Schedule Says Spring Has Sprung

Spring sprang this past week sportswise, and for the most part the teams — namely baseball, softball, boys tennis, boys and girls lacrosse, and boys and girls track — have been practicing outside, though a foot of wet snow was predicted for Tuesday.

The good news is that the turnouts for all the sports have been good — a dozen are being bused each day to Southampton for boys lacrosse, which remains combined with that school and Pierson, Bridgehampton, and Ross — and that East Hampton’s athletic director, Joe Vas, can give himself a pat on the back for assembling a stellar coaching staff.

Vinny Alversa and Henry Meyer, former teammates on the East End Tigers, a team that topped the amateur metro division not long ago, have once again been reunited, auguring well for that sport. 

Alversa is in his second year as the varsity’s head coach. It’s a young team, but a year older than last season, during which it went 0-20. Hunter Fromm, a lights-out pitcher with a minuscule earned run average, who’s now a senior, had been expected to lead the pitching staff, but he’s been done in by arm trouble that would reportedly have required Tommy John surgery, which, again reportedly, he declined to undergo. That presumably means that Curt Matthews, a junior, will lead the staff. 

A flight to Tampa, Fla., has been booked, Alversa said at Friday’s practice, on Southwest Airlines so that the team, which has been practicing in East Hampton’s gym all winter, can get in a week’s work at the Tampa Bay Spring Training Center.

Katie Helfand, who has two young children, has stepped down as the boys tennis team’s coach, and has been replaced by Kevin McConville, the Hampton Racquet Club’s head pro and the former tennis director (for four years) at the Buckskill Tennis Club nearby. 

A few years ago, McConville, who played number-one singles in his junior and senior years at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala. — one of whose alums is Nick Bollettieri — coached most of his present charges when they played for a strong combined junior high team whose home matches were played on Buckskill’s Har-Tru courts.

“It was a Sag Harbor-Bridgehampton team for two years, and a Sag Harbor-Bridgehampton-East Hampton team for one year,” he said at Friday’s windy practice session.

McConville, who became a teaching professional soon after graduating from college, has been overseeing eight-game, no-ad ladder matches since he began last week. When he blows the whistle, the players who are winning move up a court and those who are losing move down one. Ravi MacGurn, a junior, Jonny De Groot, a junior, and Luke Louchheim, an eighth grader, seem to be leading the way, he said, though Jaedon Glasstein and Hunter Medler are also vying for singles spots.

As for doubles, McConville assured this writer, who has been waiting for years to see teams move up and back together on the court, that he’d make sure they would stay in sync rather than become split, with one man affixed to the baseline and one statue-like at the net.

Diane O’Donnell, the veteran girls cross-country coach (and a top-flight age-group distance runner), has joined Yani Cuesta in coaching girls spring track. Ben Turnbull and Mike Buquicchio, who coached boys indoor track, are to do the same this spring.

A new staff, headed by Robyn Bramoff Mott, will oversee girls lacrosse, Jessica Stanna, last year’s varsity coach, having departed for a teaching job in Riverhead.

Mott’s assistant is Lisa Farbar, the school’s strength and conditioning coach. Jenn Reich and Katla Thorsen, a recent Stony Brook University graduate, are coaching the junior varsity.

“The turnouts in all the sports have been good,” Vas said during a conversation last week. “Girls lacrosse is a middle-to-low-ranked team in a power-rated league, and thus should be in some competitive games. I think we’ve got a stable staff now. . . . We’ve had some good players come out of the program in recent years. Maggie Pizzo’s playing at Yale, Carly Seekamp at Navy, and Jenna Budd and Amanda Seekamp at Hofstra. . . .”

Kathy Amicucci is back for her second year coaching softball, and will be helped in that regard by Kim Hren, one of the best ballplayers to come out of East Hampton. Rob Rivera is to coach the jayvee.

“It’s a nice staff,” said Vas. “All the programs are in good hands.”

Softball was to have scrimmaged Southampton at home Tuesday, though snow, as aforesaid, was forecast. 

The baseball team is to scrimmage at Westhampton Beach, and the Bayport-Blue Point softball team is to play a nonleaguer here tomorrow. Tomorrow will also feature a mandatory nonleague match here between Half Hollow Hills East, a perennial Suffolk County power, and the Bonackers, who look as if they’ll be a strong team as well this spring.

Baseball is to scrimmage at Hampton Bays on Saturday at 10 a.m., the same day the girls lacrosse team is to play a nonleaguer at Longwood. 

Baseball will scrimmage Pierson at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Monday, the same day that Westhampton Beach, a longtime rival of East Hampton’s, is to play a league-opening tennis match here. Softball is to open its league season at Hampton Bays on Tuesday, the same day that the baseball team is to scrimmage at Hampton Bays and the South Fork boys lacrosse team is to scrimmage at Brentwood. On Wednesday, the tennis team will play at Shoreham-Wading River.

In other words, the sports calendar says spring has sprung.