Vinny Alversa must have been happy last Thursday on two counts: 1) the East Hampton High School baseball team he coaches upended Sayville 2-1 in a bottom-of-the-seventh rally, and 2) his son Kai, a freshman who came on in relief of Chris Vinski in the fourth inning, pitched Bridgehampton to a 5-4 win over Southampton.
The Killer Bees, who are in their second season of varsity play, lost 5-3 at Center Moriches, another nonleague opponent, on Saturday, “but we played hard,” said Lou Liberatore, Bridgehampton’s coach, by phone Sunday. “We’re excited about the season.”
Alversa relieved Vinski in the fourth inning of last Thursday’s game with the score tied at 3-3. Bridgehampton scored two more in the bottom of the fifth, thanks, said Liberatore, to a botched infield grounder, and held on for the win. Alversa, who pitched for the Montauk School’s undefeated team last spring, gave up one hit, and though the Mariners put a run across with him on the mound, it was unearned.
Liberatore said Milo Tompkins, the Bees’ junior catcher-pitcher, “the best player in the league,” had gone 3-for-4 at the plate with a two-run triple, and that Dylan Fitzgerald, a senior infielder, had also driven in a run.
Lacrosse Report
Turning to lacrosse, the South Fork Islander boys, a team on which half a dozen East Hampton High School students play, defeated 13th-ranked Walt Whitman 8-7 in its league opener, and lost 13-10 to sixth-ranked Commack last week, while East Hampton’s girls team lost twice, 18-6 to Islip and 17-5 to Bellport.
Matt Babb, who coaches the Southampton-based Islanders, said in an email, “We are proud of our team’s win over Whitman. It wasn’t our best game, but we fought to the end, earning the victory.”
As for the loss to Commack, “We feel we could have, or maybe should have, beaten them. We made a few too many mistakes, which put us in a hole. . . . We just ran out of time. The game did show us that we are capable of competing with some of these top-ranked teams though.”
In the Whitman game, Charlie Corwin had three goals, Jack Cooper had two and one assist, Joe Scully scored a goal, and J.P. Amaden had an assist. Cooper had three goals and an assist in the Commack game, Amaden had two goals and two assists, and Corwin scored once.
As for the girls, Joe DiGirolomo, their first-year coach, said in an email that Islip, which led 11-3 at the half, “was a very strong opponent and moved the ball quickly and efficiently. Their very aggressive defense made it tough to settle the ball down and create scoring chances, but I was pleased with our effort overall.”
Bellport, he said, “dominated the draw controls, which meant we were defending way more than attacking. We fell into an early hole and never were able to recover.”
East Hampton’s midfielders, Melina Sarlo, Emma McGrory, and Ava Tintle, figured in the scoring, Sarlo with two goals and an assist, Tintle with two goals, and McGrory with one. Lola Garneau, a junior attack, had to sit out in order to give a head cut sustained in the Islip game time to heal.
Young Softball Team
Although East Hampton's softball team had yet to win as of Monday, having been shut out 13-0 by Sayville and 8-0 by Westhampton Beach last week, Annemarie Brown, the coach, said on Sunday that she's pleased with her young team, which has four ninth graders starting -- Brynley Lys, Colleen McKee, Lydia Rowan, and Maryjane Vickers.
"I'm very happy with these girls -- the morale this season is totally different. Our defense is good, but we need to hit. I know they're going up to the plate looking to do so -- they're swinging the bat. In practice inside yesterday, they said they'd rather have me pitch than the machine."
Westhampton Beach scored four runs on one hit in the first inning of Friday's game here, two walks, an infield error, a passed ball, and a hit batsman having contributed to the early lead. "After that," said Brown, "we held them, until the last inning."
Katie Kuneth, a junior, pitched with energy throughout, though she would have to adjust her stride, Brown said, to gain more control. Meanwhile, Caroline DiSunno, Brown's senior number-one, who has been sidelined with a broken finger on her pitching hand, has been cleared to play.