In East Hampton High School’s big 1-0 field hockey win on Sept. 10 against the perennial powerhouse Miller Place, three important factors became evident.
First, said Danielle Schuster, who coaches the team along with her sister, Nicole Ficeto, Izzy Briand, a senior goalie, made 12 saves. That’s a big number in terms of field hockey stats, Schuster said. Miller Place did not make it easy.
Second, “We played insane defense,” Schuster said. “It really locked in — they did awesome.” Leaders on that front were the senior trio of Brynley Lys, Hailey Welsch, and Brooke Lavin, who backed up Briand by defending against Miller Place’s 16 penalty corner opportunities. Katie Grande’s goal off an assist from Welsch, a little past the middle of the first quarter, remained the lone score of the game as the defense protected Bonac’s fragile lead.
The third factor influencing the outcome, Schuster said, was the field below their feet.
That’s because the varsity and junior varsity teams are now playing and practicing on the new artificial turf field at Stephen Hand’s Path, officially the Hon. Fred W. Thiele Jr. Recreational Facility. While East Hampton High School does have turf to practice and play on, the field hockey teams often found themselves splitting it with others — and you could see it in their gameplay. “We would have 50 girls practicing on half of a field,” Schuster recalled. “Now we can do full-field practices, and everyone’s getting a lot more true-to-game practice.”
It’s paying off. In the win over Miller Place, Schuster and Ficeto’s team ran the equivalent of 16 sprints of 50 yards each and didn’t show fatigue until after the last buzzer sounded.
“The field has been an amazing addition to our ability to practice and get enough turf time,” Schuster said. “It helped us really grow our game.”
The field’s origin was somewhat controversial. Some in the community lamented the loss of town baseball fields that were razed to make room for the East Hampton Emergency Department on Pantigo Place. The new complex, including two regulation-size artificial turf baseball diamonds in addition to the multipurpose field, benefited from $1.7 million contributed to the project by the Southampton Hospital Foundation in exchange for the lease on the East Hampton Town land on which it built the new medical facility. It also features a basketball court, two volleyball courts, a walking track, and restrooms.
Bonac field hockey isn’t the only East Hampton High program enjoying the new field complex. Don McGovern’s boys soccer team has played games there, too. “The field and atmosphere while training and playing on the new field is awesome,” he wrote in an email to The Star.
For soccer, it’s less about the surface and size of the field than it is about the lights. With teams coming from UpIsland, racing against rush-hour traffic and diminishing daylight, the lights have made an enormous difference. They “allow us to complete our games with teams from western Suffolk,” McGovern said.
Otherwise, in the fall, it eventually gets too dark to finish varsity games or even start a J.V. game. “We played the other evening starting at 5:30 p.m. and the lights came on in the second half and for the overtime period,” McGovern said.
A mile away from the high school, the location does make it a bit harder for student spectators to casually wander over and check out a game, Schuster said. But she and McGovern agreed it’s still close enough to attract the most fervent fans and family members.
Bonac field hockey was to have played a tough contest there against West Islip on Tuesday this week, with others coming up including games on Monday at 3:30 p.m. against Comsewogue and next Thursday at 4:30 p.m. against Southampton, both league matchups.
Other Field Hockey Feats
When Caeleigh Schuster, East Hampton’s wall of a field hockey goalie, transferred on invitation to the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., for her senior season, Izzy Briand volunteered to play in goal. Briand is primarily a softball player but was a starting field hockey defender before taking over for Schuster.
Briand was “amazing on the field, but we needed a goalie and she was like, ‘I want to do it,’ ” Coach Schuster said. “She embraced it. She went to camp this summer and really worked hard.”
Leaving was a hard decision for Caeleigh Schuster, said the coach — who also happens to be Caeleigh’s mom. The Hill School is the top-ranked field hockey program in the nation right now, which will go a long way toward supporting Caeleigh’s goal of making the junior national U.S.A. Field Hockey team.
“It was totally the right decision for her to grow her game,” Danielle Schuster said. “It was an honor for her to be asked [to play at Hill], and it was a testament to all the hard work that she’s put into everything.”
Meanwhile, back at home, the Bonac field hockey team was 3-2 in games through Friday. In addition to their underdog win over Miller Place, Schuster and Ficeto’s team scored a 4-0 win over West Babylon and a 5-0 win over Greenport, both teams that are in rebuilding stages.
A highlight among those contests was Merritt Bistrian Emptage, a freshman call-up from the jayvee team who plays travel ice hockey. She scored her first-ever varsity goal, unassisted on a fast break, against West Babylon. Bistrian Emptage is impressive, with “a lot of athletic potential,” Coach Schuster said, “but the difference in field hockey is you can’t be as physical, so we’re trying to help her rein in some of her very good ice hockey habits that we won’t get away with in field hockey.”
Against Greenport, Briand had a goal and an assist of her own, and Carlie Stuckart, a junior, notched her first-ever varsity goal.
“We’re on the right trajectory,” Schuster said. “They’re working as a team and finally getting the feeling that they like winning. They’ve got the skills — they’ve just got to want it.”
