The East Hampton High School boys swimming team, with 19 returnees from last year’s league champions, lost a mandatory nonleaguer at Half Hollow Hills West on Dec. 3, a team that East Hampton’s coach, Craig Brierley, thinks is the one to beat in Suffolk County, and, at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter last Thursday, Connetquot-East Islip, another nonleague opponent, thanks to first and third-place finishes in the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, tied the Bonackers 85-85, apparently the first time that a meet in which East Hampton participated had ended in a tie.
“Take a picture of that,” Eugene DePasquale said, pointing to the scoreboard as the final numbers were put up.
East Hampton went into the finale up by 6 points, but, in the end, the visitors came away with a tie as their B team out-touched East Hampton’s by a fraction of a second.
The Bonackers were up by 6 points as well when the halftime intermission arrived, having placed first (Joey Badilla, Jack Duryea, Colin Harrison, and Fernando Menjura) and third (Aidan McCormac, Curran O’Donnell, Gabriel Ramundo, and Nicky Badilla) in the lead-off event, the 200 medley relay.
East Hampton was third (Tenzin Tamang), fourth (Edward Hoff), and fifth (Jack Duryea) in the 200 free; second (Joey Badilla) and third (Nicky Badilla) in the 200 individual medley; first (Owen McCormac) and second (Harrison) in the 50 free; second (Tamang) and third (Nicky Badilla) in the 100 butterfly, and second (Menjura) and fourth (Owen McCormac) in the 100 free.
Joey Badilla’s 26.95-second backstroke leg got East Hampton’s A team off to a strong start in the 200 medley relay. In the 200 I.M. (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle), Badilla, who had been in the lead, was overtaken on the last lap by the visitors’ James Llewellyn. But Owen McCormac and Harrison’s one-two finish in the 50 put East Hampton up 34-28 at the break.
When the meet resumed, the home team extended its lead to 42-36 as the result of going two, three, and five in the 100 fly, but the visitors came back, winning the 100 free and taking one-two in the 500.
Going into the 200 free relay, Connetquot-East Islip was ahead 58-52, but, with first (Duryea, Menjura, Harrison, and Owen McCormac) and third-place (O’Donnell, Gabriel Ramundo, Will Midson, and Tamang) finishes in that event, the Bonackers pulled even at 62-62.
With second (Joey Badilla), third (Hoff), and fourth-place (Aidan McCormac) finishes in the 100 back, East Hampton inched back into the lead, at 71-69, and, with Duryea and O’Donnell going one-two in the penultimate event, the 100 breaststroke, regained the 6-point edge it had enjoyed earlier.
Eddie J. Smith gave Connetquot-East Islip a three-second lead in the first leg of the 400 relay, and the visitors built on that thereafter, winning out by 5.02 seconds. East Hampton’s B team of Daniel Piver, Callum Menelaws, Midson, and Joey Badilla missed out on third place by .34 seconds.
“It was a very exciting finish, with so much energy from both teams and the fans,” Craig Brierley said in an emailed report Monday. “It was a meet to remember.”
O’Donnell was named by the captains as the swimmer of the meet for “his monster effort, dropping over 4 seconds from his best time, in the 100 breast, helping to put his team ahead going into the last event. He also turned in personal best times in his 200 medley and free relay legs.”
The swimmer of the meet at Half Hollow Hills West — a meet that East Hampton lost 106-69 — was Tamang, who “scored in both the 200 I.M. and 500 freestyle, and also swam a personal best time in the lead-off leg of the 400 free relay, keying our win in that event.”
Daniel Sarlo, for the Gray team, and Duryea, for the Maroon team, were named swimmers of the gray-maroon intrasquad meet at the Y Saturday. Aidan Forst captained the Gray team, Miles Coppola and Midson were the Maroon team’s captains.
There are seven seniors, 10 juniors, three sophomores, and seven freshmen on Brierley’s team. Seven of the swimmers — Joey and Nicky Badilla, Hoff, Gabriel Ramundo, P.J. Ramundo, Conor Flanagan, and Sebastian Gomez — are from Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School.
East Hampton is to launch its League II season today at Lindenhurst.