On paper, the high school field hockey game here on Oct. 4 seemed likely to wind up in East Hampton’s favor inasmuch as the Bonackers sported a 6-2 record going in and Comsewogue, the opponent, was a lackluster 1-8, though it should be noted that that sole win had come over Pierson, which recently took East Hampton to a shootout before succumbing.
In the end, East Hampton won 5-2, but therein lies a tale.
To begin with, the visitors proved to be far more formidable than their record indicated. In fact, they jumped out to a 1-0 lead early on thanks to a perfectly placed corner play shot from 2 o’clock on the circle that Caeleigh Schuster, East Hampton’s standout freshman goalie, saw only when it zipped into the cage through the narrow gap between her right-leg pads and the left corner.
The visitors were going with a brisk length-of-the-field wind when that goal was scored. When questioned during the break between the first and second 15-minute periods, Schuster said she’d been screened on the play.
She held off the fired-up Warriors in the second quarter. In the third and fourth frames, now going with the wind, East Hampton mounted an all-out assault on Comsewogue’s goal, with Comsewogue, “a great defensive team,” in the words of East Hampton’s coach, Samantha James, somehow — with the exception of Toby Allen’s game-tying goal in the fourth — holding off the Bonackers, who repeatedly were awarded free hits from the 25-yard line after shots last touched by a defender sailed over the endline. East Hampton had 16 — count ‘em, 16 — corner plays, most of them in the second half. Comsewogue, in contrast, was awarded just one.
The Bonackers were similarly frustrated in the ensuing 10 minutes of 7-on-7 overtime play, which brought up a shootout in which each team sent out five possible shooters to go head-to-head with the opposing team’s goalie.
Melina Sarlo, first to go for East Hampton, came up empty, and Emma McGrory, her successor in the 10-second duel, did too. Chloe Coleman, however, came through, taking the rebound of her first shot off to the left and wrapping it back around Comsewogue’s keeper into the far right corner of the cage. The first round ended in a 1-1 tie though, as the Warriors’ Lauren Freudenberg had managed to put one by Schuster, her second shot, taken from the left side, going in off Schuster’s pads.
The second round went far better for the winners as Sarlo, McGrory, and Coleman all scored on their forays, while Schuster stopped Comsewogue’s first three, thus ending the agonizing contest.
James said Schuster dropped to her knees afterward, and that moments later her joyous and relieved teammates piled on.
East Hampton was to have played Friday at Greenport-Southold, another team with a 1-8 record. Presumably the Bonackers won’t be overconfident. “They’ve got a great goalie,” James said during last Thursday’s practice session.
Asked if her team had clinched a playoff spot yet, the coach demurred. “We’re hopeful,” she said, but as of Friday afternoon no points had been appended to the teams in power-rated Division II.