Golfers and Girls Soccer Win, Fowkes Smokes Cedar Point
East Hampton High’s girls soccer team won its first game in two years as it shut out Pierson 4-0 here Friday, the same day the girls swimming team cruised by Hauppauge in its home debut at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter.
The day before, East Hampton’s boys cross-country team went up against three opponents at Cedar Point County Park — a meet originally scheduled two days prior that had been postponed 10 minutes before it was to start owing to a deluge generated by Hurricane Florence.
And, on Monday, the golf team, coached by Rich King, who has taken over from Claude Beudert, a recent retiree, continued undefeated, at 4-0, by beating Center Moriches 8.5-0.5. Westhampton Beach was also undefeated, at 2-0, as of Tuesday. The two teams were to have played at Westhampton on Sept. 18, the day that the remnant of the hurricane hit.
In other Bonac golf news, James Bradley, a seventh grader from Springs who’s playing number-three on King’s team, won a Drive, Chip & Putt regional qualifier at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y., this past week, topping the 12-to-13-year-old boys division, advancing him to the national finals that are to be played at the Augusta National Golf Club on April 7.
Back to cross-country, Ryan Fowkes, East Hampton’s top runner, a senior, was last Thursday’s individual winner, in 15 minutes and 5 seconds, the second-fastest time ever run at Cedar Point. In so doing, Fowkes outsprinted a 4:17 miler, Westhampton Beach’s Juan Lasso, to the finish line from the stand of trees at the edge of the bluff, a distance of about 150 yards.
Frank Bellucci, a junior, was East Hampton’s second finisher, in a personal-record 16:34, with Evan Masi (eighth), Joshua Vasquez (13th), and Aidan Klarman (15th) coming in after him.
Kevin Barry, the boys coach, has a huge squad this year, numbering two dozen, including a dozen freshmen, some of them the best ninth graders he’s had in six years.
Those freshmen have won two large freshman races thus far this fall, the most recent being the Jim Smith Invitational at Sunken Meadow State Park on Sept. 15, a race in which they went up against about 200 of their peers from 39 other schools. With Masi placing sixth, Vazquez eighth, and Klarman ninth, East Hampton bested Westhampton Beach, Southampton, and Port Washington. Fowkes placed seventh that day in the senior race, in 17:56.
At Cedar Point, East Hampton defeated Amityville 15-50, but lost 27-28 to Mount Sinai, and 22-33 to Westhampton Beach, “the top Class B team in the county,” according to Barry.
Nevertheless, the coach added, “Our potential is huge, with three freshmen among our top five scorers.”
The girls swimming team, as aforesaid, soundly defeated Hauppauge at the Y Friday, winning every event but one, the 100 butterfly.
Sophia Swanson, in the 50 and 100 freestyle, and Julia Brierley, in the 100 backstroke, turned in county-qualifying times that day.
East Hampton swept the 200 freestyle, with Margaret Breen, Camryn Hatch, and Lisbeth Leon; swept the 200 individual medley, with Julia Brierley, Olivia Brabant, and Emma Wiltshire; swept the 50 free, with Oona Foulser, Caroline Brown, and Kiara Bailey-Williams, and swept the 100 free, with Swanson, Olivia Brabant, and Caroline Hoff.
In addition, Bailey-Williams won the 500 freestyle race, Jane Brierley won the 100 breaststroke, and Julia Brierley won the 100 backstroke, though the latter two winners forwent the points insofar as team scoring went. The 200 medley relay team (Brown, Julia Brierley, Swanson, and Foulser), the 200 freestyle relay team (Swanson, Darcy McFarland, Olivia Brabant, and Foulser), and the 400 freestyle relay team (Olivia Brabant, Foulser, Julia Brierley, and Swanson) were winners too, though East Hampton was “exhibitioning,” i.e., forgoing points, in the latter relay.
“The girls are responding very well and continue to improve their stroke techniques, racing skills, and race-relevant thought processes,” Craig Brierley, East Hampton’s coach, said in an account of the meet.
The meet came to a halt for a while early on as one of Hauppauge’s 200 freestyle swimmers, Delanie Ross, suffered an apparent asthma attack, causing her, said Brierley, to “gasp for air and pass out. It was a scary moment, but thanks to a very competent group of good Samaritans and Y.M.C.A. staff, she was in stable condition when the ambulance left for Southampton Hospital. She was just fine when her team picked her up on its way home. Our girls . . . are making a card for Delanie that we will send to her.”
East Hampton’s second league meet, with Sayville, is to be held at the Y.M.C.A. RECenter today at 5. As of earlier this week, six swimmers — Swanson, Foulser, Julia and Jane Brierley, Caroline Brown, and Hatch — have qualified for the county meet.
Cara Nelson, the girls soccer coach, whose high school team, a county champion, is in Smithtown’s Hall of Fame, said before Monday’s game here with Miller Place that Asha Hokanson, Jennifer Calle, Nidia Bravo, and Sofia Garcia had scored the goals in the homecoming game with Pierson.
“We were 0-16 last year, though we could very well surprise some people this fall,” Nelson, who’s in her second year of coaching, said. “We’re improving. We’re trying to get the girls to possess the ball and to build our attacks using our backs to pass the ball forward. The hardest part of our season is now, at the back end will be games that we can win. Our goal is to make the playoffs. I think it’s possible if we work hard, and maybe score some upsets.”
That was not to be on Monday, though East Hampton, which wound up losing 1-0 to the Panthers, put up a good fight. The visitors, thanks to a flick by Cameron Oliva, scored on their third corner kick, in the 26th minute of play. Going with the wind, the Bonackers fared better in the second half but could not finish the three or four serious attacks they launched, leaving Miller Place’s goalie pretty much untested.