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Softballers Win, Girls Track Too

Thu, 04/27/2023 - 12:01
Meredith Spolarich, above, Gabrielle Payne, and Kayla Kenlock swept the high jump at Eastport-South Manor High School last Thursday.
Jack Graves

East Hampton High’s baseball team was looking to get back on track here Monday with Comsewogue, a fellow 3-3 team in league play, after having been swept in a series with Rocky Point. In other Bonac sports this past week, the young softball team won its second game of the season here Saturday morning, mercying Hampton Bays 12-0; the boys tennis team bageled Mattituck with a lineup that was minus two starters, and the girls track team, sweeping in the shot-put, discus, and high jump, overwhelmed Eastport-South Manor 101-43.

In Sag Harbor, Braedon Mott, a sophomore right-hander, no-hit Southold in a game that the Whalers won 3-0, facing “the best pitcher in the league, Luke Newman,” according to their coach, Jonathan Schwartz. He added that Pierson scored all its runs on errors. The win, which capped a series sweep, improved Pierson to 6-0 in league play and to 8-3 over all. As of Monday, the team was tied with Port Jefferson for the League X lead.

Besides Mott, the Whalers’ roster includes three seniors, Gavin Gilbride, Massimo Vacarro, and Christian Pantina. Its eight juniors are Dom Mancino, Charles Schaefer, Nathan Dee, Mason Wheeler, Brandan Mitchell, Chad Federico, Justin Gardiner, and Jayden Greene. It also has four sophomores in addition to Mott — Andy Wayne, Lucas Iulo, Paul Roesel, and Max Krotman — and one freshman, Jeffrey Gregor.

East Hampton’s baseball team played away, home, and away games with Rocky Point, losing 2-1, 11-2, and 8-3. The middle game, played here on April 19, was nothing much to write home about other than to say that Carter

Dickinson, the starter, deserved better. The Bonackers committed seven errors during the course of the long afternoon. Of the eight runs the big sophomore gave up before giving way to Kieran Conlon in the top of the seventh inning, six were unearned.

Annemarie Brown, East Hampton’s softball coach, who started six ninth graders in a loss to Comsewogue over the spring break owing to the fact that so many of her charges were vacationing, started five — Colleen McKee, Lydia Rowan, Brynley Lys, Marijane Vickers, and Hailey Rigby — versus Hampton Bays on Saturday with pleasing results.

East Hampton scored four runs in the bottom of the first inning, the big hit being Susie DiSunno’s run-scoring double to the centerfield fence. DiSunno went 2-for-2 that day as did McKee, one of whose hits was an r.b.i. triple. Emma Terry, the shortstop, also had two hits, and Katie Kuneth, the winning pitcher, who gave up one hit, struck out three, and walked two in the five innings she worked, had a double at the plate. Everyone on the squad, including yet another freshman, Emily Hurtado, got to play, Brown said.

The win improved East Hampton to 2-7 with nonleague games coming up this week with Pierson, Center Moriches, and Southold.

“I finally got to call Newsday,” Brown said during a telephone conversation Sunday afternoon. Kuneth, she said, was “doing a great job” on the mound. Her half-dozen freshmen were “very dedicated . . . they practice hard. . . . One thing we’ve got to do is get the ball in quicker from the outfield . . . and we’ve got to pay attention to the signs.”

In this connection, she and her fellow coaches and (former high school teammates) Mylan Eckardt and Melanie Anderson have been emphasizing their former coach Lou Reale’s mantra, “Every pitch, every inning.”

Yani Cuesta’s girls track team improved its record to 2-1-1 with its lopsided win at Eastport-South Manor, a meet that marked the return to action of Leslie Samuel, who had been sidelined for a couple of weeks with an ankle sprain. Samuel, a Bridgehampton student, picked up where she left off, winning the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, the long jump, and anchoring the winning 4-by-100 relay team.

East Hampton, with Kaili Moore, Becca Trowbridge, and Gabrielle Payne, swept the discus; with Moore, Trowbridge, and Georgia Bunce, swept the shot-put, and with Meredith Spolarich, Payne, and Kayla Kenlock swept the high jump.

Other Bonac winners were Ryleigh O’Donnell, in the 400 and 400 high hurdles, Sara O’Brien, in the 3,000, and the 4-by-400 relay team of Spolarich, Dylan Cashin, O’Brien, and O’Donnell.

Six of Cuesta’s charges went on Saturday with her assistant, Nick DeLuca, to the Joe Brandi invitational relays at Connetquot High School, where the sprint medley relay team of Spolarich (400), Sam Ruano (200), Samuel (200), and O’Donnell (800) set a school record in finishing second in 4 minutes and 25.06 seconds. The eclipsed record of 4:49.24 was set by Allura Leggard, Tyra Stewart, Devon Brown, and Caroline Jungck in the spring of 2016. Cashin and O’Brien’s combined times in the 2,000-meter steeplechase earned them a fifth-place finish. 


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