East Hampton High's field hockey team lost by 2-1 a first-round playoff game played Saturday at Rocky Point.
East Hampton was the seventh seed in the Class B tournament; Rocky Point was the second.
Nicole Ficeto, East Hampton's coach, said Anna Hugo, a senior midfielder who frequently feeds the forwards with through passes and free hits, and Ella Bistrian, the left wing, had to come off the field in the first quarter because of "illegal body contact."
She remonstrated with the two referees on both occasions, Ficeto said, "but they did nothing. They couldn't control the game."
As far as the scoring went, "Rocky Point scored first, five minutes into the second quarter, off a penalty corner," one of two such that the home team was awarded that afternoon. East Hampton had four corner plays, and had five shots on goal to Rocky Point's four -- evidence that her players, who went into the tournament with a 7-6 record, had played 10-2 Rocky Point evenly, the coach said.
"Rocky Point scored their second goal in the third quarter off a penalty stroke," Ficeto continued. "It was a good call: The ball hit the body of one of our defenders. It was low enough -- it wasn't a dangerous lift." Lilia Schaefer, East Hampton's senior goalie, "got her stick on it, but the stroke went in, about waist-high, into the left corner."
With about 11 minutes to play in the game, Melina Sarlo, a freshman midfielder who was at the top of the circle, "put back a rebound. . . . It wasn't on a corner play -- the defense had failed to clear the ball."
Ficeto continued to protest the referees' "lack of control and the number of whistles that were going in Rocky Point's favor" and was given a yellow card.
Then, with two minutes remaining, Emma McGrory, the Bonackers' fleet freshman right wing, "took a hit with a stick that caused her thumb to split open. Her mother took her to an emergency room nearby where she had to get seven stitches."
Ficeto was happy to report that the next day 10 of her players attended an evaluation clinic in Coram that Kim Hannigan, the head of East End Field Hockey, gave -- a clinic that may lead to some of them playing in tournaments this summer.
Ficeto will lose the bulk of her defense -- Hugo, Rorey Murphy, Lucie Sarrazin, and Schaefer, "who played very well, terrifically considering she was a first-year varsity goalie" -- to graduation, as well as Molly Cangiolosi, a first-year senior forward. But she can look forward to returning a strong core in the fall, a group that includes Arabella Kuplins, Emma Stein, Chloe Coleman, McGrory, and Sarlo.
