East Hampton Football Makes Jump To Division III

The East Hampton/Pierson/Bridgehampton football team will officially move into Division III next season.

The Bonackers, who combine with student-athletes from Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton to form one squad, had petitioned to remain in Division IV this season, where it had been the previous two years, but the motion was voted down by Section XI — the governing body of high school sports in Suffolk County — multiple times.

“We were staying there while we work toward being more and more competitive,” head coach Joe McKee said. “Now, we’re looking forward to playing in Division III to see what we can do. The kids have gotten much, much, much better, and I feel like even though Division III is a little bit better top to bottom, we’ll be okay.”

East Hampton Athletic Director Joe Vasile-Cozzo had appealed for alternative placement in Division IV, despite having the three districts join forces and their combined enrollment dictated that they play in Division III. Part of that “new team criteria,” as Section XI refers to it, was the team could not compete in the playoffs. Over those two, COVID-19 pandemic-effected seasons the Bonackers went 1-4 and 2-6, respectively.

“I felt Division IV was still a better fit for right now, even with our numbers having rebounded,” Vasile-Cozzo said of the interest in the program and its new placement. “We’re very, very encouraged by what we’ve seen. But even though we have numbers, a lot of our kids don’t have experience. They’re first-time players just learning the sport.”

McKee and volunteer coach Lorenzo Rodriguez started a flag football league five years ago and have seen participation grow exponentially. The head coach said over 150 kids took part in the program last year, the middle school team had more than 50 student-athletes and the junior varsity squad was made up of over 30. Vasile-Cozzo added the varsity team had 25 kids on it last fall.

“It took a while to get those kinds of numbers generated, but it’s exciting,” McKee said. “And I think a lot of those kids at the middle school level started with the flag football team.”

Still, Vasile-Cozzo said he submitted a petition to Section XI early with the hope for another year of development in a smaller division. The Bonackers will go from playing teams like Babylon, Elwood/John Glenn, Hampton Bays and Wyandanch to playing teams like Comsewogue, Islip, Sayville and Westhampton Beach.

The motion was voted on first by the placement committee, which is made up of two athletic directors representing each of the four conferences, which passed it, 5-3. From there, the four conferences, comprising 14 or 15 athletic directors each, based on enrollment numbers, for a total of 59 representatives, voted against the petition, 30-21. Fifty-one athletic directors happened to be present at the four conference meetings.

East Hampton had the opportunity to ask that the decision be reconsidered, which it did, but the appeals committee, led by a chairperson who is a retired athletic director, and a minimum of three athletic directors usually not directly involved with the situation, defeated the motion 3-0. The chairperson only votes if necessary.

The district appealed again, this time, to Section XI’s Athletic Council, where it was voted down, 9-8. The Athletic Council comprises 35 people, including six members — two male, two female and two administrative representatives per conference — and the 11-member Executive Board. Seventeen of the 24 council members that were present voted. The Executive Board, made up of elected New York State Public High School Athletic Association representatives and superintendents, vote in the event of a tie.

“East Hampton petitioned our placement committee for relief to move to Division IV next season, and this is our process with any decision made by a committee,” Section XI Executive Director Tom Combs said. “East Hampton’s enrollment by itself puts the team in Division III, and when you add Pierson and Bridgehampton, they combined to be the fourth-largest school in Division III.”

Vasile-Cozzo took issue with the fact that there’s more conference representatives for the larger, Class AA and A schools, than the Class B, C and D schools, which he said were more directly impacted by the decision, and voted in favor of the petition during the placement committee vote.

“Conference I and II voted it down, basically, because they have more votes than us. We don’t have the numbers to win that kind of vote,” Vasile-Cozzo said. “The other debt held against us is that we are a ‘bigger school’ compared to the smaller schools. And it seems like we’re bigger than we actually are when we combine with Pierson and Bridgehampton — when we only get a couple of kids from each of those schools — so it’s not a true reflection of our enrollment, if you will.”

East Hampton Trustee Jackie Lowey also took issue with the process, calling it “enlightening, in a really disappointing way,” during an April 12 Board of Education meeting.

“Not being part of it, the decisions, in my opinion, were not in the best interest of our children or of our school, and I found that to be really concerning,” Lowey said. “We worked very hard to rebuild the football program here for many, many years, and this is not going to help in that effort, in my opinion. I think it’s the wrong decision, and I think their process was flawed. In my opinion, they went in there with a decision already made, being, ‘We’re going to keep it the way it always has been,’ and the best interest of children doesn’t matter much.”