(11/24/2009) East Hampton was the new kid on the block in this
C. Cordone
This year’s girls volleyball team, which had on it seven seniors who have played for Kathy McGeehan (at right) since their junior high days, won a county championship, a Long Island championship (East Hampton’s first in the sport), and this past weekend debuted in the state’s Final Four.
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past weekend’s state Class A girls volleyball tournament. The other teams in the Final Four — Victor, Burnt Hills, and Cornwall — had been there before.
Consequently, even though the Bonackers brought a 19-0 record into the Glens Falls Civic Center, it wasn’t a big surprise that they finished fourth in Saturday’s pool play and thus did not advance to the final.
Also it was no surprise that Victor, a Rochester-area power, sailed through pool play at 6-0 and swept Cornwall, which had come out of pool play at 3-3, on Sunday to repeat as the state Class A champion. It was the third state championship for Victor, which also won in 2003.
Moreover, it was the eighth straight year that Burnt Hills, the third-place finisher, a team that had won two games from the Bonackers earlier this season in a tournament at Northport, had played in a Final Four. The Saratoga-area team won state championships in 2002, 2004, and 2005.
Bonac fans were hoping that East Hampton, which lost 25-14, 25-12 to Victor in the six-game pool’s first round and had split with Cornwall, winning 25-15 and losing 25-17, might come back in the finale against Burnt Hills, but the latter won out 25-19, 25-20.
“We were certainly capable,” said East Hampton’s veteran coach, Kathy McGeehan, “but I think we were just a little bit worn out. The whole experience up there was wonderful, but a tournament like that can be emotionally draining. I know the kids liked it, but they weren’t as relaxed as they could have been.”
By the time East Hampton’s pool play ended, its players had been on the court for the better part of four and a half hours, had been treated to four rousing send-offs at East Hampton’s schools and at the Springs School early Friday morning, had been feted, along with all the other contestants, that night at a banquet at the Civic Center, had marched in an Olympic-like opening ceremony, and the team’s seven seniors had come to realize that their years with McGeehan, whom they had looked upon as “a second mom,” in the setter Sarah Philipbar’s words, were drawing to an end.
In postgame interviews, McGeehan said, in tearing up, that her seniors, two of whom, Calli Stavola and Summer Foley, she’d coached since they’d been Montauk seventh graders, and the rest of whom she’d coached since eighth grade, beginning with East End Waves travel teams, constituted “a very special group. . . . They’ve been successful way beyond volleyball. I haven’t done their G.P.A.s, but you’ll be amazed by their averages. I can’t
remember a time that I haven’t had a scholar-athlete team.”
McGeehan added that at the banquet, Myra O’Neal, in speaking for the team, said she and her teammates were playing not only for themselves, but for an entire community and its various school districts — that out of many, as it were, they’d become one.
Had the team been able to play consistently at the level it did in its first game with Cornwall, during which the Green Dragons were thrown into disarray, East Hampton’s results undoubtedly would have been better than 1-5.
Before playing East Hampton, Cornwall had stunned Burnt Hills 25-21, 25-15, but Philipbar served notice, with an opening ace, that East Hampton was conceding nothing. Soon after, with Shaina Preiss serving, Bonac sprinted ahead to 9-1 — a 7-point run during which Preiss had two aces, Foley had a kill, and Kirsten Brierley and Stavola teamed up for a double block — before the opponents sided out.
By the time Foley served the game out, sending her team off the court in high spirits, Stavola, who was afterward named to the state’s Class A tournament team, had had three kills and an ace, Preiss had two kills, and Foley had a kill.
“We created opportunities for ourselves in that game,” McGeehan said later. “When Shaina was serving we had a strong rotation with Summer, Kirsten, and Calli at the net. Our blocks were effective, and Cornwall wasn’t tipping over them.”
A 6-point run during which Stavola was serving enabled East Hampton to take a 10-8 lead in the second game, and the score was knotted four times thereafter, but the opponents, benefiting from blocks, kills, and
East Hampton errors, finished with an 11-3 run to win, as aforesaid, 25-17.
The Bonackers were likewise grudging in the early going in both of the games with Burnt Hills, pulling to 9-10 in the first before Hills’ tips and kills extended its lead, and knotting the count at 15-15 in the second before pulling away again.
McGeehan said she didn’t mind playing the best team first. Afterward, “I told them if we went 4-2 or 3-3, we could well be in line for the final. As it turned out, Cornwall made it to the final at 3-3. I don’t know why it was, but we couldn’t sustain the high level we reached in that first game with them. . . . During the playoffs we played unevenly against the best teams. That happened in the third game with Eastport-South Manor [in the county championship match]. It certainly was the case with Wantagh [which East Hampton defeated 3-2 after going down 0-2 in the Long Island championship match.] And, against the state’s truly best teams, it was the same.”
East Hampton’s fans, who largely filled one of the Civic Center’s sections from top to bottom, applauded the team and McGeehan, who was making her first trip to a Final Four in 30 years of coaching, as they left Court 3.
Soon after, although it was late, they drove home, arriving in the wee hours. No police and fire engine escort this time, as had been the case following the county and Long Island matches at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue.
“There wasn’t a soul on the street when we got back — we snuck into town,” McGeehan said. “I didn’t get back home [to Montauk] until 4 a.m.”
“I love her — we all do,” Philipbar said of McGeehan. “It’s hard, but. . . . It’s been a long journey, quite emotional. . . . We gave it our all. It was definitely a good experience. We had a good run, and there’s always another year for Stranny [McGeehan’s nickname]. There’s a lot of talent coming up [from a junior varsity that was undefeated in league play], and from this team too.”
Tryouts for East End Waves travel teams 'are to be held at the high school on Dec. 7 at 7 p.m.