Had East Hampton's Alex Davis received the blocking he needed during last Thursday’s 27-21 loss here to Westhampton Beach, he, rather than the Hurricanes’ triple threat, Brody Schaffer, would probably have grabbed the Newsday headline the morning after.
Despite Davis’s limited rushing yards that day, the game was still a “woulda, coulda, shoulda” insofar as the Bonackers were concerned.
The Hurricanes jumped out to a 13-0 lead, thanks to a 26-yard touchdown pass thrown by the visitors’ quarterback, Finn Drake, to Schaffer that capped the team’s first possession, and to a 60-yard punt return by Schaffer, who, as the old song has it, “can run and kick and throw / just give him the ball and look at him go.”
After Schaffer, whose point-after attempt had been blocked the first time, made the extra point, East Hampton’s many fans, it could fairly be said, were praying for a quick pick-me-up, and they got one in the form of Davis’s ensuing 96-yard kickoff return. Manny Morales’s point-after kick made it 13-7 as the first quarter wound down.
Early in the second frame, following a sack of Drake, who was facing third and long, Jai Feaster recovered Drake’s fumble at the Westhampton Beach 27. Two subsequent completed third-and-eight passes by Theo Ball, Bonac’s quarterback, to Charlie Stern and Cole Dunchick set up East Hampton’s second score, a 1-yard plunge into the visitors’ end zone by James Corwin. Morales’s point-after kick treated East Hampton to the lead, at 14-13.
But that lead didn’t last long. The Hurricanes, with Schaffer carrying the mail to begin with, replied with a TD of their own, by way of a 43-yard pass from Drake to Brady Spanbock, who had separated himself from two defenders. Schaffer’s point-after kick put East Hampton in a 20-14 hole.
The Bonackers were driving on their next possession when Ball, who had connected with two different receivers for first downs, threw incomplete three straight times, occasioning another punt by Morales, and another long drive by the Hurricanes, which ended at East Hampton’s 3-yard line as Davis and Corwin forced Schaffer out of bounds as the clock ran out.
Westhampton Beach scored the first time it had the ball in the second half, as the result of a 46-yard run down the left sideline by Drake, a scamper through would-be tacklers that reasserted his team’s early two-touchdown lead.
East Hampton thus trailed 27-14 as the fourth quarter opened, but the team and its fans took heart when, early on, Dylan Ward, an interior lineman, recovered a fumble at East Hampton’s 44. Elation one moment, deflation the next, though, as Ball, throwing on first down for the right sideline, was intercepted — the sole pick of the game.
Three punts later — two by East Hampton, one by Westhampton Beach — the Bonackers scored as the result of a 79-yard, 11-play drive that a 3-yard pass from Ball to Dunchick capped. Morales added the extra point, bringing East Hampton to within 27-21, and while only two minutes remained, East Hampton still had a chance to win.
Westhampton Beach gathered in Morales’s subsequent short, end-over-end kick, however, and ran out the clock.
The Hurricanes’ win improved their record to 2-3, and dropped East Hampton to 2-3.
The Bonackers are to play a homecoming game with 1-4 Amityville on Saturday at 1 p.m. at East Hampton’s Herrick Park, where Bonac’s football games were played from the 1920s into the early 1970s, before the new high school field on Long Lane was ready. The homecoming game is to be preceded by Hall of Fame ceremonies at the high school and a parade down Newtown Lane.
