Bonac Swimmers, 9-and-Up, Made Waves This Past Week
The East Hampton High School boys swimming team and the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton
RECenter Hurricanes enjoyed productive outings in pools this past week.
While the boys, coached by Craig Brierley, lost 102-79 at Sayville, “we put up some good times,” said the coach, who added that “we’re not in our racing phase yet — we’re concentrating on building up our endurance. The other coach said afterward that he was ‘a little nervous,’ that he didn’t expect us to be so strong.”
Meanwhile, Tom Cohill, the Y’s aquatics director and the youth swim team’s head coach, assisted by Brierley, Danielle Quackenbush, Annette MacNiven, and Dan Mendelson, reported that the Hurricanes had had “some outstanding times” at the Flushing-Cross Island Y Holiday Invitational at Eisenhower Park in Nassau County this past weekend.
Among those Cohill cited from among his 50 competitors were Skye Marigold, a 17-year-old who is to swim at Connecticut College next fall, Georgie Bogetti, Thomas Brierley, Trevor Mott, and the 9-and-10-year-old girls — Katalina Badilla, Kiara Bailey-Williams, Olivia Brabant, Julia Brierley, Caroline Brown, Darcy McFarland, Sophia Swanson, Gaby Osborn, and Evelyn Purcell.
The 9-10 girls, he said, finished second over all among about 10 teams; Bogetti had won the 13-14 girls 200 and 500 freestyle races, in 1:57.140 and 5:11.10; Mott had broken 5 minutes in the scholastic boys 500, finishing in 4:59.00; Brierley had been “the first person we’ve had to break 1:50 in the 200 free,” with a time of 1:48.52, and Marigold had turned in personal bests in the open 100 free (52.67) and in the 50 free (24.32).
It was the 100-strong Hurricanes’ sixth meet of the season. Next for them is the Winterfest regional meet at the University of Maryland in January.
Cohill added that Marigold, Bogetti, and Brierley are very close to posting national-qualifying times.
Moreover, there are four 11-to-12-year-old Hurricanes among the metropolitan region’s top 10 in the mile. Maggie Purcell is ranked fifth in that distance, Caroline Oakland seventh, Maddie Jones eighth, and Liana Paradiso ninth. Bogetti is sixth-ranked in the mile among the region’s 13-14-year-old girls.
Getting back to the boys varsity, the elder Brierley said that absent the 13 points Sayville had been awarded in diving (East Hampton has no divers), the margin of victory would have been 10 points.
“Nobody matched our top guys — Thomas and Trevor won their individual events easily — but Sayville got a lot of seconds and thirds.”
Thomas Brierley won the 100 backstroke and the 200 individual medley, and was a member of the 200 and 400 freestyle relay teams as well. Mott won the 200 and 500 freestyle races.
“With 33 swimmers [only four of whom are seniors] we’ve got the biggest roster we’ve ever had, and we’ve got a lot of versatility,” said the coach. “We’re having everyone do a stroke as well as freestyle.”
T.J. Paradiso, a freshman, was “the swimmer of the meet.”
“He had a full plate and stepped up,” Brierley said, “in the 100 free, the 200 individual medley, and in two relays.”
Before Friday’s practice, Paradiso, when questioned, said he had personal best times in all of his races at Sayville. “The team,” he said, “is great.”
There are a number of lifeguards or soon-to-be-lifeguards on it. One, Cort Heneveld, a junior who quarterbacks East Hampton’s football team and who as a sophomore was accepted into the United States Naval Academy, said of his first competitive swimming season, “I like it a lot.” He confessed that at the beginning, he — by virtue of his 210-pound frame — tended to sink, but he’s learned to move fast, so much so that in a recent intrasquad meet he had been “faster than some of the guys.”
Afterward, he said with a smile, “we ate 10 pounds of bacon and a whole bunch of eggs.”