Despite a “quick, tight turnaround,” in the coach Yani Cuesta’s words, East Hampton High’s girls track team began the season here last Thursday with a 76-64 win over Hauppauge.
Only 10 on the squad of 30 had been on Cuesta’s winter indoor team — Leslie Samuel, Meredith Spolarich, Dylan Cashin, Ryleigh O’Donnell, Sara O’Brien, Georgia Bunce, Shirley Jiang, Sam Ruano, Isabel Doyle, and Angie Castillo — and there were just six practice days, two of them rainouts that forced the team indoors, leading up to the season opener.
It was hard, Cuesta said Sunday, for her to keep track of dual meet scores inasmuch as she’s largely occupied with timing the track events and with recording splits, so it was not until after the long jump, the event that led into the final three relay races — and after she had entered in the high jump, shot-put, and discus scores — that she knew East Hampton could win if it took one of the three relays.
Toward that end, she asked Leslie Samuel, a senior and her chief sprinter and jumper, if she would forgo the 4-by-100 relay in favor of the 4-by-400. Samuel, who had won the 100, the 200, and the long jump, was not all that keen on the idea, Cuesta said, though she relented, and thus assured an East Hampton victory, the length of victory being about 30 yards.
Samuel was not the only big point-getter for East Hampton that day: Spolarich won the high jump, at 4 feet 8 inches, ran with the winning 4-by-4 team, placed second in the long jump with a leap of 14 feet and 5 3/4 inches, and was third in the discus with a throw of 64 feet 10 inches.
O’Donnell was also on the 4-by-4 team, and won the open 400 in 63 seconds and the 400 intermediate hurdles in 73.5 seconds. Cashin won the 3,000 and was second in the 1,500, and Kaili Moore, a ninth grader making her varsity debut, won the shot-put with a heave of 28-9 and the discus with a throw of 74-3. She also ran in the 100, placing fifth. Rebecca Trowbridge, a junior, was the runner-up to Moore in the shot-put, at 24-6, and the discus, in 73-7, both personal bests.
Cuesta said she wanted Moore to come up as an eighth grader, but that Covid and paperwork got in the way. “Malecki,” she said of Eric Malecki, the longtime coach of East Hampton’s competitors in field events, “thinks that if she concentrates on the correct techniques, she’ll break the school’s throwing records next year.”
Spolarich, an all-around athlete, may well compete in the pentathlon for East Hampton at the end of the season, a five-part event that comprises the 100 high hurdles, the long jump, the shot-put, high jump, and 800. She stopped at 4-8 in the high jump last Thursday, a height she scaled in her first try, because neither of Hauppauge’s entrants had equaled her, Cuesta said, adding that “we were telling the girls not to shoot for personal records — it was a crummy day, cold and damp — but for placements.”
Samuel, whose time of 13.1 seconds won the 100-meter dash, was followed across the line by two opponents, in 13.3 and 13.6, after which came East Hampton’s Sam Ruano, a sophomore, in 14.5 and Moore in 14.6. Samuel won the long jump at 16-1 and the 200 in 27.4. Ruano was fifth in that event and Melanie Vizcaino, a freshman, was sixth.
Another freshman, Sara O’Brien, a Pierson student — as is Spolarich — placed third in the 1,500 in 5:40.6, about 20 seconds behind the winner and 12 behind Cashin, the runner-up. O’Brien anchored East Hampton’s 4-by-8 entry, which also numbered fellow freshmen Bennett Greene and Sophia Figueroa, and Leah Fromm, a junior. East Hampton’s 4-by-1 entry comprised of Vizcaino, Jiang, Alexa Tabares, a junior, and Ruano. Leah McCarron, a freshman, was third in the triple jump, the day’s first event, at 28-4, but could not run in the 4-by-1, Cuesta said, because of a pulled muscle.
Cashin and O’Brien ran together the whole way in the 3,000, trailing Hauppauge’s duo for most of it, which caused Cuesta, who hadn’t added in the shot-put, discus, or high jump scores to East Hampton’s total as of then, to fret. “I’d rather,” she said, “that they run their own races.” The pair set her mind a little more at ease by pulling ahead on the bell lap, with Cashin crossing the line first, followed by O’Brien — nine seconds ahead of Hauppauge’s third-place finisher.
There’s to be a meet today at Comsewogue, “a strong team,” said Cuesta. “We’re hoping for good weather.”
