Four singles and four doubles players on East Hampton High School’s boys tennis team, which recently finished the regular season at 15-1 in league play, achieved all-county status last weekend in the Division IV tournament at William Floyd, a tournament whose final rounds were to have been played Monday, though rain was in the forecast.
Max Astilean, the hard-hitting junior left-hander who plays number-one for the Bonackers, was to have faced in the singles final a Shoreham-Wading River eighth grader, Ray Hidaka, “a good player,” according to East Hampton’s coach, Kevin McConville, “who Max beat in two of their three meetings last year. Max lost the first time they met, but beat Hidaka in straight sets the two times they met after that.”
East Hampton’s top-seeded doubles team of Cameron Mitchell and Miguel Garcia was upset in the division tourney’s semifinal round by a Mattituck duo, losing in three sets. The number-two team, Armando Rangel, an East Hampton junior, and Dane Schwalbe, a Pierson freshman, also lost in the semis, setting up a consolation match for third on Monday.
The other East Hampton singles players who advanced to the county individual tournament, which is to begin at Smithtown East High School tomorrow, were Kiefer Mitchell, a sophomore, Jagger Cohen, an eighth grader, and Nick Cooper, a sophomore. They all were to have played matches Monday as well to round out the division’s one-through-eight ladder for the county’s three-day individual tournament, which is to begin at Smithtown East High School on Friday, May 20.
On Monday, Kiefer Mitchell, who had lost to Astilean in a semifinal match, was to have played John Glenn’s number-two, Alon Alkelai, “a kid who beat Nick in the quarters, using a sliced backhand and drop shots,” for third place. Cohen was to have played Westhampton Beach’s number-one, Gavin Vander Schaaf, for fifth. (Mitchell defeated Vander Schaaf in straight sets in the quarterfinal round.) Cooper, the third seed, who was upset in the quarterfinals by the 11th-seeded Alkelai, was to have vied with John Glenn’s number-two, Anthony Bell, for seventh.
East Hampton’s team is among the top three in the county, McConville said, along with Commack and Ward Melville, which recently edged the Bonackers 4-3. If things go according to form, East Hampton, which received a first-round bye, will be home for three matches in the county team tournament, which was to have begun with play-in matches Monday. East Hampton, seeded second in the county’s East Division’s tournament, a tournament contested by 19 teams, was to have played the 15-18 winner on Wednesday, May 18.
Assuming East Hampton won that second-round match, it is to play host to the 7-10 winner on Tuesday, and to Westhampton Beach in a semifinal match on Wednesday, May 25. Then, presumably, East Hampton would meet Ward Melville again, at Ward Melville in East Setauket because it is the higher seed, in the tourney’s final on May 31.
The team that wins the East Division tournament is to play the West Division winner, presumably Commack. “We’re all pretty equal,” McConville said of Commack, Ward Melville, and East Hampton.
East Hampton’s coach is fairly confident that his team, with a slightly rearranged lineup that he hopes will include Chris Pilarski, a Pierson sophomore who has been sidelined lately with a sore shoulder, will prevail.