February 25, 1999
In arguably the best outcome ever for East Hampton High School wrestlers in the county tournament, three Bonackers — Jeremy Cuevas, Brian Turza, and Rick Osterberg — earned all-county designations as the result of their performances last weekend at the State University at Stony Brook.
Cuevas, a junior, was the runner-up at 112 pounds. Cuevas was the first finalist East Hampton has had since Matt Fromm advanced that far in the 158-pound division in 1995.
Turza, a senior, placed third in the 189-pound class, winning twice in the wrestlebacks. Osterberg, a junior, placed fifth, at 135 pounds, going 1-1 in the wrestlebacks after losing 6-5 in the semifinal round to Lindenhurst’s Keith Gholson.
The last time Jim Stewart, East Hampton’s veteran coach, had three county medal-winners was in 1987, when Eric Kaufman won the 115-pound division — the first time since the mid-1960s that a Bonacker had won a county championship — and Amasa Winter, at 101, and Orlando Blowe, at 180, earned sixth-place finishes. Stewart took 12 wrestlers in all to that ‘87 tourney. He took six this year, the others being Louis Russo (119), a ninth grader, and Chris Zay (130) and John Glennon (275), seniors.
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A Kings Park team and its following, loaded for bear, burst into Bonac’s gym Monday night and an hour and a half later, by virtue of a stunning 54-53 upset win over East Hampton in a county boys basketball tournament Class B semifinal, repaired in noisy triumph to the populous Mid-Island region whence they came.
It was a battle from the get-go. The fourth-seeded Kingsmen, urged on by a raucous crowd and a coach seething with combative fervor, took a 7-0 lead before Willie McFarland netted the top seed’s first bucket.
And while East Hampton, as expected, came back, to the delight of most of those in the packed gym, the tall insurgents, playing a smothering man-to-man defense, refused to let the Bonackers loose.
. . . “With 50 seconds to go we had the ball and didn’t score; with 34 to go, they had it and did, and that was the ball game,” Bill McKee, Ed Petrie’s assistant, said afterward. “We didn’t execute down the stretch and they did.”
“It was a tough loss — the kids were really disappointed,” he continued. “It’s the second year in a row that we’ve lost in a county semifinal and the first home loss for us in 25 games over the past two years.”
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Rob Balnis, a student at Frostburg State in Maryland, is to play soon with a national rugby side, the Eagles, in a 7s tournament in Fiji. It is the second year that Balnis, an outside center, has been picked for the traveling side. Only one other Montauk Rugby Club player, Chris Carney, has played for the Eagles in international competition.
Balnis, Frank Bistrian, Frank Romano, and Mike Vasti, all Montauk players, were members of the Met Union all-star squad that won a 15s tournament in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last weekend. . . . Bistrian scored off a penalty play in the championship game, and Balnis set up a break that resulted in a score. The winners’ number-eight man, Bistrian was named the tourney’s most valuable player.
