Swimmers Win, Hoopsters Lose

East Hampton High’s boys swimming team, the largest the program has ever fielded, trounced Ward Melville, Division II’s runner-up last year, in a season-opening mandatory nonleague meet at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter on Dec. 5.

The score was given as 86-71, owing to the fact that East Hampton “exhibitioned” in the final three events, the 100-yard backstroke, the 100 breaststroke, and the 400 freestyle relay, but the real margin of victory was much greater.

The boys basketball team also made its debut this week, though with disappointing results, in the Kendall Madison Tip-Off tournament on Friday and Saturday at the high school. The Bonackers lost 79-78 in overtime to Mattituck Friday, and 75-55 to Southampton, the tournament’s dominant team, Saturday.

The worst news for Dan White, East Hampton’s coach, though, lay in the fact that his 6-foot-4-inch senior center, Bladimir Rodriguez Garces, his chief rebounder and a solid scorer, will be out for around a month and a half as the result of breaking a foot.

Garces, after missing a shot in the final seconds of O.T. Friday night, apparently kicked an immovable object, which won out.

White had no time, he said following the Southampton game, to realign his offense and defense earlier on Saturday. When this writer remarked on the Mariners’ repeated offensive rebounds that night, he said, “It’s hard to rebound when you have guys who are 5-11.”

Southampton, a whirlwind of a team led by twin senior guards, Marquise and Marcus Trent, overwhelmed Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees Friday by 30 or so — even with the starters having been summoned back to the bench early in the fourth quarter — and, as aforesaid, breezed by the Bonackers by 20 the next night.

Asked if he foresaw any challenges ahead for the Class B team, Rickey Taylor, one of Herm Lamison’s assistants, said, “Center,” meaning Moriches.

Coached by Nick Thomas, Center Moriches won the Long Island Class B championship last year, and, according to Sunday’s Newsday, “returns much of its talent, including Sean Braithwaite, a 6-5 senior swingman who averaged 21 points, 11 rebounds, and 5 assists per game last year.” The Red Devils’ roster also includes Micah Snowden, a 6-5 senior transfer from Southampton, who, according to Newsday, “averaged 21 points and 15 assists per game at Southampton.”

The Trents, as well as Dakota Smith and Sincere Faggins, acrobatic players all, hounded the Bonackers at both ends of the court, though Jeremy Vizcaino, Bonac’s senior point guard, who has grown greatly basketball-wise since last season, held his own, and, frequently faced with double teams, did his best to keep East Hampton in the game. 

A 3-pointer by Christian Johnson, who’d come off the bench, narrowed Southampton’s lead to 21-18 with five minutes left to play until the break, but after that the sky-walking Mariners pulled steadily away.

The players’ warm-up jerseys had “Southampton Never Stops” imprinted on them, and, judging by Saturday’s high-energy, relentless performance, it seems that way.

“We’re still young,” said Taylor, a former Mariner himself who once played for the Washington Generals. “The Trents are our only two seniors. Hopefully, we’ll go upstate this year.” Lamison’s biggest challenge, he agreed, might lie in keeping his players fired up.

Mattituck, a Class B team as well, also went 2-0 in the Kendall Madison tournament, and, like East Hampton, Bridgehampton went 0-2, losing 71-57 to the Tuckers in Saturday’s first game.

The Bees, who have returned everyone from last year’s squad, had their moments, but only moments, despite their coach Ron White’s inspirational urgings during timeouts.

After one of these, with three and a half minutes remaining and with the Bees trailing 62-56, Elijah White, the coach’s son, seemed to have himself planted squarely in the path of an onrushing Xavier Allen, who knocked White back several feet, but was himself assessed, to the surprise of many, a blocking foul. Allen made both of his free throws, and Mattituck was unheaded thereafter.

The elder White was sanguine afterward, however. Once his charges get back to playing “Killer Bee defense,” he said, and begin believing in themselves, as they should, he was confident they’d come around. 

“Hopefully, in March” his Class D team would “be going upstate with Southampton.”

Getting back to boys swimming, it was clear from the get-go that East Hampton was the better team as it won 12 points in the opening event, the 200 medley relay, 9 in the second, the 200 freestyle, 12 in the third, the 200 individual medley, and 9 in the fourth, the 50 free. 

And so it went, as spectators, for the first time, could follow the running score on the new $10,000 scoreboard the East Hampton Kiwanis Club had donated. (The club also gave the Y a new timing system that cost around $8,000, the total gift being the largest, Kiwanis’s president, Rick White, said, in the club’s history.)

East Hampton also benefited from its superior numbers — the roster was recently trimmed to 31 as the result of about a dozen cuts, said the coach, Craig Brierley — putting up three competitors in each event while Ward Melville sometimes entered two or one.

In winning the 100 butterfly, Ethan McCormac, who recently received the first William A. O’Donnell Founders Award from the Old Montauk Athletic Club, turned in a state-qualifying time of 53.70 seconds. 

Sectional (county) qualifiers that day were Edward Hoff, in the 200 free; Ryan Duryea and Joey Badilla in the 200 I.M.; Thor Botero, Colin Harrison, and Ethan and Owen McCormac in the 50 free; Nicky Badilla and Ethan McCormac in the 100 fly; Jack Duryea and Hoff in the 100 free; the 200 free relay team of Joey Badilla, Ryan Duryea, Ethan McCormac, and Owen McCormac; Joey Badilla in the 100 back; Jack and Ryan Duryea in the 100 breast, and the 400 free relay team of Ethan McCormac, Hoff, Joey Badilla, and Aidan Forst.

Others on the squad, not named above, are Ryan Bahel, Ben Berkhofer, Miles Coppola, Kai Esposito, Conor Flanagan, Christian Gaines, Emmett Harrington, Ramses Jimenez, Avery Martinsen, Aidan McCormac, Callum Menelaws, James Midson, Will Midson, Curran O’Donnell, Kevin Pineda, Daniel Piver, Kenny Sanchez, Tenxin Tamang, Luke Tyrell, and Jordan Uribe.

East Hampton’s swimmer of the meet was Tyrell, a senior, whom the captains chose “because, even without goggles, he was able to go a lifetime best, dropping three seconds, in the 100 backstroke.”