East Hampton High's winter sports seasons were still on hold as of this week, the second week in a row that the school's students were learning remotely.
The boys swim team's members from Pierson High in Sag Harbor, about a half-dozen of them, were to practice this week at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, though, because of the closure here, only those East Hamptoners who also swim with the Y's youth team, the Hurricanes, were to practice. The six to eight East Hamptoners who are new to the sport would not be able to, "unfortunately," the boys team's coach, Craig Brierley, said during a telephone conversation Monday. "It hurts -- they were just getting into a routine, and then were cut off."
Absent the pandemic, Brierley's boys would have had three competitions under their belts by now, as would have Mike Vitulli's bowling team. The boys and girls track teams, practicing virtually at the moment, would each have had one; the girls were to have been at home against Sayville's girls, and the boys were to have been at Sayville this past Sunday.
"I think Joe Vas is trying to tack the Sayville meet onto the end of the season," Mike Buquicchio, who assists Ben Turnbull with the boys track team, said of East Hampton's athletic director. As for the Kings Park meets -- with the boys at home and the girls away -- set for this Saturday, "I don't know what's going to happen there," he said.
As of Monday, two league swim meets and a county meet were on the Section XI schedule -- to be held on Feb. 11 and Feb. 20 -- though Brierley said a Zoom meeting of county swim coaches was to be held Monday night to "discuss how they will happen."
"Taking it one day at a time," Brierley said he knew that the Deer Park meet, which was to have been held here last Thursday, and the North Babylon meet, which would have been swum at Deer Park Tuesday, "have been rescheduled. We're going up against both teams at Deer Park on Feb. 8."
He wasn't sure whether the season-opening meet that was to have been held at Half Hollow Hills West last Saturday will be rescheduled. "That was a nonleague meet, so I'm not so much worried about that one."
"We're going to have remote practices this week," said Buquicchio. "There's an app they can use on their phones that will tell them how far and how fast they've run. We'll see how it works."
"We don't want to lose a whole other week," he added, referring to the fact that practices on the track had been disallowed by the school board last week and this.