Two Bonac Teams Astride the Heap
The East Hampton High School girls swimming team finished second in this past week’s league meet, behind Sayville-Bayport-Blue Point, but it should be noted that absent the points awarded for diving (East Hampton has no divers) the Bonackers would have won handily.
Craig Brierley, who coached the team to an undefeated regular season and to its first league title, said in an emailed report, “The girls swam their hearts out — we had lifetime bests in all but one event!”
East Hampton’s boys cross-country team was also a winner, in the division meet’s championship race — one contested by 20 teams — at Sunken Meadow State Park, though its coach, Kevin Barry, initially thought his team had been the Division III runner-up to Kings Park “by 3 points.” He and, needless to say, his runners were pleasantly surprised when the official results were posted about 15 minutes later, showing that East Hampton had won 55-59.
It was the second time in three years that a Barry-coached team had won a division championship.
Ryan Fowkes led the way for East Hampton, in 17 minutes and 40 seconds, good for third place, behind Miller Place’s Tom Critton (17:00) and Shoreham-Wading River’s Joey Krause (17:26). Geo Espinoza (18:18) and Ethan McCormac (18:30) were ninth and 10th, earning them all-division honors, and Frank Bellucci (17th in 18:58) and Robert Weiss (21st in 19:06) rounded out the scoring. Omar Leon, who ordinarily is East Hampton’s third or fourth runner, “had stomach issues,” Barry said, “but gutted it out.”
The county’s top-ranked Class B team at the moment, East Hampton is to run in the county meet at Sunken Meadow tomorrow, at 2 p.m. A win there will earn it a trip to the state championships that are to be held in the Rochester area on Nov. 11.
Barry also reported that two Bonac-bred collegians, Dana Cebulski and Erik Engstrom, performed notably in the past week. Cebulski, a sophomore at the State University at Geneseo, placed fourth in the SUNYAC cross-country championships Sunday in Potsdam. Her time for the 6K (3.7-mile) course was 22:53. Geneseo, said Barry, is at present ranked third in the nation in Division III.
Engstrom, a University of Massachusetts sophomore, led his team to a sixth-place finish in the Atlantic-10 championships in Fairfax, Va., this past week, Barry said. He placed 19th over all, running the 8K (4.96-mile) course in 25:57, missing an all-conference designation by nine seconds.
Back to swimming, East Hampton, with Catalina Badilla, Madison Jones, Sophia Swanson, and Julia Brierley, won the 200 freestyle relay, and though that was its sole first-place finish, Bonac swimmers figured prominently in every one of the 12 swimming events.
East Hampton runners-up were the 200 medley relay team of Darcy McFarland, Brierley, Swanson, and Jones; Brierley, in the 50 free and in the 100 breaststroke; Badilla, in the 100 butterfly, and Swanson, in the 100 free.
Third-place finishers were the 400 free relay team of Badilla, Emma Wiltshire, Oona Foulser, and Olivia Brabant; Swanson, in the 200 free; Foulser, in the 50 free, and Jones, in the 100 free.
Sayville-Bayport-Blue Point won the meet with 315.5 points, followed by East Hampton (297.5), Harborfields (200), Hauppauge (185), Stony Brook (175), and West Babylon (59).
Minus the winners’ 33 diving points, East Hampton would have bettered Sayville (a team it beat earlier in the season 94-89) 297.5 to 282.5.
In his account, Brierley said that Sayville’s team edged his by a half-second in the meet’s opening event, the 200 medley relay. “That set the tone for what was to follow — it was a close meet between the top two schools.”
“There were so many swims worth highlighting. . . . The 200 free relay team dropped three seconds from its season-best time, and is within one second of a state qualifying time; the 400 free relay team dropped a whopping 14 seconds from its season-best time; Oona Foulser dropped 1.3 seconds in the 50 free and swam a season-best 5:49.72 in finishing sixth in the 500; Emma Wiltshire dropped 2.4 seconds in her leg in the 400 free relay, and Catalina Badilla dropped 3.1 seconds in the 100 fly.”
Foulser and Wiltshire were named by the captains as swimmers of the meet.
Besides the above, others who scored for East Hampton that day were Vanessa Betancur, Kiara Bailey-Williams, Caroline Brown, and Lucy Emptage.
East Hampton’s dozen or so qualifiers are to swim in the county meet Saturday at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, at 10 a.m.
In other playoff news, the girls volleyball team, seeded fourth among the Class A schools, was to have played fifth-seeded East Islip here Tuesday. The winner is to play in a semifinal at the site of the higher seed tomorrow, at 4 p.m. The Class A final is to be played at S.C.C.C.-Brentwood next Thursday, Nov. 9, at 5:30 p.m.
The boys volleyball team, Division II’s fourth seed, is to play at first-seeded Hauppauge Saturday at noon. The final is to be played at S.C.C.C.-Brentwood on Tuesday at 5 p.m.