Had a referee been more attentive, had he seen the ball roll over the goal line, East Hampton High’s boys soccer team would have come away, according to its coach, Don McGovern, with a tie rather than a 2-1 loss last Thursday at Amityville, an outcome that dropped the Bonackers to 6-6-1 in League VI play and made Monday’s regular-season-ending game here with 9-4-0 Hauppauge a do-or-die one insofar as the playoffs were concerned.
The playoff news was better last week for Bonac’s field hockey team, which, thanks to Caeleigh Schuster’s shootout goal-tending heroics and Ava Tintle’s second-round goal here last Thursday, edged East Islip 1-0, thus clinching a playoff spot.
That nail-biter was just one of three here that day, the others being the girls tennis team’s 4-3 win over East Islip in a first-round county team tournament match, and a swim meet for the League III championship at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter that went down to the last event.
Schuster made 23 saves during the course of the field hockey game, while the visitor’s goalie made four, though, despite that stat, her mother, Danielle Schuster, said she thought the teams were pretty much evenly matched throughout the fray.
Bonac’s shoot-out team and East Islip’s team finished the first shootout round tied with two goals apiece. Bonac’s team comprised Katherine Corwin, Hailey Welsch, Tintle, Katherine Grande, and Brynley Lys, who, like their counterparts, dribbled toward the opponent’s goalie from the 25-yardline facing a 10-second time limit. East Hampton goals were scored by Welsch, the second to go, and Tintle, the third.
Schuster turned back the four East Islip shooters she faced in the second round, while Welsch and Tintle again found the back of the cage, sweeping the ball in from acute angles after having gotten around the visitors’ keeper.
Of the girls tennis team’s win, its coach, Pablo Montesi, said, “East Islip put their best players in doubles, and the matches were close. First and second doubles each went to three sets. It was a great win for us as a team.” Fourteenth-seeded East Hampton was to have played at third-seeded Smithtown East Tuesday. Hailey Rigby, who has played first singles for East Hampton throughout the fall, did not play in last Thursday’s match owing to a season-ending ankle sprain.
Last Thursday’s field hockey shootout and the 4-3 girls tennis wins were followed not long after by a riveting girls swimming meet with Sayville-Bayport at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, a meet in which the League III championship was up for grabs.
In the end, Say-Bay, the defending league champ — and county runner-up — won it, by a score of 86-84, its 400-yard freestyle relay team putting it over the top in the final event.
“While Sayville earned first-place finishes in all but one event, it was the depth of the Bonac team that was able to keep it close — the meet was tied going into the 400 free relay,” Craig Brierley, East Hampton’s coach, said in an emailed report.
There were 20 individual personal bests recorded by East Hampton’s swimmers that day, “PRs” by three of its 200 medley relay and 200 freestyle relay teams, and personal records by two of its 400 relay teams. Lily Early, who placed third in the 500 freestyle race, qualified for the county meet with her time of five minutes and 52.48 seconds.
The meet was the last home one of the season, and before it, the team’s seven seniors — Ani Bedini, Ava Castillo, Lily Griffin, Valeria Gutierrez, Ashley Leon, Fiona Merola-Stisi, and Abby O’Sullivan — were honored, “a special, bittersweet moment” in Brierley’s words. “We wish our seniors the best of luck in the next chapter of their lives. We are blessed with all the memories that they have given to our program over the years.”
East Hampton’s second and third-place finishes came in the meet-opening 200 medley relay, the 200 individual medley, the 100 butterfly, the 100 freestyle, the 500 free, the 100 backstroke, and in the 400 free relay. The Bonackers went one-two in the 200 free relay with Ava Castillo, Cybelle Curry, Lizzy Daniels, and Lily Griffin on the winning team, and with Sydney Powers, Bedini, Maya Dias, and Ginger Griffin on the runner-up one.
Lily Caplin, a Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School junior, and Evann Castillo, an East Hampton sophomore, were named as swimmers of the meet by the captains, who, according to Brierley, had been impressed by the fact that “when not competing they will be cheering loudly, and this meet was no different. . . . They support their teammates all the time, and work very hard to improve. Their efforts help make this team so special.”
The field hockey team won its final regular-season game 4-2 over Comsewogue on Saturday. In its first playoff game, the team will again face East Islip at home starting at 3 p.m.
