Scoring in every quarter, the East Hampton High School football team, whose numbers are greater than they have been in a great while, cruised to a 32-8 home-opening victory over Rocky Point Saturday, a win in which the enthusiastic players and fans took delight.
But Joe McKee’s charges were urged in the postgame huddle not to let their high spirits take over entirely. Bonac’s head coach surmised that 20 flags, resulting in penalties against his team, had been thrown that afternoon, some of which erased big gains.
“Just play the game,” he said, adding that with another contest coming up in four days at Hauppauge (a big winner over Amityville Saturday), “you can’t take your foot off the gas pedal.”
“Hauppauge’s no joke,” McKee continued, “but you guys are no joke either. On our last drive, they knew what was coming” — handoffs to Eddie Cobb, the bulldozing fullback — “but they still couldn’t stop us.”
Jaron Greenidge, the varsity’s defensive coordinator (Jason Menu is its line coach), said, “This was an expected victory — you did the job. If you continue to work in practice, we can beat everybody in this division. But remember, this is a team — we’ll only be as strong as the weakest link. So, ask yourself, what can I do to help?”
While Saturday’s was, in McKee’s words, “a total team effort,” Charlie Corwin, Cobb, Jai Feaster, and Alex Davis — the latter two Bridgehampton High School students — were particularly noticeable.
Corwin, the veteran quarterback, rushed for 120 yards on 12 carries, including a rushing touchdown and a passing touchdown, and he also gained 73 yards in the air, completing four of seven passes. Cobb rushed for 92 yards with one touchdown; Feaster had a 35-yard touchdown reception and intercepted two Rocky Point passes. Davis rushed for 85 yards on 10 carries, one of which resulted in a touchdown, and had a pick.
Corwin’s 35-yard strike to Feaster and a subsequent extra-point pass to Jason Lester got things going early in the first quarter. Early in the second, following a shanked Rocky Point punt that gave the home team possession at the visitors’ 22-yard line, the Bonackers made it 14-0 on a six-yard, second-and-goal carry by Corwin.
With four minutes left until the halftime break, Cobb also scored from the 6. With 14 seconds until the break, a seeming second touchdown by him was called back because of a “false start.” The half ended with Corwin narrowly failing to connect with Charles Stern at the back of the end zone.
An interception and runback by Henry Butler at the start of the third quarter was erased by a penalty, and soon after the visitors, who had recovered an onside kick at Bonac’s 45, got on the scoreboard by way of a quarterback sneak from their hosts’ 2-yard line. The extra-point pass was converted.
And that was to be Rocky Point’s high point that hot afternoon, during which the teams took periodic water breaks.
There was more to come as far as East Hampton was concerned, beginning with Davis’s return to the 50 of Rocky Point’s ensuing kickoff. Corwin carried to the 40 on the next play, and with second-and-six from the 36, Davis rushed for another first down at the 29. A plunge by Cobb advanced the ball to the 25, at which point Davis, after sweeping to the left, cut back inside at the 15 and ran the rest of the way for Bonac’s fourth score of the game.
After taking over on downs at midfield when the fourth quarter began, Corwin engineered an eight-play drive during which Cobb carried up the middle six times, the last, from the 2-yard line, into the end zone.
The game ended with East Hampton at the visitors’ 5, where Corwin took a knee and let the clock run out.