25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports: 11.22.18
November 4, 1993
The East Hampton High School field hockey team won its first county Class C championship Friday, shutting out Southampton 1-0, and followed up with the C-D title Tuesday by a like score over Pierson-Shelter Island. The team will face Miller Place, the county’s pre-eminent team, in the small schools final at 2:30 this afternoon at the Southampton High School field.
. . . Ellamae Gurney came up big for the Bonackers in the county C game with Southampton. Early in the second half, Heather McCormack, the right inner, passed the ball to Gurney at right wing. Beating about six defenders, Gurney moved the goalie out of position and slammed a shin-high shot into the left corner of the cage.
. . . Bridget Behan, East Hampton’s top scorer with 13 goals, was pretty well marked by Southampton, but she wasn’t to be denied in Tuesday’s C-D title game. In that one, Behan, the hard-playing left inner, pushed home the winning goal with just 19 seconds remaining to play.
Like her 26-year-old cousin Jenno before her, Gretchen Topping, of Swan Creek Farms in Bridgehampton, will ride in the National Horse Show at the Meadowlands on Sunday, her 18th birthday.
During a brief stretch this summer, Gretchen, who rode at the National show last year, managed to qualify for all but one of the four major indoor shows. She won three Maclay and four Medal equitation competitions, and placed fourth nationally in the P.H.A. class on a borrowed dark bay thoroughbred, Nyatross. She admits her mount, who she said was “more like a dog than a horse,” will be hard to give up at the end of the season.
November 11, 1993
Playing very close to perfection, the East Hampton High School field hockey team made its fans forget Saturday’s gloomy skies by smashing Sachem 5-0 in the county championship game at Southampton High School.
It was the first time an East Hampton hockey team ever won a county championship, and the first time an East Hampton team accomplished the feat since girls tennis did in 1980.
The Bonackers, who have been on a roll for the past month, got to the final by scoring a tremendous upset on the same field last Thursday, defeating the odds-on favorite, Miller Place, thanks to Ellamae Gurney’s goal in the second half.
Gurney, whose sister Francie played on the 1980 county-champion tennis team, shared most valuable player honors with Bonac’s sophomore goalie, Erika Vargas. Vargas withstood a pounding throughout the second half, and was credited with 19 saves, a number of them spectacular. The shutout earned her a share of Dawn Da Costa Faro’s 14-shutout school record, set in 1989, a year East Hampton lost the county championship game to Sachem, 3-2.
Vargas broke the record Saturday as her teammates, playing probably the best hockey ever seen here, dominated the Class A champion. Together, they virtually breezed to the county title.