Playoffs on Bahns’s and Maloney’s Minds

    Ed Bahns, whose baseball team was 5-6 as of Tuesday morning, having dropped all three games in a series with Mount Sinai, by scores of 9-1, 11-1, and 4-1, professed some concern Friday when asked about the team’s chances of making the playoffs.

    “An 11-9 record is still possible,” the coach said, “but I am a bit surprised. We’ve got possibly the best third baseman in the league and possibly the best shortstop, I know we’ve got the best catcher, and we’ve got a decent pitching staff, not lights-out, but decent. We’re a senior team, but so far we’ve been playing below our capabilities.”

    On the other hand, Matt Maloney, whose girls lacrosse team was on the verge of a tough, three-game week, was more sanguine. “If the playoffs were held today,” Maloney said during Friday’s practice session, “we’d be the fifth seed among the eight teams.”

    Should the girls make the postseason, it would be a first for the 12-year-old program.

    Meghan Dombkowski and Sarah Johnson, two of the team’s defenders, were confident, when questioned Saturday morning at the South Fork Country Club, where they were selling raffle tickets for the East Hampton Coaches Association, that the team would, indeed, make history.

    “We’re good now, but Coach Maloney knows and we know that we could be so much better,” said Johnson, who in the fall is to attend the University of Tampa, where she hopes to play volleyball. Dombkowski, a fellow senior, said she’ll play field hockey, and perhaps lacrosse, at Nichols College in Dudley, Mass.

    As of Tuesday morning, East Hampton (5-3 in divisional play) was in eighth place among the 21 teams in Division II, with 112.420 power points, just behind Harborfields, which is to play here tomorrow. The girls, who lost 16-11 to fourth-place Shoreham-Wading River here Monday, were to have played at 12th-place Huntington yesterday.

    Of Monday’s loss here to Shoreham, a game in which Maggie Pizzo scored seven goals, Maloney said via e-mail, “We put forth a great effort — I was very proud of our performance. We took care of the ball in the midfield, we limited our turnovers on offense, and we played tough, physical defense for most of the game.”

    “But we did lose. I told the girls afterward that while it was a great effort, we needed to perform that way in the rest of our games. I told them we no longer could be satisfied with a great effort — we have to have the W too.”