East Hampton High’s baseball team and the Southampton-based South Fork boys lacrosse team, whose lineup includes half a dozen Bonackers, namely Charlie Corwin, Jack Cooper, Luke Castillo, Thinley Edwards, James Corwin, Aman Chugh, and Nate Barbour, could boast of 3-0 records as of earlier this week, and East Hampton’s girls lacrosse team was 2-0.
Playing at home before a crowd of about 60 Saturday morning, the boys lacrosse squad, coached by Southampton High’s Matt Babb and East Hampton’s Jaron Greenidge, overwhelmed the North Babylon Bulldogs 20-0, with Luca Lattanzio scoring six goals, Slate Glick four, Isaiah Lattanzio three, Cooper two, Alex Davis two, Castillo one, Charlie Corwin one, and James Corwin, who was assisted by his brother, one.
It was the second rout in a row for the South Forkers, who had pummeled Copiague 22-2 on March 26.
Oliver Edson, the team’s goalie, a Southampton sophomore, made a handful of saves, Joseph Kalhorn, the visitors’ keeper, 11. The Bulldogs didn’t get a credible shot off until the beginning of the second quarter. Meanwhile, South Fork fired away at Kalhorn from the get-go. Luca Lattanzio broke the ice in the opening minutes, and was followed soon after by Cooper — who initially handled the faceoffs — and by Glick before scoring again to make it 4-0. The first quarter ended with South Fork ahead 7-0. Often the goals were scored on the third touch, attesting to the team’s sharp passing and swift ball movement.
The winners took aim at the visitors’ goal two dozen times in the first period, according to one count. Evidence that the home team wasn’t trying to run up a score lay in the fact that South Fork got 24 shots off during the game’s remaining quarters.
Asked during the love fest that followed if any tough games were coming up, Babb said, “Oh, yes. We’ve got Northport on Tuesday and Sachem North at Hampton Bays on Thursday. Those will definitely be tough games.” Both Northport and Sachem North were placed above South Fork in the preseason rankings, which means that Babb’s charges would garner power points with wins over those squads.
Babb and Greenidge, who coaches the defenders, played all 21 players on their squad that day, with no noticeable drop-off in effectiveness.
“We’ve got young guys on defense,” Greenidge said afterward. “Three sophomores and a freshman to go with [the longstick midfielder] Luke Castillo. He’s our only veteran. . . . They’re getting the hang of it. It will take some time, but we’ll get there.”
Charlie Corwin, who captains the team along with Cooper, Castillo, and Isaiah Lattanzio, and who often passed off that morning rather than shoot, said, with a smile, “We’re off to a good start, which is giving the young kids more playing time. Hopefully we can keep going the way we have been.”
Girls Lacrosse, Bonac Baseball Open Strong
Playing at Deer Park Saturday, East Hampton’s girls lacrosse team, which is coached by Joe DiGirolomo, won easily, 17-4. Ava Tintle led the way with five goals; Melina Sarlo had four, Lily Perello had three, and Lola Garneau two. The goalie, Sadie Campsey, had 10 saves.
As for baseball’s season-opening series last week, there was “good pitching and timely hitting,” Vinny Alversa, Bonac’s coach, said when asked about his team’s sweep of Westhampton Beach.
Carter Dickinson, who had help from Tyler Hansen, was the winning pitcher in game one, which went East Hampton’s way by a score of 2-1. Hansen and Nico Horan-Puglia had the r.b.i.s.
Trevor Meehan and Zach Dodge combined to defeat the Hurricanes 6-3 here on March 26, with Hansen, Horan-Puglia, and Dickinson getting key hits.
In the third game, at Westhampton Beach Saturday, Finn O’Rourke, Kieran Conlon, and Hansen shared the mound duties. After having taken an early 7-1 lead, East Hampton wound up prevailing 7-5. Hansen came in with the bases loaded and no outs in the sixth inning. A passed ball allowed Westhampton’s fifth run to score, but Hansen then snuffed the rally, retiring the side on a flyout, a groundout, and a strikeout.
Asked if he thought Westhampton was a good team, Alversa said, “Yeah . . . all the teams in our league our good.” His team was to have found out how good Hauppauge, the preseason favorite to win the league, was this week. The home-away-home series was to have begun here Tuesday, and is to end at East Hampton tomorrow.
“They’re doing well for a pretty young group of guys,” Alversa said of his players.
From Tennis to Flag Football
In other sports action, East Hampton’s boys tennis team, which lost a mandatory nonleague match at Ward Melville 6-1 on March 25, rebounded to defeat another mandatory nonleague opponent, Islip, 4-3 here on March 26. Henry Cooper, Keifer Mitchell and Miguel Garcia all won with ease at first, second, and third singles, but three of East Hampton’s four doubles teams lost, leaving it up to Nick Cooper and C.J. Baumrind, Bonac’s first pairing, in the last match that day.
Cooper and Baumrind pulled it out in a third-set tiebreaker after they and Islip’s Tyler Simonetti and Kieran Freelin had split sets, with Cooper-Baumrind winning 6-4 before losing 7-5. The Bonac duo won the tiebreak 7-5.
Asked what he thought of the team’s new coach, Pablo Montesi, a native of Chile who has been with Future Stars in Southampton for the past 15 years, Baumrind, a junior, who played third doubles last season, said, “I like him; he focuses very much on the players.”
As for the matches, Henry Cooper defeated James Eifert 6-2, 6-0; Keifer Mitchell defeated Colin McKeon 6-0, 6-1; Garcia defeated Brandon Simonetti 6-1, 6-0; Nick Cooper and Baumrind won in three at first doubles; Carlos Quintana and Griffin Beckmann lost 6-2, 6-2 to Jacob Schiffer and Gavin Argerziano at second doubles; Marcos Wechsler and Lucas Centalonza lost 6-3, 6-0 at third doubles to Charlie Zimmerman and Connor Mullins, and Joseph Martinez and David Flores, at fourth doubles, lost 6-1, 6-3 to Ronan Montana and Jeremy Carroll.
Montesi said of Cooper and Baumrind, “They played with confidence, they were solid. . . . They played better than they have at practices.” He added that Cooper and Baumrind had won East Hampton’s sole point in the match with the powerful Ward Melville team.
East Hampton’s girls flag football team is to begin its season at Center Moriches on Monday, the day of the eclipse, though the game, one of the team’s coaches, Josh Brussell, said, isn’t to begin until 6 p.m., under the lights.
There are 22 on the squad. “They’re working hard, they’re very upbeat, but, as I’ve told them, you never know how you’ll do until you get punched in the face.”
In discussing how the sport differed from tackle football, Brussell said, among other things, that “it’s 7-on-7, there’s no blocking, though you can set picks, and anybody can pass and everybody can receive. . . . We’ve got five returnees. It’s a very sophomore and junior-heavy team.”