East Hampton High’s girls lacrosse team made its debut here last Thursday, and looked pretty good as it defeated North Babylon, a nonleague opponent, 16-10.
With Melina Sarlo scoring six goals and Ava Tintle and Lily Perello scoring three each, the Bonackers had a rather easy time of it, “though not as easy a time as it should have been,” the team’s coach, Joe DiGirolomo, said afterward. Ava Chapman, in the absence of the team’s starting goalie, Sadie Campsey, made five saves.
DiGirolomo said his charges had the edge in turnovers caused and in ground balls, and, with Sarlo and Tintle alternating, won about half the draws. His players were awarded a number of free position shots following fouls by the visitors’ defenders, though most of the goals resulted from open field shots. North Babylon’s Angela Taddeo scored eight of her team’s goals.
Speaking of defense, DiGirolomo said the girls needed some shoring up when it came to “communicating and sliding.” East Hampton, he said, alternated between man-to-man and zone defensively “to give North Babylon different looks.”
The team was to have played at Lindenhurst Saturday, but rain caused the nonleague game to be put off until today. East Hampton is to play its league-opener at Deer Park this Saturday, and will be at home again, with Southampton, next Thursday.
“Making the playoffs is our team’s goal,” the coach said. “We only lost three girls to graduation. If we play smart, I think we can do it.” East Hampton’s league is a power-rated one. Therefore, said DiGirolomo, “knocking off a couple of teams ranked ahead of us will help our cause.”
Young Softballers
Bonac’s young softball team took the field the next day, Friday, in a nonleague game here with Deer Park, and while it was close in the first four innings — East Hampton trailed 3-1 going into the top of the fifth — things unraveled thereafter as the result of errors in the infield and outfield. The final score was 13-2.
Katie Kuneth, the pitcher, one of three seniors on the team, deserved better, said the coach, Annemarie Cangiolosi Brown. Practice sessions scheduled for the days leading up to the game had to be forgone, owing to various reasons.
Brown and her assistant, Melissa Edwards — Pierson’s former coach — were hoping to practice in the school’s gym at 8 a.m. Saturday, after it had become clear a nonleague game that was to have been played at Hampton Bays that morning had been rained out. “But the boys lacrosse ‘media day’ got moved inside from the turf, so we practiced at 6:30.”
That session, she said, largely concentrated on first-and-third situations,
“what to do when their runner on first heads for second and the one on third moves toward home. Deer Park pulled that on us more than once, and we didn’t react well. The ball’s supposed to go to the shortstop coming in. . . . Basically, I think we were very nervous on Friday.”
In general, it had been a trial by fire lately for her young players, who hadn’t much time to prepare, Brown said. “I do think, though, that we’ll be okay.”
Having Edwards, a fellow phys ed teacher at the John M. Marshall Elementary School, as her assistant has been “a great addition,” said Brown, adding that Melanie Anderson and Mylan Eckhart, her former assistants, would “help out when they can. . . . Mylan and Jeff Tupper put on a Little League clinic at John Marshall on Saturday, and 60 third-through-seventh-grade girls showed up! These clinics are going to continue at Stephen Hand’s Path. There are a lot of good athletes coming up — the future looks bright.”
Brown’s former high school coach, Lou Reale, who turned East Hampton softball into a playoff contender at the turn of this century — having done the same at Bayport before that — is to be inducted into New York State’s softball Hall of Fame in June. Reale has picked her as his award-presenter.