East Hampton Athletic Hall Of Fame Inducts Its 2021 Class

After a year off due to the pandemic, the East Hampton Athletic Hall of Fame committee got back to work, inducting several former players and teams on Saturday as part of homecoming weekend.

The class of 2021 included athletes Dickinson Baker (1966), Thomas McGintee (1997), Matthew Rubenstein (2004), coach Frank “Sprig” Gardner and the 2009 girls volleyball and 1966 wrestling teams.

After short opening statements by East Hampton Athletic Director Joe Vasile-Cozzo and East Hampton Athletic Hall of Fame Committee President Richard Schneider, Baker was the first to be officially inducted.

Baker was inducted for his numerous achievements while attending East Hampton High School, including helping the 1965-1966 basketball team go undefeated in league play before placing third in Suffolk County. He also played number one on the championship golf team for four years and was the top starting pitcher on the baseball team that also won a championship.

Baker also taught and coached at the Amagansett School, where he started the Amagansett Badminton Club, which enjoyed its 40th year. He is one of three generations now in East Hampton’s Hall of Fame, joining his son John Baker, who was inducted a few years back as part of the 1991 baseball team, and his mother Eleanor Dickinson Baker.

McGintee, who could not attend the ceremony due to a coaching commitment with his daughter’s soccer team, sent in a video message and was represented by his family, including his mother Dolores and father Bill, who accepted his plaque on his behalf. McGintee was a multi-sport All-League and All-County athlete who played volleyball, basketball, indoor track and his main sport, baseball, which he went on to play collegiately at Division I Davidson College.

“I never thought I would play volleyball,” he said in his video message. “I thought football or soccer would jeopardize my body with my focus on baseball. A few concussions from diving in the stands, a couple sprained ankles from landing on people’s feet, I realized I was doing it because I loved the sport.”

He added that he joined winter track to get into shape for baseball, but because of his experience with that he was able to run a few marathons. But baseball was McGintee’s true passion.

“Vinny Alversa, he and I played months worth of Wiffle ball in his backyard. Our love of the game never went away for the two of us. A special thank you to him as well. You have a special coach there, hope you hang on to him.”

Rubenstein is the first East Hampton athlete ever to earn All-American honors as a stout tennis player. He led the tennis team to its first ever undefeated season in 2003 while finishing second in the state his senior year. He also achieved the number one USTA ranking in the Eastern Region in 2004 and received All-Conference honors in basketball and cross country.

Gardner was a well known wrestling coach throughout the country, but especially on Long Island where many tournaments, just like in East Hampton, are named after him. Known as the father of New York State wrestling, Gardner was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1986, posthumously 11 years after his death — he died on his birthday, April 8, 1975.

Gardner came out to East Hampton after two very successful decades of coaching at Mepham High School in Nassau County. During his time there, his teams competed in 304 dual meets or tournaments and only 10 times did his teams not place first, two of which were ties. Gardner also served in World War II as a lieutenant commander on an aircraft carrier, wrote a book about wrestling skills and was once on the cover of Life magazine for his coaching acumen.

“I wish that he would be here today,” said Jim Stewart, longtime East Hampton wrestling coach and a protégé of Gardner. “He would get a real kick out of it. He had a way with words and a magnetic personality. We learned a lot more than just wrestling. His sense of humor, he’d have us laughing while doing his drills and we’d be sweating and enjoying every minute of it. Very stiff and very sore the next day, but would always come back for more.”

Only 12 years removed from its dream run in 2009, the majority of the girls volleyball team was in attendance for its induction on Saturday morning. The team included Mia Boleis, Kirsten Brierley, Samantha Dombkowski, current varsity head coach Summer Foley, Rachel Haab, Megan Hess, Meredith Janis, Julia Lee, Melanie Mackin, Myra O’Neal, Raya O’Neal, Sarah Phillipbar, Shaina Preiss, Shannon Sheehan, Calli Stavola, Kelsi Thorsen, current junior varsity head coach Kim Valverde, and assistant coaches Courtney Wingate and Sara Topping and head coach Kathy McGeehan.

Both Wingate and Topping, who had played in the mid-1990s before joining McGeehan as assistant coaches, both said the 2009 team was so deep that its reserves could have been starters on nearly any other high school team and would have pushed for a county title itself, making for some memorable practices.

“This season was extraordinary. These girls — these crazy talented and fun and now beautiful women — went further in their volleyball season than any other girls volleyball had been before you. You made us all so dang proud, and to date no one has surpassed you,” Wingate said.

McGeehan could not make it due to a coaching commitment to a volleyball team in Rhode Island but, like McGintee, she sent a video message. She said that the team actually began years before 2009 when the players were younger in Springs, Montauk and East Hampton schools. Eventually they all came together to have an undefeated league season dropping only three sets before defeating Westhampton Beach in the county semifinals and then Eastport-South Manor for the county championship.

It was in the Long Island Championship where the team almost met its demise, falling behind to Wantagh 0-2, but in what McGeehan called “the greatest comeback in East Hampton girls volleyball history,” it stormed back to win 3-2 and thus earning the program’s first ever Long Island title and trip to the New York State Final Four.

“The 2009 girls will always be my greatest of all time,” McGeehan said.

Last but not least to be inducted was the 1966 wrestling team. The team included Thomas Bahns (98 pounds), Don Schulte (106 pounds), David Hamlin (115 pounds), Pat Ryan (123 pounds), Roy Cary (130 pounds), John Henry Albert (136 pounds), Bill Sullivan (135 pounds), Kent Metz (141 pounds), Robert Sucsy (148 pounds), John Geehreng (157 pounds), William McDonald (166 pounds), Stephen Cary (183 pounds), heavyweight Jim Miller, assistant coach Bill Barnett and head coach Gary Golden. Ryan, Albert, Metz, McDonald and Miller were all posthumously inducted.

The 1966 Bonac wrestling team outscored its opponents, 293-77, and had wrestlers in 10 of the 12 final bouts of the league championships that year at Longwood High School.