25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports: 04.04.19
March 17, 1994
Bobby Hopson, the Bridgehampton School’s all-time scoring leader, recently capped a dazzling four-year career at Wagner College, scoring 19 points — and thus raising his career total to 1,568, good for fifth place on the Staten Island college’s all-time list — in a Northeast Conference semifinal-round loss to Rider College, the eventual champion. It was the third time this season that Rider, an 83-75 winner, had defeated Wagner.
In the six Northeast Conference tournament games played in his career, Hopson, a 5-foot-10-inch shooting guard, averaged 24 points per game, shot 53.5 percent from the field, and netted an amazing 60.6 percent of his 3-point attempts.
. . . In the Rider-Wagner conference final last year, ESPN announcers raved about Hopson and his opposite number, Darrick Suber, who’s now playing professionally in New Zealand.
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Bob Wolff, a sports anchor on Channel 12, exhorted attendees at Monday’s Athletic Leaders Club seminar at East Hampton High School to follow the Golden Rule, and to remember that in the end “it’s not so much the glory, the accolades, or the money, but what sort of person you were. . . . Success, he said, required “more perspiration than inspiration,” adding that “a pat on the back is a lot more effective than a kick in the pants,” and that “the only race you should care about is the human race.”
March 24, 1994
The East Hampton 9-and-10-year-old Biddy basketball team added the Sag Harbor invitational tournament championship to its laurels Saturday, going 4-0 during the course of the day and edging its Harbor peers 41-40 in the final.
It was the third time this season the young Bonackers, who finished the season at 12-0, prevailed over the Harbor Biddies. All of the games were nip-and-tuck.
. . . In the end, it was Marcele Street who carried the mail for East Hampton. Held to only 3 points in the first half, Street scored 13 in the second half — 6 of them in crunch time. Street’s big baskets at the end — and the fact that Eric Thompson, Sag Harbor’s center and the tallest kid on the floor, fouled out with four minutes remaining — served to tilt the game East Hampton’s way.
. . . “I don’t think there’s a better 9-10 team than East Hampton in the county,” said Tom Mac, the Harbor Biddies’ coach. “Both towns are on the ball now — we’ve got good programs again.”
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Andy Levandoski drew a crowd at the East Hampton Bowl on March 15 as word got around that the veteran bowler was flirting with a perfect 300 game.
Actually, Levandoski, who is with the Van Dyke & Hand team, a middle-of-the-pack entry in the Tuesday businessmen’s league, wasn’t flirting — he was in hot pursuit. And he would have made it had he not been “rapped” in the 12th frame by the 10-pin.
“Andy’s last ball was a good one,” said Steve Graham, one of about 30 onlookers. “Ordinarily, the three-pin will take out the six, and the six will take the 10, but this time the six went wide. When that happens, it’s called a ‘rap.’ ”
Levandoski’s 299 is apparently the first 299 at the Bowl since the late John Vinski did it some 30 years ago. It was Levandoski’s personal best in a lifetime of bowling that began, he said, when he was 8.