Swimmers Make a Splash, Soccer Loses in Quarterfinal

East Hampton High’s girls swimming team, while not the official winner of the League III meet at Hauppauge High School on Oct. 24, finishing second over all to Sayville-Bayport, bested everyone in the swimming events. 

What turned the meet in Sayville-Bayport’s favor was its 36 diving points. “Going into the diving, we were up by 10,” Rich Swanson, one of the parents, said over the weekend. “Then, all of a sudden, there was a big swing.”

East Hampton has no divers, a fact that doesn’t hurt it at home meets — the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter having no diving board — but often does in away ones.

Absent Say-Bay’s diving points, Craig Brierley’s Bonackers would have won 295-277. As it was, they were the runners-up, by a score of 313-295.

East Hampton apparently could have prevailed even so had it won the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay. Sayville-Bayport’s team won that, in three minutes and 45.62 seconds, with Hauppauge second at 3:46.52, and East Hampton third at 3:58.96, a season-best for Olivia Brabant, Kiara Bailey-Williams, Emma Wiltshire, and Camryn Hatch. 

The Bonackers — a young team, there being only two seniors, Oona Foulser and Wiltshire — did win the other two relays, however, the 200 medley relay, with Julia Brierley, Jane Brierley, Sophia Swanson, and Foulser, and the 200 free relay, with Foulser, the Brierleys, and Swanson. 

“The girls set the tone right at the very first event,” Coach Brierley said in an emailed account, “blowing away the field in the 200 medley relay,” touching the wall eight seconds ahead of second-place Harborfields, in 1:51.97. That time “dropped three seconds from the team’s season-best and qualified it for the state meet.”

Swanson, he added, “followed up a fantastic medley relay swim with a lifetime-best 59.73 in the 100 butterfly.” That time, which earned her a third-place finish, also qualified her for the state meet.

“There were so many swims worth highlighting,” said the elder Brierley. “A few of them were Oona Foulser’s lifetime-best 25.37 in winning the league’s 50 freestyle; Jane Brierley’s winning time of 1:09.49 in the 100 breaststroke; Darcy McFarland’s county-qualifying time of 1:07.76 in the 100 backstroke, a personal best by 1.6 seconds, and Emma Wiltshire’s lifetime-best 1:00.08 in the 100 free, a county-qualifying time as well.”

“Officially, Sayville won the meet, but our girls know they came out on top in the swimming portion of the league championships! This competition was a complete team effort. For those competing, every race mattered, as well as for the remainder of the team who were cheering their teammates on.”

In other events, Swanson, Jane Brierley, and Bailey-Williams finished third, fourth, and fifth in the 200 I.M.; Julia Brierley was fourth in the 50 free; Foulser was second in the 100 free; Caroline Brown, McFarland, and Hatch finished third, fourth, and fifth in the 100 backstroke, and Julia Brierley placed third in the 100 breaststroke.

After Sayville-Bayport and East Hampton in scoring came Hauppauge, with 228 points, Harborfields, with 196, West Islip, with 131, and West Babylon, with 85.

Foulser and Wiltshire, the team’s captains, were named by Brierley and their teammates as swimmers of the meet.

The county meet is to be Saturday at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, at 10 a.m. Swanson, Jane Brierley, Julia Brierley, Bailey-Williams, Foulser, Hatch, Wiltshire, Brown, McFarland, and Margaret Breen have posted county-qualifying times in individual events.

Also last week, the boys soccer team, the 11th seed, lost a quarterfinal-round contest at third-seeded Elwood-John Glenn by a score of 1-0 last Thursday.

Don McGovern, East Hampton’s coach, said Glenn’s goal came off a corner kick midway through the first half, as the result of a head flick from the near post that sailed over the reach of East Hampton’s goalie, Kurt Matthews, the ball coming to rest within the nets at the far post.

Zane Musnicki, Brian Gonzalez, and Sebastian Fuquen, whose goal in a first-round game with sixth-seeded Kings Park advanced East Hampton to the quarterfinals, “had good chances,” said McGovern, adding that “we weren’t too efficient in the box.”

“It was a typical John Glenn team, physical and always a threat on set plays.”

While he’ll lose 11 seniors to graduation, Musnicki, Matthews, Fuquen, and Gonzalez among them, the coach said he thought East Hampton, whose jayvee, coached by Mike Vitulli, went undefeated this fall, would again be a contender next year. “At one point in the Glenn game we had six sophomores on the field,” he said.