Lester sacked the visitors’ quarterback at the Center Moriches 30.
Following a punt when the second quarter began, the Bonackers took over at midfield. Three plays later they were in the end zone again by way of an electrifying 50-yard pass up the middle to Street.
Andrew Salamy caught Cullen’s extra-point pass, which had been tipped by a defender. Everything was going Bonac’s way, it seemed.
And that’s the way the half ended, with East Hampton sitting on a 22-0 lead.
McKee told them during the break not to let down, that the Giants had come back the day before from an 18-point deficit.
Apparently the players listened, for they launched a 12-play, 65-yard drive when the third quarter began, Cullen carrying the ball over the line on a third-and-one at the Center Moriches 4-yard line. Rene Criollo’s point-after kick was good; East Hampton led 29-0.
McKee began subbing liberally then, and continued to do so throughout the remainder of the game, during which the visitors finally got on the board as the result of a 23-yard carry with seven and a half minutes left to play — a touchdown to which the visitors added 2 points — and East Hampton scored once more thanks to a 20-yard touchdown run by Michael Hill and a point-after kick by Criollo with a little more than three minutes left.
Could things be turning around for Bonac football? Coach McKee thinks they may. He’s got 140 — more kids than ever, boys and girls — in his N.F.L. flag football program, whose sessions are held at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Tuesday and Friday evenings, beginning at 5:30. Lorenzo Rodriguez, who coaches the jayvee’s defense, and McKee’s brother Kelly, as well as parents and jayvee players, help to channel all that energy.
“It’s kindergarten through sixth grade, and we’ve got three divisions, with eight teams of seven kids each in the K-2 and fifth-sixth divisions and six teams with seven kids each in the third-fourth division,” Joe McKee said. “This is our fourth year and every year it’s been going up. We had 125 last year. . . . We’re up to 33 on the middle school [seventh and eighth grade] team, which is coached by Dave Fioriello and Rob Rivera and Andrew Daige, and 35 on the jayvee, and they’ve said they want to have a varsity next year. So, yes, I’m excited. I think we’re getting there.”
The past few years had been a roller coaster ride, said the fifth-year coach, with two good years to begin with, followed by “a nosedive” in his third season at the helm.
“We’re on the rise now . . . we’re trying,” he said, adding that “the kids love flag football. I hope they stick with it.”