Bonac Boys Swimmers’ First Winning Season
In only its third year, East Hampton High School’s boys swimming team has finished a season with a winning record.
Jeff Thompson’s charges have finished at 3-2 in League III, good for third place, behind 5-0 Hauppauge and 3-1 Harborfields, and ahead of 2-3 Deer Park, 1-3 Huntington, and 0-5 North Babylon. The team went 3-4 over all.
As for the postseason, Thompson’s goal is to have six individuals and all three relay teams — 200 medley and 200 and 400 free — compete in the county meet on Feb. 18. Four of his swimmers, Thomas Brierley, Trevor Mott, Dan Hartner, and Rob Rewinski, have already posted county-qualifying times — Brierley in 500 freestyle and 100 backstroke, Mott in the 500 and 200 freestyle races, Hartner in the 100 back and 50 free, and Rewinski in the 100 free. “A couple of others are on the cusp in the 50 and 100,” said the coach during a conversation following Monday’s practice at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter.
When it comes to the relays, he can, because of the team’s great depth, “mix and match.”
The league meet is to be contested today at Hauppauge, and Thompson is hoping to “take Harborfields down.” The Tornadoes bested the Bonackers 87-83 in a recent dual meet that went down to the wire.
“The team did phenomenal this year,” said Thompson’s assistant, Craig Brierley. “We’re so pleased. From top to bottom.”
East Hampton lost 89-80 here on Feb. 1 in a nonleague meet with Smithtown — East Hampton’s last home meet of the season — though the visitors exhibitioned in the finale, the 400 freestyle relay.
“It was a good matchup,” said Thompson, “a good test for us going into the postseason. Smithtown was a little stronger — they had two guys I didn’t know about.”
The Bonackers had many seconds and thirds and a couple of firsts — Mott in the 200 free and the 200 freestyle relay team of Hartner, Brierley, Paul Dorego, and Mott — and, said Thompson, “a lot of lifetime bests.”
Among them, he said, were Mott’s time of 1 minute and 54.16 seconds in the 200 free; Kyle Sturmann’s 1:07.75 in the 100 butterfly; Rewinski’s 54.81 in the 100 free; Jeremy Pepper’s 2:10.76 in the 200 free, and Adam Heller’s 2:27.74, Thomas Paradiso’s 2:28.21, and Rob Anderson’s 2:28.62 in the 200 individual medley; Dorego’s 25.21 in the 50, and Ryan Lewis’s 1:17.39 and Paradiso’s 1:18.18 in the 100 breaststroke. Moreover, Hartner had missed breaking one minute in the 100 backstroke “by five-tenths of a second. Trevor was out-touched by three milliseconds in the 500.”
“We were popping,” said Thompson. “Their coach didn’t soften his lineup. It was the last home meet for our seniors — everyone was inspired.”
“We’re resting up this week,” he added. When asked how many football fields had been swum thus far, Thompson, after consulting his iPhone, said, “We’re in the Pacific, about midway to Hawaii. They’ve done . . . 136 miles each . . . 3,264 miles if it were a baton relay.”