A Homecoming Harvest: Wolves Are Sent Packing by Bonac Football

Under an orange thumbnail moon, the East Hampton/Pierson/Bridgehampton football team sent the Wyandanch Wolves packing at the Hon. Fred W. Thiele Jr. Recreational Facility on Stephen Hand’s Path Friday evening before a crowd that swelled to about 1,000 as the 50-10 rout progressed.

Pretty much everyone got in on the act, including Bonac’s subs, who played the entire second half, jubilant flag footballers who flooded onto the field before the game began, the 80-piece band directed by Chris Mandato that at halftime played stirring renditions of “Narco” and “Waka Waka” before Samone Johnson’s cheerleaders performed and the homecoming king, Griffin Beckmann, and queen, Vicky Chen, were crowned.

One could be forgiven for thinking on that mellow night, with students cheering on their peers from the bleachers and with youngsters and parents lining the long stretch of low fences, that nothing could ever go wrong. Certainly nothing went wrong — well, nothing much — on the new town-built, lighted gridiron on which football was being played for the first time.

East Hampton, sticking largely to the run, scored every time it had the ball in the first half, by the end of which it led 50-0, a massive margin that, if not singular, certainly is a rarity in Bonac football annals.

The parade of crowd-pleasing touchdowns and strong point-after kicks by Manny Morales began with Alex Davis’s 15-yard run into the visitors’ end zone two-and-a-half minutes into the contest, and with his three-yard TD plunge three minutes later. Jai Feaster, Davis’s fellow senior running back from Bridgehampton, made it 20-0 by way of a 17-yard score with three minutes yet to go in the first quarter, and a subsequent interception and 30-yard runback by Jake Rivera left the Wolves licking their wounds in a 28-0 hole after the initial 12 minutes of play.

It was more of the same in the second period. Before the first minute ticked off, Jackson Ronick had scored from Wyandanch’s 11-yardline and Cole Dunchick had run the ball in on the extra-point play, upping the margin to 36-0. An Owen Rodgers fumble recovery soon after, at East Hampton’s 30, set up another TD by Ronick, who, having gathered in a second-and-seven pitch from the quarterback, Theo Ball, and having been sprung by Dunchick’s block, sprinted the remaining 67 yards. Morales’s point-after kick was good, making it 43-0, though that point didn’t appear for a while on the scoreboard, leading a spectator to wonder if the scorekeepers were done for the night.

One more touchdown, East Hampton’s seventh of the half, was yet to come, in the form of a three-yard plunge by Davis, who made his return after suffering an injury in the season-opening loss at Eastport-South Manor, with two minutes left until the break. Morales’s kick made it 50-0, and the scoreboard duly noted the fact.

As aforesaid, Joe McKee and his assistants, Jason Menu, Jaron Greenidge, and McKee’s older brother, Kelly, cleared the bench in the second half. Wyandanch finally got on the board in the fourth quarter, a safety, a one-yard TD plunge, and a subsequent two-point run accounting for the Wolves’ 10 points.

Enjoy the moment, Joe McKee was to tell his smiling charges in the post-game huddle — a huddle into which Kelly McKee had leapt — for on the morrow they would have to go to work in earnest again given the fact that stiff tests of their mettle, in the form of home showdowns with Smithtown West, Westhampton Beach and West Islip loomed.

Making the playoffs is the team’s most immediate goal. It did so last year, as the result of a 5-3 record, only to be trampled in the first round by the Half Hollow Hills West Colts, a team the 2-1 Bonackers hobbled, 35-10, on September 20.

Last week marked the homecoming, too, for a popular East Hampton physical therapist, Rob Balnis, a star on the East Hampton team that vied with Comsewogue for a county championship in 1994. Balnis, who also played rugby internationally, suffered a stroke about a month ago, and had been at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in New York City since then. He was at the Stephen Hand’s Path field Friday night with his son, Declan, a running back on Bonac’s junior varsity. A large sign at the intersection of Springs-Fireplace and Three Mile Harbor Roads welcomed him home and wished his Ohio State Buckeyes well.