Not long ago, Yani Cuesta, East Hampton High’s girls winter track coach, said of Melina Sarlo that she was “one of those all-around athletes that you rarely see anymore.”
That might be something of an understatement: There aren’t enough seasons in the school year to accommodate the lithe, dark-eyed senior’s talents, which, beginning at the beginning, have included softball, soccer, swimming, junior lifeguarding, boys and girls basketball, volleyball, field hockey, track, and lacrosse, a sport she’ll play next fall at Hofstra University, whose scholarship aid is also taking her superlative academic record into account.
Both grace and grit have figured into Sarlo’s athletic learning curve, which has also included her studies, mathematics and science in particular. “We’ve never had to push her at all,” her father, Michael, said during a conversation at their house in Springs the other day. It was Melina who, in the absence of a third-and-fourth-grade girls basketball team, asked him if she and Claire McGovern couldn’t play basketball with the boys team that Tom Cooper and Mike Rodgers coached at the Southampton Recreation Center, which they did — until a fifth-and-sixth grade girls team, under Mark Crandall and Don McGovern, was formed.
As for field hockey, a game of fits and starts that often requires of its players dogged persistence in battles for possession of the ball, and quick turnarounds when referees’ whistles blow, she said, with a smile, “I love it. You’re getting to play with other people, there’s the passing, the quick movements and blocks, and then when you tip the ball into the cage on a corner play it’s very satisfying.”
By contrast, she agreed, the fluid movements that attend basketball, track, lacrosse, and lifeguarding’s swimming competitions were equally as compelling.
Sarlo’s father said that no better example of his daughter’s grit could be found than at the last Main Beach invitational lifeguard tournament, when, despite having been carried way off course by the sweep and waves in her leg of the paddleboard relay — almost to the east buoy that the competitors were to round — she reversed course, and, “paddling almost twice the distance of everyone else,” rectified the error, confounding most of the onlookers onshore, who figured the Town’s A team was out of it, and, having regained the lead, handed off to Bella Tarbet, the anchor, who took it from there.
Perhaps even more impressive than the great number of sports in which she’s become competitive is the fact that she captains the three she plays at the varsity level — field hockey, indoor track, and lacrosse. Older girls, among them Tarbet in track, Anna Hugo and Rorey Murphy in field hockey, Grace Perello in lacrosse, and Sophia Swanson, “when it comes to putting in the hard work,” convinced her, Sarlo said, to give back in like manner to teammates younger than she. A leader “should listen to the coach, always do the right thing, and lead by example,” she added.
“She tends to be one of those unsung heroes, a quiet leader who doesn’t seek the spotlight but so absolutely deserves it,” said Cuesta, whose sister, Paula, is Melina’s mother.
“When she was young, I’d talk to her about running for me, but she got into so many sports when she got to high school that I didn’t think it would happen. She made the varsity field hockey and girls lacrosse teams as an eighth grader, and was intending to play basketball in the winter of her freshman hear when Covid put an end to that. Our winter meets were held outdoors when things began to get going again, and she came out, primarily, I thought, to stay in shape, but she enjoyed it and had success, so she stayed with it. Having her stay with the team is the best thing Covid gave me.”