Tennis Team Clinches League Title
The East Hampton High School boys tennis team clinched the league title — and remained undefeated in league play — in a 4-3 squeaker over Westhampton Beach here on April 20.
In other Bonac sports action this past week, the girls and boys track teams defeated their Mount Sinai counterparts, the margins of victory being 83-67 in the girls’ case and 73-70 in the boys’.
The boys’ win came as a bit of a surprise. Bill Herzog, the coach, initially thought the team, which dropped two of the three relays, had lost, as did Kevin Barry, the boys cross-country coach, who was one of the spectators. “We’ll be better in the fall,” Barry said when the meet was over.
The baseball team, which has been taking its lumps lately, at the hands of Mount Sinai and Miller Place, played creditably Monday in the series opener here with John Glenn, but the visitors’ left-handed ace, Tyler Arella, who’s going to Villanova, prevailed 3-1.
Kyle McKee went all the way for the Bonackers, taking the loss. Glenn scored two unearned runs in the first inning and added another run in the top of the seventh by way of a bunt, a stolen base, and a sharp ground ball down the first-base line that Will Mackin could not stop.
East Hampton got one run back in the bottom half. Mackin drew a walk to lead off, and was replaced on the basepaths by Luke Vaziri. Phil Zablotsky then reached first base, and Vaziri advanced to third, on a potential double play grounder to the second baseman.
Vaziri came home when the next batter, Kurt Matthews, hit into a force play at second, after which Kevin Boles — one of four seniors on the team — hit into another force at second and Hunter Fromm took a called third strike to end the game.
Mike Ritsi, the coach, said afterward that the team has been making too many errors and perhaps was taking its losses too lightly. “I’m seeing too many smiles,” said Ritsi, who in his playing days here was known for the gritty way he came back from a potentially career-ending knee injury he suffered while quarterbacking the football team.
One of his players, the sophomore left fielder, Augie Schultz, has posted a petition on MoveOn.org proposing that Section XI, the governing body of Suffolk high school sports, let the team play closer to home and against opposition that more nearly matches its talent level. “Clearly, we are in the wrong league for our skill set and geographical placement,” he says. “We have been demoralized on and off the field. . . . The worst part is that we must travel at least an hour and 15 minutes to every away game. It affects our grades, our sleep, our morale, and it just makes life harder.”
When asked about it, Ritsi said, “Our team plays in a very tough league — Bayport-Blue Point won the states a couple of years ago, and the league has six Division 1 pitchers, but that’s the way it is. Hopefully, we’re going to get stronger, increase our mental toughness, and learn how to win. Kyle, Will, Tristan Larsen, who wasn’t here today, and Kevin Boles are the seniors, so we’re a young team. . . . John Glenn’s other pitchers aren’t as good as Arella. Hopefully, we’ll have a good one for you Thursday.”
The East Hampton-Westhampton Beach tennis match looked initially as if it would be a ho-hummer — the Bonackers had, after all, won 6-1 at Westhampton on March 29 — but then, after Julian MacGurn, Jack Louchheim, and Ravi MacGurn had posted straight-set singles wins, things began to get interesting.
All the doubles matches went three sets, as did Jonny De Groot’s at fourth singles. The second doubles team of Jordan Foster and Jack Murphy — cheered on by their teammates, who were anxiously looking on — pulled it out, taking a third-set tiebreaker from Adam Shera and Owen Williams by a score of 7-4, thanks largely to Foster’s winners at the net.
Foster and Murphy’s match, which ended with De Groot still on the court with Josh Kaplan, put East Hampton over the top, extending its undefeated league mark to 10-0. A 6-1 win over the Ross School two days later upped it to 11-0.
De Groot, a freshman from Bridgehampton, took the first set 6-4, but, finding himself increasingly lured by his smaller opponent into a cat-and-mouse game, wound up losing the next two sets 6-1, 6-2. It was De Groot’s first loss this season.
As for track, the girls swept the 100 (Allura Leggard, Tyra Stewart, and Gabby McKay), the 200 (Leggard, Stewart, and Cecilia Blowe), and the long jump (Blowe, Devon Brown, and McKay) in its meet at Mount Sinai on April 19.
Yani Cuesta’s other winners that day were Nina Piacentine, in the 1,500-meter racewalk, Taliya Hayes, in the shot-put, with a season-best heave of 30 feet 1 inch, Christine Malecki, in the discus, Danielle Futerman, in the pole vault, and the 4-by-100 (McKay, Stewart, Blowe, and Leggard) and 4-by-400 (Lateshia Peters, Blowe, Leggard, and Brown) relay teams.
Cuesta said her team is to participate in the Westhampton Beach invitational Saturday. Some of her charges were to have contended in the Steeple Fest at Port Jefferson Tuesday.