Soccer Coach Upbeat Despite Loss: a Bonac Roundup
Several of East Hampton High’s fall sports teams saw action in the past week.
The girls tennis team, coached by Kevin McConville, the head pro at Hampton Racquet, defeated West Islip 6-1 in a mandatory nonleague match with everyone playing 10-game pro sets.
The sole loss, by 10-6, came at first doubles. Otherwise, Rebecca Kuperschmid, Juliana Barahona, Cateline Micallif, and Katie Funicelli, and the doubles teams of Olivia Baris and Kaylee Mendelman and Ciara Bedini and Eva Wojtusiak were winners.
The boys soccer team, coached by Don McGovern, lost 2-0 to Half Hollow Hills West, a fellow Class A school, in a nonleaguer played here Friday morning.
“Match their physicality and your skill will take over,” McGovern told his team during the halftime break, by which time the Bonackers trailed 1-0 because of a successful free kick that followed upon a failed clearing attempt and a foul, the ball being backheaded, or “flicked,” into the nets over the goalie Kurt Matthews’s outstretched arms near the end of the period.
East Hampton went against the wind in the first half, and went with it in the second, though the presumed advantage didn’t pan out.
Alex Pantosin, a senior midfielder, hit a hard, ground-hugging shot that was saved in the early going, though the momentum was not to turn inasmuch as Hills West’s bigger players were also the more aggressive ones that day.
The visitors had half-a-dozen set plays, either corner kicks or free kicks — the latter taken by Hills West’s goalie — in the second half, though Matthews foiled all of them. He was beaten, though, by the visitors’ Marcus Fraser, a hard-working forward, in the 70th minute, the low partly screened 15-yard shot coming to rest in the left corner of the cage.
East Hampton got off a few shots on goal during the course of the game, but the visitors’ four defenders were tenacious, and their goalie was not really tested.
“They disrupted everything,” McGovern said afterward. “We just didn’t match up physically. But I’m very optimistic regarding the season. I thought our backs played well, but we’re young in the midfield — you can see that.”
He’s carrying 28 on the roster — 11 seniors, 12 juniors, four sophomores, and a freshman, Hedrys Palencia, a forward and the tallest player on the team — but only has several starters from last year returning.
Hills West, he said, was in League IV. East Hampton is in League V. East Hampton’s league-opener is to be here tomorrow with Sayville, presumably another physical team that pretty much eschews short passes in favor of long ones and set plays.
Kevin Barry has the largest boys cross-country team he’s ever had, with 25 to 28 on the roster, including Ryan Fowkes, who’s heading into his senior year and hopes to continue running in college. Diane O’Donnell has far fewer on the girls team, nine to be specific, but, nevertheless, expects the team to be the most competitive one she’s had in a while.
Craig Brierley, the girls swimming coach, will have a young team, with only two seniors, Oona Foulser and Emma Wiltshire, but given the continued success of the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter Hurricanes, it ought to be good again. There are 25 on his roster, including four eighth graders — Alyssa Brabant, Margaret Breen, Jane Brierley, and Camryn Hatch — and three ninth graders — Julia Caldwell, Corrina Castillo, and Emily Dyner.