East Hampton High’s baseball team remained in the county’s AA tournament by virtue of a 15-4 shellacking of Rocky Point here Saturday after having lost 7-6 at Eastport-South Manor, the undefeated top seed, the day before.
Thus, the fourth-seeded Bonackers faced the eighth-seeded team, Half Hollow Hills West, here on Memorial Day to determine which of the 2-1 teams would advance in the double elimination tourney. The Bonackers wound up winning Monday’s game 2-1 thanks to Victoreddy Arguero’s walk-off hit to left field that scored Hudson Meyer in the bottom of the seventh inning.
In other playoff action, the high school’s eighth-seeded softball team was bageled 18-0 by the top seed, East Islip, in its first game, and was eliminated as the result of a 4-1 loss at Rocky Point Friday. The Ross School boys tennis team was to have played Bayport-Blue Point for the county’s small schools championship Tuesday. And C.J. Echavarria, in the 100-meter high hurdles, and Greylynn Guyer, a senior in the 2,000-meter steeplechase, set school records at the girls freshman-sophomore meet on May 19.
The baseball team began the postseason with a well-pitched 2-0 win over Smithtown West, the fifth seed, here on May 20. Finn O’Rourke went all the way, giving up three hits and striking out nine, a total that caused the visitors’ coach to shake his head afterward as he reviewed the scorebook.
O’Rourke struck out the side in the first inning. His opposite number, Brady Austin, struggled a bit in the home half, but got out of it without any damage as Arguero, with runners on first and second and two out, lofted a 3-2 pitch that was caught in left field.
And so it went until the bottom of the third, when, with two outs, Mason Miles, Bonac’s best hitter, drove an Austin delivery to the base of the fence in left field for a double. The visitors’ coach then had Carter Dickinson intentionally walked to get to Arguero, but the gambit failed: Arguero doubled up the middle, putting East Hampton on the board.
Smithtown West had runners on second and third with two outs in the top of the fifth, but a short-to-first groundout ended the threat. East Hampton made it 2-0 in the bottom half. Tyler Hansen, the team’s leadoff hitter, drew a walk, after which Hudson Meyer advanced him with a nicely placed bunt between the pitcher and
first baseman. That brought up Miles, who promptly drove in Hansen with a base hit through the left side of the infield.
And that was to be it scoring-wise for East Hampton that day. Meanwhile, O’Rourke continued to pitch effectively. A 6-4-3 double play and a strikeout spelled finis for the Bulls in their last at-bat.
Of Friday’s narrow loss at Eastport-South Manor, Vinny Alversa, Bonac’s coach, said, “We beat ourselves — five errors and two balk calls on Trevor [Meehan] at critical moments that I didn’t agree with. But the fact was we beat ourselves. Eastport played better than we did.”
Saturday’s game began with Rocky Point in the lead at 2-0, but then came the big, beautiful fourth inning during which the Bonackers scored 13 runs, all with two outs, to put the Eagles away. Those with hits in that frame were Liam Cashin, Livs Kuplins, Tyler Hansen (the winning pitcher), Miles, Arguero, Meehan, Hudson Beckmann, and Dickinson. Miles’s two-run double and three-run triple, Arguero’s two-run double, and Meehan’s two-run single were the big blows.
