East Hampton High’s softball team has been winning some, losing some, but on Saturday the Bonackers busted out here, pummeling Harborfields 27-1 in a league game that was foreshortened by “the mercy rule” after five innings of play.
“We needed that,” Annemarie Brown, East Hampton’s head coach, told her huddled-up players, all of whom saw action during the course of the contest, afterward. Before spring break they had lost by one run each to Southold-Mattituck-Greenport, a nonleague opponent, and Kings Park. The playoffs remain a possibility for the team, which as of earlier this week was 2-4 in League V play and 4-6 over all.
Facing a pitcher who was unable to put much on the ball, the Bonackers banged out 33 hits on Saturday, Emma Terry, Alyssa Brabant, Susie DiSunno, and Maddie Brown all checking in with doubles. Every player in the lineup got at least one hit. Sophia Yardley, the backup catcher, an able sub for Emily Kennedy, who is out with tennis elbow, finished with five hits. Susie DiSunno and Katie Kuneth each had four. Emma Terry, Brown Brabant, and Sienna Salamy, the extra player, had three each.
Brabant, Cami Hatch, Susie DiSunno, Kuneth, Brown, Yardley, Leah Masi, Salamy, Caroline DiSunno, Terry, and Jameson Grant drove in runs. Caroline DiSunno pitched the first two innings, Brabant, who gave up the opponent’s lone run, the final three.
After the first inning, East Hampton led 7-0. It was 17-0 after two, and so it went, even as Brown and her fellow coach — and first cousin — Melanie Anderson tried to hold the score down, holding up runners when there were hits with the bases loaded.
The season’s second half is to begin today with Kings Park, which edged East Hampton 1-0 the last time out, on April 13, playing here at 4:30.
On the Track
The girls track team also saw action last week at the Deer Park invitational on April 19, a wretched day, and, in better weather, at the Joe Brandi Relays at Connetquot High on Friday and Saturday, though at least half the team was vacationing, its coach, Yani Cuesta, said.
Ryleigh O’Donnell did well at Deer Park, placing second in the 1,500 — the first time she’s run the distance this spring — and, following a brief wait, winning the 400. She also was sixth in the 200, a race in which her teammate, Leslie Samuels, a Bridgehampton student, was the runner-up. The 200 attracted 42 competitors. Samuels was 12th among 71 entrants in the 100.
Davi Trowbridge, one of East Hampton’s fledgling racewalkers, finished fifth in the 1,500 racewalk, paring “almost a full three minutes off her previous best time, which was super exciting,” Cuesta said. Trowbridge and Natalie Reininger were disqualified in their first outing, before the break, but have benefited from Kathy Piacentine and her daughter Nina’s coaching, and also from coaching they’ve received from Mimi Fowkes, who’s in college now. Nina Piacentine holds the school record, at 7 minutes, 14.82 seconds. Trowbridge, whose time on the 19th was 12:03.06, has a ways to go before challenging that, “but she and Natalie, even though they might not realize it, have come far.”
Also on the 19th, Bella Hopson, one of a number of strong sophomores on the team, placed eighth in the long jump, at 13-8 1/4; Samuel was 10th, in 13-2/14. Casey Stumpf, a junior, was 10th in the triple jump, in a personal best 27-6 3/4.
Turning to last weekend’s invitational at Connetquot, Dylan Cashin was fifth on Friday in the 3,000 in 11:20.66, a personal record, and Samuels was sixth in the 100 in 13:59, also a personal record.
All of Saturday’s events were two or four-person relays. East Hamptoners in the medals were Cashin and O’Donnell, who were fourth in the 2,000-meter steeplechase; O’Donnell (1,200), Alexa Gomez (400), Sara O’Brien (800), and Cashin (1,600), who were third in the distance medley relay; Hopson, Gomez, Cashin, and Samuels, who were sixth in the 4-by-200 relay, and Hopson and Samuels, who were 10th in the long jump.
Trowbridge and Reininger finished 13th in the 800-meter racewalk in a combined 11:44.49. “I’m excited for them,” said Cuesta, “though they have no idea how much they’re improving.”
Her volunteer assistant, Eric Malecki, Cuesta added, was “over the moon about Kristina Baratta’s first-time 64-foot-2-inch discus throw. She did a full spin. Malecki thinks she’ll be throwing at least 20 feet longer by the end of the season.”
“We’re coming back from the break undefeated, at 3-0,” Cuesta said in signing off, “but I don’t see us staying that way — East Islip, for instance, is a beast, a phenomenal team — but I can see us winding up at 4-2, maybe even 5-1. We have no dual meets this week, but next Saturday [April 30] our girls and boys are going to the Westhampton Beach invitational, and the following Monday we’re at East Islip.”