The East Hampton School District's athletic director, Joe Vas, was happy to report this week that his petition to the athletic council of Section XI, the governing body for public high school athletics in Suffolk County, that eight of East Hampton High's teams play closer to home, beginning in the fall, has been approved.
Asked if the third time had been the charm, the A.D. said it was probably the fifth time he'd made such a request to the powers that be.
East Hampton's efforts to have its teams aligned geographically rather than strictly by enrollment numbers — a circumstance that has until now necessitated trips to the far western reaches of the county — dates to 2004, when Bill McKee, then the junior varsity basketball coach, and Ed Bahns, the varsity baseball coach at the time, proposed that the county be divided into two leagues, one east and one west of County Road 112.
Their proposal received the backing of the then-athletic director, Chris Tracey, who argued that the change, if enacted, would afford student-athletes here more time to pursue their school work. "The schools like Huntington, Amityville, and Harborfields come out here once, while we have to go up to their neighborhood many more times," Tracey said, though he added he didn't think Section XI ever would come around to East Hampton's way of thinking.
When Vas, who is to retire in December, took over the reins here in 2006, he took the ball, as it were, and ran with it, meeting with opposition all along the way, until now.
In a recent article on the subject in The Star, he said the urgency of the situation had only worsened over the years, when it had come to travel time, a shortage of bus drivers, and strains on financing and scheduling — the coronavirus pandemic being the tipping point.
The East Hampton teams that are to play in geographically based leagues come the fall, teams that have been playing in enrollment-based leagues, are boys soccer, girls volleyball, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls winter track, softball, and baseball. Teams playing in power-rated leagues would not be affected, only those in which enrollment has been the baseline.
Since 2014, Vas has proposed that Kings Park, Rocky Point, Harborfields, Islip, and Amityville be jettisoned as East Hampton opponents in favor of Westhampton Beach, Hampton Bays, Bayport, Sayville, Shoreham-Wading River, and Eastport-South Manor. Travel time and its resultant costs would be halved, he has maintained.
The dividing line in his plan would be Route 111. "You've got Sayville, Bayport, Eastport-South Manor, Westhampton Beach, Hampton Bays, and East Hampton along Route 27, and Shoreham-Wading River, Rocky Point, Miller Place, Mount Sinai, Comsewogue, and Hauppauge on the northern side," Vas said recently. "They're all Class A schools. All the A schools west of the line can do the same thing."
"It's been a long time coming," the A.D. said in making the announcement on Jan. 19, the day the athletic council gave its approval. "It's a big thing, for the community and the kids — it's exciting."