This past week, East Hampton High’s boys soccer team won the program’s first league championship since 2014, the year that the Bonackers, led then by Nick West, Esteban Valverde, Nick Tulp, and Brian Oreamuno, went all the way to the state final.
There had been a possibility that the title would be shared, Don McGovern, East Hampton’s coach, said by phone Sunday night, but by finishing the regular season last week with wins over Rocky Point and Westhampton Beach, the Bonackers stood alone atop League IV at season’s end with a 9-1 record, trailed by Sayville and Shoreham-Wading River, each at 7-2.
Also of note this past week, the boys cross-country team won the varsity B race at an invitational meet held at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, the boys volleyball team won an invitational tournament at Center Moriches High School, and Maya Molin, a Pierson High School sophomore who has largely played second singles for East Hampton’s girls tennis team this fall, upset the division individual tournament’s second seed, “a girl who had beaten her 6-0, 6-1 when we played William Floyd in the regular season,” Kevin McConville, Bonac’s coach, said.
The girls swimming team lost 92-73 here last Thursday to Sayville-Bayport, the League III champion, dropping its league record to 2-1, but it stood to be the runner-up to Say-Bay if it won at 1-2 Lindenhurst yesterday.
Back to boys soccer, Eric Armijos, Michael Figueroa, and Gary Gutama scored goals in East Hampton’s 3-1 win over Rocky Point here on Oct. 12. The Bonackers spotted Westhampton to an early 2-0 lead in the regular-season finale there on Saturday, but, unfazed, came back to score six goals in the second half — two each by Armijos and Gutama, and one each by Figueroa and Chris Guallpa. That was his team’s most productive half of the season, said McGovern, adding that when his players are fully focused things go well.
Winning the league title will assure East Hampton of a high seed and a home game in the playoffs next Thursday. It should be added that the junior varsity ran its record to 12-2 in defeating Westhampton’s jayvee 2-1 here Saturday.
Kevin Barry, who coaches the boys cross-country team, which was to have had a showdown for the league championship here with Westhampton Beach Tuesday, said that the Bonac runners had won the 2.5-mile varsity B race at Van Cortlandt, “the most famous cross-country course in the country,” by placing second (Mikey Gilbert), third (Brayan Rivera), fourth (Diego Rojas), fifth (Liam Fowkes), and ninth (Juan Torres) in a field of largely private and Catholic schools. And this without the services of Wyatt Smith, who was sick, and Liam Knight, who was competing that day for the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes. Iona Prep was the runner-up to East Hampton.
Dylan Cashin, the girls team’s top runner, placed second in the girls varsity race. East Hampton’s girls were also to have vied with their Westhampton peers for a league championship Tuesday. All the teams went into Tuesday’s meets with 4-0 records.
“Westhampton hasn’t lost a league meet in five years, we haven’t lost in three,” Barry said during a telephone conversation Sunday night. “Westhampton’s won the county championship the last four years in a row. They’ve got the top two runners in the county. We won’t worry about them. It will come down to the packs. We’ve got nine guys who all are within one minute of each other.”
The boys volleyball team, which is expected to contend in the small school playoffs that begin at the end of the month, turned in an impressive performance at the aforementioned tournament at Center Moriches. “We dropped a set to East Islip in pool play, but lit them up in the final,” Josh Brussell, East Hampton’s coach, said, adding that he was “pretty confident” that his team, which includes Alex Lombardo, Cash Muse, Hunter Eberhart, Calum Anderson, Nick Schaffer, and Alan Rodriguez, ought to finish the regular season at 8-6.
