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Liam Knight and Daisy Pitches. JACK GRAVES
State qualifiers for the East Hampton varsity girls swim team include Ginger Griffin, Elizabeth Daniels, Heidi and Vanessa Rizzo and Sydney Powers. JACK GRAVES
Having lost only one swimmer to graduation, the YMCA East Hampton RECenter Hurricanes, 116-strong at last count, are in the midst of what seems to be a blockbuster season, though Tom Cohill, the youth swim team’s head coach, said during a poolside conversation the other day, that “while it’s great to win, I want the athletes to work on being competitive and on doing their best.”
Going up against the Cross Island and Patchogue Y teams at the RECenter on November 15, a meet that lasted from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Hurricane competitors, who ranged in age from 5 to 18, topped 54 of the 58 events.
Among the winners that day were Daisy Pitches and Liam Knight, who were to have left on November 20 for the International Surf Rescue Challenge championships in New Zealand. It’s the second year in a row that Knight has represented the United States Lifesaving Association’s U19 team, and the first year for Pitches, who, Cohill said, has already qualified for the Y nationals in the 50, 100, and 200-yard freestyle races, and in the 100 backstroke. On the 15th, she anchored the winning girls 200 freestyle relay, led off the winning 200 medley relay, won the 200 free and won the 100 butterfly. That day, Knight won the boys 100-yard fly, led off the winning 200 free relay, won the 50 free, and was the runner-up to Miles Menu, a teammate of his, in the 200 free.
It was the fourth meet of the season for the Y team, which is pointing toward the state Y meet that’s to be held from March 20-22 at the Nassau County Aquatic Center, and toward the Y nationals that are to be held from March 30 to April 3 at the Greensboro Aquatic Center in Greensboro, North Carolina. Cohill said the boys 200 medley and 200 freestyle relay teams of Knight, Miles Menu, Nick Chavez and Jasiu Gredysa have also qualified for the nationals, with Aidan Menu as an alternate, and that Lizzie Daniels has qualified for the nationals in the 100 and 200 breaststroke.
Cohill’s coaching assistants include Angelika Cruz, Sean Knight, Sean Crowley, Eugene DePasquale, Melissa Flaherty, Diana Winthrop, Sophia Swanson, Ryan Duryea and Hank Oppenheimer, the latter four having formerly competed with the Hurricanes and with East Hampton High School’s boys and girls varsity teams, with which the Hurricanes are closely allied.
The girls varsity’s 200 medley relay team of Vanessa Rizzo (backstroke), Daniels (breaststroke), Ginger Griffin (butterfly) and Heidi Rizzo (freestyle), with Sydney Powers as an alternate, left on Friday for the state public high school association’s meet in Rochester, where Daniels was also to swim in the 100 breaststroke (see separate story). Julia Brierley, a former East Hampton High and Hurricane swimmer, whose father, Craig, and brother, Thomas, coach Bonac’s boys and girls, has been preparing them for state competition.
Getting back to the November 15 meet, the list of winners, as aforesaid, was long, with the following among those figuring prominently: Miles Menu, Vanessa Rizzo, Heidi Rizzo, Nick Chavez, Rex Doerfler, Paul Crills, Maya Saifullah, Aaron O’Shea, Zubair Saifullah, Violet Pitches, Blakely Ball, Ryder Abran, Henry Sullivan, Reagan Taylor, Isabel Jimenez, Raegin Poitras, Juliet Martin, Marlowe Flaherty, George Paleokrassas and Ava Novak.
It’s the biggest YMCA RECenter team he’s overseen to date, said Cohill. Twenty-nine of his charges were to have swum in a distance meet (500 yards and up) at Sachem East High School over the November 22-23 weekend, and 80 of them are to vie with tri-state peers in the three-day YMCA Holiday Invitational meet at Eisenhower Park that’s to begin on December 10.
