Baseball Team Happy to Be in Florida
East Hampton High’s baseball players must have been happy Monday as they took the field in St. Petersburg, Fla., for a doubleheader with Frontier Central High School six inches of wet snow blanketed their diamond here.
The Bonackers are to play six games at the Spring Training Complex in St. Pete this week. Before leaving for Tampa they had managed to squeeze in a couple of scrimmages and one league game in the stormy month of March.
That league game was played at Mount Sinai. East Hampton lost it 5-0, “but that’s better than the 24-1, 32-2, and 18-something scores they beat us by last year,” Vinny Alversa, East Hampton’s coach, said during a recent practice session.
Kurt Matthews and Elian Abreu, his top two, pitched at Mount Sinai — Matthews for the first four innings and Abreu for the last two. The former, said Alversa, gave up four runs, three of them earned, three hits, three walks, and struck out five, while Abreu gave up one run, two hits, walked two, and struck out one.
“They scored two in the third, two more in the fourth, and added one in the sixth,” said the coach. “Kurt and Elian pitched well. We had two hits, one by Drew Salamy and one by Luke Campbell, both freshmen.”
“We put the ball in play,” he added, “and there were quite a few walks, but we couldn’t get the key hit.”
Asked who his other pitchers might be this season, Alversa said, with a slight smile, “Everyone.” This is the second year in which pitch counts are to be limited to no more than 105 within a five-day period.
On Tuesday, East Hampton was to have played a game with Pearl River. Yesterday, the Bonackers were to have played Maranatha Christian, a team from Minneapolis. Scarsdale is to be today’s opponent, and an intra-squad game, with umpires, is to be played tomorrow.
Mount Sinai is to play game two of the league-opening series here on Monday at 4:30 p.m. Miller Place is to play here Wednesday at 4:30.
Turning to tennis, the boys team defeated Southold-Greenport 6-1 here on March 28, the first of what will presumably be numerous wins this season. With Jonny De Groot away, Kevin McConville moved everyone up. Playing at one, Ravi MacGurn defeated Xavier Kahn 6-1, 6-2; at two, Luke Louchheim defeated Jacob Kahn 6-4, 6-1; at three, Jaedon Glasstein defeated Cole Brigham 6-1, 6-1, and at four, Brad Drubych defeated Jared Palumbo 4-6, 6-3, 10-4.
Jamie Fairchild and Alex Weseley, playing at first doubles, defeated Mario Contreras and Devin Quinones 6-3, 6-0; Matthew McGovern and Miles Clark, at two, lost 5-7, 6-3, 13-11 to Alex Kandora and Van Karsten, and, at three, Hunter Medler and John Jimenez defeated Southold-Greenport’s Parker Bukowski and Jack Koslosky 6-1, 6-0.
The Bonackers, with their three top singles players away, were to have played at Shoreham-Wading River Monday, but that day’s snowfall put it off. Should the match be played later in the week, McConville said during Saturday morning’s practice session that he would have Glasstein at one, Drubych at two, Weseley at three, Fairchild at four, and McGovern and Clark at first doubles. The other two doubles teams would include some junior varsity players, he said.
East Hampton’s boys and girls track teams were to have had their first outings at Port Jefferson’s Steeplefest yesterday.
The good news for Yani Cuesta and Diane O’Donnell, the girls coaches, is that there are 41 on the spring roster whereas there were only four who came out this past winter for indoor track.
The team is young, however, with only one senior, Michelle Barranco, who will put the shot and throw the discus. There are 15 sophomores, five juniors, and 20 ninth graders. Two of the latter, Ava Engstrom and Bella Tarbet, are already long-distance runners to be reckoned with.
As of last week, Cuesta was reasonably sure as to which events about half of her charges would do. The girls’ league opener will be at Westhampton Beach on Wednesday.
As for the boys, Ben Turnbull, their coach, said in a recent email, “Our goal this season is to learn. We have a very young team, though I hope to have five to six individuals make the state qualifying meet. . . . Our competition is very strong this year, what with Amityville, Westhampton, Shoreham-Wading River, Sayville, and Miller Place in our league.”
The team’s core, he said, includes Robert Weiss, a senior sprinter and middle-distance runner, Ryan Fowkes, a junior distance runner, Matthew Maya, a junior hurdler and jumper, Eamon Spencer, a senior middle-distance runner, and Ruben Santana, a senior shot-putter and discus-thrower.
The boys will be home to Westhampton Wednesday.
Asked to comment on East Hampton’s contributions to the East End boys lacrosse team, known as the Islanders, Matt Babb of Southampton, the head coach, said in an email: “We have six players from East Hampton on our varsity — Cole Shaw, a junior, who’s the team’s captain, Brian Damm, a junior who should anchor our attack, Logan Gurney, a sophomore midfielder, Aiden Cooper, a freshman defender who will rotate as our face-off guy, Jack Ulrich, a junior who can play at both attack and midfield, and Henry Johnston, a junior midfielder who gives us depth on the defensive end.”
The Islanders were to have played Kings Park at Southampton High School yesterday, and are to play at Bellport today and at Hampton Bays Monday. On Wednesday, Center Moriches is to play at Southampton, the Islanders’ home field.
While East Hampton’s softball team was bageled at Mount Sinai and at Miller Place recently, it pummeled Port Jefferson 28-0, a game in which Rebecca Kuperschmid and Bella Swanson homered. The team was to have played a home game with John Glenn Tuesday morning, but because of the previous day’s snow, it seemed unlikely. Sayville is to play here tomorrow, at 4:30 p.m., and on Tuesday Babylon is to play here, also at 4:30.