25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports: 11.16.17

November 5, 1992

Bears Lose by Grisly Margin

Any member of the East Hampton High School football team will tell you Saturday was a perfect day for football, but for the Stony Brook Bears it was a cold and bitter day indeed.

Bonac used the occasion of its annual homecoming game to demolish the outclassed visitors 47-28, rolling to a 20-0 first-quarter lead and scoring 27 more points before the halftime gun sounded.

The winners used a punishing ground attack to seize control of the game early before going to the air to put the Bears away for good.

The victory left the Bonackers with a 3-3 mark and kept their playoff hopes alive; Stony Brook dropped to 2-4.

. . . East Hampton must get in front of fourth-place Southampton (4-2) to qualify for the playoffs, so the remaining two games on the schedule are musts. The team travels to Port Jefferson Saturday and gets the first-place team in the conference, Mount Sinai, at home the following week.

November 12, 1992

Saturday afternoon was pretty in Port Jefferson, with fall light slanting through the turning shade trees that ring the high school’s football field. And for the East Hampton High School football team, Saturday proved to be a lot of fun, probably the most fun the Bonackers have had all season.

By the time the shadows lengthened, East Hampton had routed the home team 39-14, scoring six touchdowns to the Royals’ two, and virtually everyone had gotten into the act, especially the offensive line, which continually blazed trails for the chief ball carriers, Todd Carberry, Max Finazzo, and, later, Rob Balnis.

Carberry rushed for a gargantuan 292 yards in 28 carries, an East Hampton “first” in the athletic director Dick Cooney’s memory.

. . . With the offensive linemen, Mike Vasti, Paul Poutouves, David Barbour, John Hayes, and Shane Davis, pushing their counterparts around, Carberry and Max Finazzo took turns reeling off yardage. 

. . . The linebackers, Poutouves, Ron Gatlin, Trevor Darrell, and Will Stedman, came up big defensively, as did the linemen — Davis, Gus Gomez, Gavin Menu, and Hayes — the cornerbacks, Carberry and Kenny Brabant, and the free safety, Brendan Collins.

. . . East Hampton did it on the ground and in the air. Carberry tallied three times, on runs of 26 and 22 yards and on a 20-yard reception. Steven Quick, the tight end, caught a 31-yard touchdown pass from the quarterback, Marcus Borowsky, who also scored on a 6-yard keeper. Balnis, a quick sophomore, completed the rout with a 36-yard ramble near the end of the game.

Janelle Kraus, a Pierson-Shelter Island harrier, a small but strong freshman, captured the county Class C cross-country title at Sunken Meadow State Park Friday, in 20 minutes and 59 seconds.

Kraus is the latest in a string of success stories orchestrated by Cliff Clark, the Team Shelter Island guru, who is aiming high despite the low combined enrollments of Pierson and Shelter Island High Schools.

“We’ve been watching her since she was in the sixth grade,” Clark said this week. “She was a real competitor, but nothing forewarned us that she would be this good.” Kraus hung with Melissa Lingle of Stony Brook and Sandy Kutzing of Port Jefferson for over two miles, and blew by both about three-quarters of the way up Cardiac Hill, a steep incline that has been the traditional bane of runners who test the Sunken Meadow course. Once on top, she accelerated quickly and coasted to a 13-second victory over Lingle.