Boys Soccer, Girls Volleyball on Runs, Field Hockey Stunned
The East Hampton High School boys soccer team had won three in a row as of Tuesday, improving its overall record to 4-5.
Don McGovern, the coach, said, however, that there was still much work to do. The boys shut out Mount Sinai 2-0 on Sept. 15, defeated Miller Place 3-1 in the rain here on Sept. 19, and shut out Babylon 1-0 at Babylon Saturday.
The Miller Place game would have been a shutout too had not the goalie, Kurt Matthews, in the final minutes misplayed a bouncing ball that landed on the foot of a Panther forward, who tapped it into the empty cage.
Marco Gutama was the star of that game, scoring goals in the 23rd and 56th minute. Brian Gonzalez, who came off the bench, scored the other, in the 64th minute.
The final could just as easily have been 6-0 had the Bonackers not missed so many chances.
“We’re progressing,” McGovern said while walking off the field. “We’re almost halfway through the season.”
Justin Carpio scored the lone goal at Babylon. Again, said McGovern, “We had many scoring opportunities, but Justin’s goal proved to be enough.”
This year’s team has no go-to guy as in past years — a Nick West or Mario Olaya or Ernesto Valverde, for instance — but it moves the ball well and is competitive. Bayport-Blue Point was to have played here yesterday, a game that was to have begun the second half of the season. The last time out, Bayport bested the Bonackers 1-0.
The field hockey team on Monday was upset 1-0 by Pierson at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park. East Hampton went in at 4-1 and the Whalers went in at 1-4. But Pierson’s players were more aggressive — hungrier, as it were — than East Hampton’s throughout the 60 minutes of play. The Bonackers, who came in boasting a win over Shoreham-Wading River, could get nothing going on Pierson’s well-mowed grass pitch. The Whalers were awarded 10 penalty corner plays vis-a-vis East Hampton’s five, and scored on one of them, 12 minutes into the second half, as Mahlia Hemby tapped in a Paige Schaefer shot headed for the right corner of the cage. Charlotte Johnson, Pierson’s goalie, made seven saves that afternoon; Maddie Schenck, Bonac’s keeper, made six.
“Schaefer’s shot would have gone in anyway,” Gavin Menu of The Sag Harbor Express commented.
“It seems like they’re asleep out there,” an East Hampton fan said near the game’s end. Robyn Bramoff, East Hampton’s coach, obviously stung by the loss, demurred when asked afterward to account for it.
In other high school sports action this past week — a slow one news-wise given the Rosh Hashana holidays — the golf team on Monday defeated Westhampton Beach, a perennial rival, as Turner Foster, the defending county champion, shot a 2-under 32 on the South Fork Country Club’s front nine; the girls volleyball team that day improved to 5-2 by shutting out Mount Sinai 3-0, its fourth win in a row; the boys volleyball team likewise defeated East Islip, 3-1, improving its overall record to 3-4, and the girls tennis team’s record dropped to 2-5 in league play and to 2-7 over all as the result of losing 4-3 to Eastport-South Manor. East Hampton’s singles players having been doing well by and large, though the doubles teams have not.
Finally, Joe Vas, the school district’s athletic director, announced this week the homecoming schedule for Oct. 14. The field hockey team is to play Hampton Bays that day at 11 a.m. A field hockey alumnae game is to be played at 1:30. There’s a flag football game at 3 and a boys volleyball game, versus East Islip, at 6.
Golf, boys soccer, and boys volleyball are to play at home on Oct. 12, a Thursday, and girls volleyball is to play the next day. On the 14th, a Hall of Fame breakfast is to be held in the cafeteria at 8:30 a.m., following by Hall of Fame inductions in the auditorium at 9:15.