Roundup: Bonac Tennis Team Hangs a Loss on Ross
The big news as far as East Hampton High School sports was concerned last week lay in the fact that the boys tennis team defeated the league-champion Ross School 4-3 here on May 1.
Ross and Westhampton Beach finished with 10-2 records, though Ross defeated the Hurricanes both times they played. It was the fourth straight year that the private school has won the league championship.
But East Hampton, which had lost 4-3 earlier in the season in Ross’s “bubble,” was up for the May Day showdown, delighting numerous Bonac fans — the most seen here in a long time for a tennis match.
At the end of the day, it went down to third doubles, and Brady Yusko and Nicki Neubert proved up to the challenge, prevailing 6-4, 7-6 (7-5) over the Cosmos’ Will Cassou and Maddison Hummel.
East Hampton and Ross split the four singles matches, with East Hampton, in the persons of Julian McGurn and Collin Kavanaugh, winning at one and two and with Ross’s Louis Caiola and Jonas Feurring winning at three and four.
Reese Donaldson and Matt Silich took the first set from Ross’s Jack Brinkley and Ramiz Farah at first doubles, at 7-5, but Brinkley and Farah rebounded to win the next two sets 6-1, 6-4. East Hampton, with Peter Davis and Andrew Dixon, and the aforementioned Yusko and Neubert, won the other two doubles matches. The team finished at 8-4.
In the Division IV tournament, which was played on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, McGurn, the fourth singles seed, reached the quarterfinals, where he lost to the fifth-seeded Andrew Reiley of Eastport-South Manor. Feurring defeated Westhampton’s number-three, Beecher Halsey, 0-6, 6-1, 6-1 in the first round, but lost to the second seed, Chris Kunhle, 6-3, 6-3 in the second.
Brinkley and Caiola, “who would have been favored to win the doubles,” according to Ross’s coach, Juan Diaz, were not allowed to contend given the fact, as Westhampton’s coach John Czartosieski pointed out, they had played only six matches together in the regular season, not the requisite seven.
Diaz said he was “very disappointed” by the decision.
In other East Hampton sports news, the girls lacrosse team dominated Elwood-John Glenn 19-8 in a game played here Monday, leaving Bonac’s girls with an outside chance to make the playoffs should they win their remaining two games and should certain other teams lose. “It’s not an ideal situation,” said the girls coach, Matt Maloney, “but we do have a shot.”
In Monday’s game, Melanie Mackin scored a career-high six goals and Carley Seekamp had a career-high seven assists.
Bellport was to have played here Tuesday and on Saturday morning East Hampton is to end regular-season play at Center Moriches.
The boys, whose record was 4-8 as of Tuesday, “will not make the playoffs,” said their coach, Mike Vitulli. “But we have improved a lot from the beginning of the season, and we’re hoping to win our last two” with Mount Sinai here today and at winless McGann-Mercy in Riverhead Saturday.
“Drew Harvey and Cort Heneveld have had good seasons,” Vitulli continued, “and a lot of guys are gaining much needed experience.”
On Monday, Vitulli used his freshmen and sophomores in a scrimmage with Southampton’s jayvee. East Hampton “won” 12-0.
As for baseball, Will Collins, who assists Ed Bahns in coaching the team, said “the scores that you see in the newspaper don’t indicate how much we’ve improved over the course of the season.”
The Bonackers, who are the League VII cellar dwellers, along with Amityville, were swept this past week by Shoreham-Wading River, losing the first game 15-0, but putting up a fight in the next two, which they lost 10-6 and 5-3.
The May 1 game, played here, “was our best of the season,” said Collins. “We had a season-high 12 hits, two each by Patrick Silich, Brendan Hughes, Jack Abrams-Dyer, and Kyle McKee [a freshman], who pitched well until we had to take him out because of a high pitch count. Our defense hurt us that day.”
The finale of the three-game series, played at Shoreham last Thursday, wound up 5-3 in the Wildcats’ favor. “Aside from a passed ball and a couple of mental mistakes, we played perfect defense,” said Collins, “and we rallied from being down 5-1 to score two runs in the top of the seventh inning, one coming home on a double by Brendan Hughes, and one scoring as the result of an infield error. Peter Shilowich started for us and went the whole way. He’s not overpowering, but he’s effective, and gets a lot of groundball outs. He gave up nine hits and walked two. . . . We’re hoping that the kids bring a lot of energy into this last week so we can truly say we got better all season long.”