Two East Hampton seniors will take center stage on June 17, as Mason Miles and Livs Kuplins earn some of the highest honors in Suffolk County athletics. Miles has been named the League V most valuable player in baseball, the first Bonacker to win the award in over 20 years. At the Suffolk County Baseball Coaches Association banquet, Miles will find out if he’s the recipient of the Carl Yastrzemski Award, given to the best baseball player in all of Suffolk County.
“Super pumped for Mason on winning the M.V.P. He’s one of those players who, every time he steps to the plate, you get a chance to watch the ball go a long way,” said Vinny Alversa, the head coach of Bonac baseball. “Mason is incredibly deserving of this award.”
Meanwhile, that same night, Livs Kuplins will play in the National Football Foundation 2026 All-Star Classic N.Y.C. vs. Long Island — a football game that pits the best seniors from the city and the Island against one another in a matchup at Hofstra University.
“They try to create these rivalry games. So last year it was Ohio State versus Michigan, and this year they’re doing Notre Dame versus U.S.C. Long Island is Notre Dame,” Kuplins said. “They basically pick some of the best players. They try to be two deep at every spot, and then we go and we play the city. It should be a great time.”
Kuplins will play for Rob Hoss, the head coach at Sayville, the team that knocked East Hampton out of the playoffs this past fall in the Suffolk County Division III semifinals. Kuplins said there are no hard feelings, and he’s thrilled to have the opportunity to share the field with Hoss.
“After the playoff game when they beat us, he said to me that he knew I was a little hurt, and he knew I was a good player and they tried to avoid me, which was a compliment,” he said. “It’s a great honor. I’m very excited to have the opportunity and put the pads on one more time.”
East Hampton’s head football coach, Joe McKee, said it’s an honor that Kuplins wholeheartedly deserves. “He was definitely one of the top athletes I’ve ever coached. He just has an intuitiveness to him, just a smoothness to him, a competitiveness to him. Super nice kid, but just a real competitor and a heck of an athlete, and he was the straw that stirred the drink for our team this year, for sure.”
It’s a shame that the football game and the baseball banquet are the same night. Kuplins will have to skip the dinner, where he’ll also receive all-league honors, along with Miles, Trevor Meehan, and Finn O’Rourke. O’Rourke and Meehan plan to leave early to catch some of the football game.
“We’re all going to go [to the awards]. They’re going to leave a little early to catch Livs’s game, but I’ll stick it out to see if I can bring back the Yastrzemski Award for us,” Miles said.
Miles is most definitely a contender, with strong numbers this season: a .410 batting average, six home runs, 31 runs batted in, 18 bases on balls (nine of them intentional walks), 17 runs, and an .803 slugging percentage.
“He’s an extremely hard worker, a great teammate, and he put up some amazing numbers this season,” Alversa said. “There are so many good players that are up for the Yaz, but he definitely has a shot.”
