Caeleigh Schuster, arguably the best field hockey goalie East Hampton High has had since the mid-1990s, came under fire right away in Saturday’s county Class B final between the Bonackers and Rocky Point at Newfield High School as the Eagles, with Kylie Lamoureux, their swift center back, leading the way, repeatedly swooped into Bonac’s circle.
But Schuster, who’s only a freshman, parried everything that came her way in the first quarter, including a stick save of a lifted shot during the second of Rocky Point’s three corner plays in that period. And she continued to turn back shots in the second period, until, with two-and-a-half minutes left until the half, the Eagles’ Tia Fusco broke the ice on Rocky Point’s fifth corner play.
Nothing daunted, the Bonackers, who had almost scored off a Chloe Coleman free hit four and a half minutes into the second frame, came back to tie the count just before the break, as Emma McGrory outdueled a defender for possession and muscled a corner play shot over the line – a timely score that lifted her teammates’ spirits and effectively announced that the battle had been joined.
It was a battle that the Bonackers were eventually to lose 4-3 in overtime, but their gritty play throughout the fray could not be faulted.
Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School’s team also played for a county crown at Newfield High that day, after the East Hampton-Rocky Point clash, and, as expected, won handily over Greenport-Southold, its Class C opponent. Meredith Spolarich, Pierson’s unstoppable midfielder, scored three goals in the 5-0 win. The Whalers had defeated the Porters by a like score in the last game of the regular season. The Long Island Class C championship game is to be played Wednesday at Berner Middle School in Massapequa.
Back to East Hampton-Rocky Point, the Eagles, thanks to a 50-yard breakaway goal by Morgan Feinberg and to a corner-play shot by Sydney Woods, led 3-1 with 10 minutes yet to go in the third quarter, but the Class B championship game was by no means over. Kerri O’Donnell, camping out at the post, almost converted a rebound with 8:25 to go in the third, and, a little more than two minutes later, Melina Sarlo, assisted by Coleman, made good on a corner play shot from the top of the circle for 3-2.
It looked as if McGrory had, with a lifted shot, tied the score on a succeeding East Hampton corner play, but a ref’s call made before she shot annulled it. In the final minutes of the third, Sienna Link Morse was sent to the sidelines for an encroaching offense, and McGrory, who had fallen flat out in trying to chase down a pass headed over the sideline, had to come off briefly to get patched up. Sienna Morse missed the first minute and 15 seconds of the fourth period, during which East Hampton was a player down. Soon after she reentered, Rocky Point was awarded back-to-back corner plays, but to no avail. They were to come up empty on four others in the final quarter as well.
Meanwhile, East Hampton, which only had only one corner play awarded in the fourth period, took full advantage of it as O’Donnell, having received a pass in front of the goal from Ally Schaefer, put a shot by Rocky Point’s goalie, Breezy Henke, that tied the score at 3-3 with a minute left in regulation, much to the delight of the Bonac fans who had made the trip up the Long Island Expressway.
Rocky Point had two chances to break the tie via corner plays in the final seconds of regulation, but both were foiled, the final one by McGrory, who had rushed forth from the cage to contend for the ball at the top of the circle.
Schuster had 22 saves going into the 7-on-7 overtime period, and made four more during it before Rocky Point’s Sarah May pushed a shot behind her on a corner play with five-and-a-half minutes remaining. A defender who’d been backing Schuster up could not stop it either.
It was the first time an East Hampton High School field hockey team had played in a county championship game since 2003. The last time a Bonac field hockey team won a county title was in 1996, under Megan Barnett. Ellen Cooper, whose teams had won in 1993 and ’94, retired after the ’95 county Class B final with Shoreham-Wading River, which won in a third round of shootouts.