East Hampton Field Hockey Suffers Back-To-Back Overtime Losses, But Dragone Is Not Worried

A pair of overtime losses last week may define the season for the East Hampton field hockey team. First-year head coach Dana Dragone is hoping it’s for the better.

After suffering a 2-1 overtime loss at currently undefeated Miller Place on September 29, the Bonackers returned home this past Friday to host Comsewogue, where they suffered a 3-2 loss in overtime. The back-to-back losses, which dropped East Hampton to 4-4 on the season, came after the team won three straight.

Dragone made it a point after Friday’s loss to say she is not at all upset about the losses. In fact, she said if her team keeps playing the way it has been, it’ll be just fine.

“You can’t be mad at them. They showed that they wanted it, they definitely wanted it more than the other team. It just happens,” she said. “I’m very proud of them. They’re playing very well. They show up to every game.

“Today we were a little bit flat in the beginning, which I think really killed us, but if they show up how they showed up to Miller Place, we’re going to win the rest of our games. It’s just their mental game at this point. Their skills are there, they’re a very good team. We have a lot of really good girls.”

Friday’s home match against Comsewogue got off to a bit of an odd start when a Warrior sent a shot on goal that East Hampton eighth-grade goalie Caleigh Schuster appeared to just let in. Well, that’s because she did.

Apparently, the ball struck an East Hampton defender’s stick, and as per rules, a shot cannot go off a defending team’s stick and go directly into the cage. What Schuster did is exactly what she was taught to do, Dragone said. The officials simply didn’t see the deflection and allowed the goal, giving Comsewogue a very early 1-0 lead just 37 seconds in.

“Obviously, it’s jumbled in there, can’t always see, but when your goalie is letting it in, it should be pretty obvious that the other team didn’t hit it in,” Dragone explained. “But it is what it is. It kind of threw us off a bit.”

But not for too long.

About a minute later, East Hampton earned a corner. Sophomore Melina Sarlo sent in the ball from atop the circle and junior Toby Allen deflected it in, and just like that the game was tied back up at 1-1. Then, about five minutes later, sophomore Emma McGrory scored on a breakaway to give the Bonackers a 2-1 lead.

After three goals in the game’s first seven minutes or so, the game went scoreless until the final few minutes of the first half. Meghan Gunning tied the game for Comsewogue with 1:16 remaining in the second quarter, just a few minutes after Schuster had made a big save on a breakaway, resulting in a Comsewogue player being hurt on the play and having to miss the rest of the game.

Although both teams had scoring chances throughout the second half, neither team was able to capitalize, so the game went into overtime, which features seven vs. seven, which includes the two goalies. Such a format opens up the field tremendously, which can lead to some odd-man breaks, or even straight up breakaways, and that’s exactly what happened.

Comsewogue all of a sudden found itself with three players bearing down on Schuster, who came out of her goal to meet the players. Schuster got a little piece of Gunning’s shot, but it trickled through and into the cage to give the Warriors the walk-off 3-2 victory.

Comsewogue led East Hampton 13-10 in corners and the Warriors outshot the Bonackers, 23-11. Schuster made 20 saves in goal for East Hampton. Dragone called her young goalie, in her first year on varsity, the team’s rock on defense.

East Hampton has seemed to carry things over from the shortened spring season in April when it reached the postseason. In between then and the start of this season, Nicole Ficeto had stepped down as head varsity coach, which could have led to the team taking a step back with a sudden change at the top. But Dragone said that her time as JV coach with many of the players on varsity now has certainly helped and gave all the players the credit for keeping the program on the right path.

“I’ve gone with most of these girls the past two years. Now they’re moving up with me, so that transition wasn’t too bad,” she said. “I’ve pretty much coached all of them except for like three of them before, but it is a new team. We had a lot of juniors who came up. That whole dynamic is a little bit different, but I think the girls are handling it well. They seem to be showing that they’re still dedicated and still want to play, even if it’s not for coach Ficeto it’s for me.”

East Hampton played a few away matches at Greenport/Southold and Eastport-South Manor on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively, before hosting East Islip next Wednesday, October 13, at 4 p.m.