The Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, repeated as New York State Y.M.C.A. champions at Erie Community College in Buffalo last weekend, a singular result that immensely pleased the team’s coaches, who had simply asked that they give it their best.
“I am in awe,” the Hurricanes’ head coach, Tom Cohill, said by phone Monday morning. “I didn’t go up there with the expectation of winning; we just wanted them to do their absolute best. And, obviously, they did.”
“Winning a state championship does not happen because a few swimmers win events — state championships are won by the points scored by each member of the team,” Angelika Cruz, who provided daily reports of the Hurricanes’ progress over the weekend, said in one of her emails. “Those who did not score added to the chemistry needed to win by cheering and supporting their teammates until the very end of each long session. And the parents are part of that winning chemistry also. . . . Without them there would be no meet to win!”
The 50-plus Hurricane boys and girls, ranging in age from 5 through 18, recorded two dozen state championships, in individual events and in relay races, on the way to their victory over strong Y competitors that included squads from Huntington, Rochester, Auburn, Flushing, and Cross Island.
The Hurricane girls, a group led by Summer Jones, Cami Hatch, Jane Brierley, and Daisy Pitches, finished way ahead of their peers, posting 1,596 points in all; the boys scored 684.5, for a total of 2,280.5. The runner-up Huntington Y Bluefish finished with 1,894.
Jones, who is to attend Davidson College in North Carolina this fall, was presented with a state scholarship, the first time a Hurricane swimmer has been so honored. She, Hatch, and Brierley, in individual events, and three female relay teams — two of which have the three of them as participants and one of which has two of them — qualified for the Y.M.C.A. national championships that are to be held in Greensboro, N.C., in the first week of April.
In individual events the following won state championships: Jones in the 15-19 girls 50-yard freestyle, 100 free, 200 free, 500 free, and 100 butterfly; Pitches in the 13-14 girls 100 free, the 200 individual medley, and 50 free; Heidi Rizzo in the 9-10 girls 100 individual medley, the 200 free, the 50 backstroke, and the 50 breaststroke; Novella Dunham in the 8-and-under girls 25 and 50 free; Vanessa Rizzo in the 11-12 girls 50 back; Hatch in the 15-19 girls 100 back; Liam Knight in the 13-14 boys 100 back and 500 free; Miles Menu in the 13-14 boys 200 free, and Mia Luna in the 11-12 girls 50 breaststroke.
“They’ve worked really hard all year,” Cohill said of his and Cruz’s charges. “Clearly, they have a will to win. They’re an excellent group of athletes and families. . . . It’s not easy to win a state championship.”