It’s ready or not when it comes to East Hampton High School varsity sports, for competition was to have begun in earnest this week, with the football, girls tennis, girls soccer, boys soccer, field hockey, boys volleyball, and golf teams all scheduled to have seen action as of this evening.
Kathy Masterson, the school district’s athletic director, said Friday that she was looking forward again to seeing the kids, who had during the summer “recharged their batteries” and have apparently turned out in great numbers for Bonac’s 12 teams, a list that, aside from the above-named, includes girls swimming, girls volleyball, boys cross-country, girls cross-country, and cheerleading.
Boys soccer, as has been the case lately, attracted the greatest number of hopefuls, 90, which required some cutting so that the varsity and junior varsity squads could be pared down to about 30 players each. Masterson said that Don McGovern, the varsity’s coach, “always keeps as many kids as possible — he’s a great coach, an amazing role model.”
The team was to have played Eastport-South Manor here yesterday, and is to play host to Comsewogue tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. and Jericho (a nonleague opponent) on Saturday at 10 a.m. On Monday, the Bonackers are to play at Harborfields at 5 p.m.
Football too had a good turnout, and may have increased its numbers further as the result of cuts in other sports. The coach, Joe McKee, was reported recently as having said his team could surprise some people in Division III. Among the notable players back are Bridgehampton’s Alex Davis and Jai Feaster, who can be dazzling on offense and defense, and Adam Beckwith, the sole returnee on the line. While Charlie Corwin, the former quarterback, is playing lacrosse at Dickinson College now, Theo Ball, a junior who ran the jayvee’s offense the past two years, looks promising, according to McKee. (McKee, who also oversees flag football for kindergartners through sixth graders on Friday nights at East Hampton Village’s Herrick Park, said this week that sign-ups for it are to be held tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. at Herrick.)
The varsity’s first game is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 13, at 7 p.m. at Comsewogue.
Herrick Park, where football games used to be played on fall Saturday afternoons in the years before a high school was built on Long Lane, will be the site of East Hampton’s homecoming game with Amityville on Oct. 19, Masterson said. McKee, she said, had asked that it be played there, and Mayor Jerry Larsen and the village’s administrator, Marcos Baladron, had been “phenomenally helpful” when it came to the details.
“After the Hall of Fame ceremony that morning, a parade will begin here at the high school with our Hall of Famers leading it,” she said of Cole Brauer, who recently sailed solo around the world, Ashley West Harvey, an outstanding high school and college runner, and the 1995 county-championship baseball team. “We’ll have food trucks at the park, a scoreboard with a screen, everything. . . . The game will begin at 1.”
East Hampton’s present varsity baseball coaches, Vinny Alversa and Henry Meyer, played on that 22-4 team of 1995, along with Tom McGintee, R.J. Etzel, Steve Puglia, Jake Katz, Guy Ficeto, Troy LaMonda, Matt Fromm, Robbie Peters, Brendan Fennell, Denis Dunn, Keith Corso, and Alex Walter Jr. Jim Nicoletti, who coached it, and who lives in Bradenton, Fla., now, is coming up for the ceremony, Masterson said.
Bonac’s field hockey team, coached, as was the case last year, by Nicole Ficeto and Danielle Schuster, her sister, will be anchored for the fourth year in a row by Schuster’s daughter, Caeleigh, a 16-year-old junior and University of Connecticut verbal commit who is to continue pursuing her Olympic ambitions at the Junior Women’s National Camp at Charlotte, N.C., in December, a camp where the United States’ U-18 and U-16 teams, slated to play in Easter tournaments in Europe, are to be picked.
At the Nexus U.S.A. Field Hockey championships in Virginia Beach in July, Schuster’s team, one of 16 in the U-18 bracket, won a bronze medal. Afterward, she and the 31 other goalies in the tournament — there being two per team — played in a showcase for college coaches.
East Hampton’s field hockey team is to open the season at home today with Shoreham-Wading River at 5 p.m. It is to play at home on Saturday with Greenport-Southold at 2 p.m.
Other teams scheduled to play today — all away — are girls soccer at Port Jefferson, girls tennis at Islip, boys volleyball at Northport, and golf at Westhampton Beach.
On Monday, the Smithtown East girls tennis team is to play here at 4, the Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School golf team is to play East Hampton at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett, also at 4, and the girls swimming team is to make its debut at Ward Melville at 5:30.
