After Friday’s 2-1 loss here to Eastport-South Manor, Don McGovern, who coaches East Hampton High’s boys soccer team, which had just seen a nine-game winning streak snapped, asked if his players could tell him why they’d lost.
Silence all around, and then McGovern told them what they knew, “You got outworked. You can’t think that it’s going to come to you. Not a chance. It’s the same as in life, nothing is ever handed to you, nothing comes easy. You’ve got to work for it.”
And then he proceeded to point a finger at some of those gathered around him in the seated semicircle on the turf field. “It’s not your fault . . . it’s not your fault . . . it’s not your fault. . . . It’s everybody’s fault. This is a team. It takes all of us to be successful, and when we lose it’s everybody’s fault. So let’s pull together and come back fighting.”
Eastport South-Manor had come in with losses to Comsewogue and Shoreham-Wading River, teams that East Hampton, whose record dropped to 9-2 as the result of that day’s disappointing loss, had beaten. But the Sharks played hard, and their goalie, who was credited with 11 saves, was up to the challenge that Bonac’s slick ball-handling forwards posed.
The father of one of them said afterward that East Hampton, a team that is able to move the ball well on the ground, had played it up in the air too much during the scoreless first half.
In the second frame, the Bonackers had their chances, John Bustamente’s shot off the far post in the 67th minute and Michael Figueroa’s corner kick header that bounced over the crossbar a minute later being the most notable, but it was Eastport South-Manor that scored — within the first two minutes of play on a right-to-left ground-hugger that eluded Bonac’s diving goalie, Nicholas Guerrero, and then — the heartbreaker — on a soft, acutely-angled dribbler from in close that rolled over the line into the right corner of the nets. That goal, owing to a defensive lapse — “We simply stopped running,” McGovern said afterward — came with four-and-a-half minutes left to play, and was to hold up despite the concerted efforts of the Bonackers, who had tied the score at 1-1 in the 46th minute thanks to a hard close-in shot by Figueroa that the goalie got his hands on but could not stop.
During those final minutes, East Hampton, which largely was the aggressor in the second half, was awarded two free kicks within the 25 yardline, two corner kicks, and three throw-ins in Eastport’s end, but could not knot the score again.
“A win today would have guaranteed us a home game in the playoffs,” McGovern said later. As of Friday, games remained with Rocky Point and Westhampton Beach. The coach told his players that to get that home game they would have to win out.
While the news wasn’t so good for the boys, East Hampton’s girls soccer team won its second game of the season here on Oct. 3, defeating Hampton Bays 2-0 on goals that Claire McGovern scored in the second half. The nonleaguer was played in the wind and rain, and without officials, but counted nevertheless, Cara Nelson, the team’s coach, said.
Skye Tanzmann got the assist on the first goal, stepping in front of a goal kick and heading it to McGovern, who beat the goalie with a shot from about 12 yards out that landed in the left corner of their opponents’ nets. McGovern scored the second after receiving a through pass from Hailey Benenaula.
Nelson will have 38 teachers and coaches at her disposal for the Battle of the Bonackers here tomorrow afternoon, a fund-raiser for the Suffolk County Girls Soccer Coaches Association’s Kicks for Cancer fund that has been helping cancer patients and their families since 2008.
Besides Nelson, among those expected to play are the school district’s new athletic director, Kathy Masterson, its superintendent, Adam Fine, Joe DiGirolomo, Nick Finazzo, Mike Vitulli, Rob Rivera, Jessica Sanna, Ethan Mitchell, Doug Milano, John King, Krista Brooks, Yani Cuesta, and Nick DeLuca.
