After Clinching Postseason Berth On Senior Night, East Hampton Girls Volleyball Falls To ESM In Playoff Match

East Hampton girls volleyball head coach Summer Foley was clear following her team’s 3-0 loss at Eastport-South Manor in a Suffolk County Class A outbracket match on Monday evening, October 25: She thought her team could have beaten the host Sharks. She said she was still proud of her team, nonetheless.

ESM won in sets of 25-23, 25-18, 25-18 and faced top-seeded Sayville on Wednesday in the county quarterfinals.

“I’m just proud that they made it this far,” Foley, a first-year head coach, said after the match. “We had a few injuries this year that held us back, and typical things that happen during the season, but I’m really proud of this bunch. And I’m graduating eight seniors, that’s mostly who was playing today, too, so I was happy that they were able to come to at least one round of playoffs and show their stuff a little bit. It’s always hard when you go away to schools, obviously, the crowd and all that, but we held our own for a good while.

“Do I think we could have won? Absolutely. But I’m just proud, at least we did compete. We competed as much as we could have.”

The Bonackers trailed the Sharks by as many as five points for much of the first game on Monday night, but as they’ve shown throughout the season and in their most recent matches, they were not going to go down easy. A service ace by senior Brylinn Bushman pulled East Hampton within three at 24-21, then following an unforced error by ESM, a shared block by seniors Maddy Brown and Faith Fenelon made it a one-point game at 24-23. But an unforced error by the Bonackers ended the comeback attempt, allowing the Sharks to win 25-23.

East Hampton took an early lead in game two, but that was erased by some strong serving by ESM.

“Just the little things, we get down on ourselves,” Foley explained as her team’s issues on Monday. “Next year, when we come back they’ll find that mental toughness. That’s what its about. They have the talent, they have the skill, they just need the mental toughness now.”

With eight seniors expected to graduate this June, including Brown, Bushman, Fenelon (11 assists), Nora Conlon, Julia Erickson, Sorrel Miller, Julianne Murray (five kills) and Brooke Wittmer (12 digs), Foley said the reason for keeping 16 girls this season, a few more than usual, was to try and offset those losses for next season when there will be seven seniors on the team — current juniors who gained valuable experience this season.

“I’m not too concerned about the rebuild, but we are definitely losing some really good players,” she said. “My two captains, Faith Fenelon and Brooke Wittmer, my setter and libero, so that's going to be a heavy, heavy loss, but I’m still exited about next year’s team. I think that I have a good handle on the future of girls coming up.”

Foley said she enjoyed her first full season as head coach of the program after being an assistant to Alex Choi the past few years. The two swapped positions this season.

“It was a little nerve-wracking in the beginning,” Foley admitted. “I think I got my feet under me by the end of the season, but I’m happy that Alex was here to help me. He’s always a good support. It’s nice having a guy in the gym hit at the girls — he's strong because he played in high school. He’s helped me tremendously, but it was definitely a little nerve-wracking. Varsity and JV, it’s different, but I played for East Hampton and I played under [Kathy McGeehan]. I think she taught me a lot of fundamentals and things that help me keep my bearing a little bit. I'm excited about next year.”

East Hampton ended its two-year postseason absence thanks to a thrilling 3-1 victory at home over Mount Sinai on October 20.

After winning the first game rather easily, 25-16, the Bonackers dropped the second set to the Mustangs, 25-21, to knot the match up at 1-1. East Hampton came back to win the third set, 25-15, but found itself trailing nearly by double digits midway through the fourth set, only to rally and win it, 25-22.

Wittmer, who is one of just a few remaining girls on the team from the last time it reached the playoffs in 2019, and one of eight seniors honored prior to the match, said that she knew things were going to go one of two ways — it was either going to be her final match of her high school career or it wasn’t. She was confident and determined it was going to be the latter.

“I knew it was not going to be my last game,” she said. “It was probably one of the best games that our team has ever played. We really pulled back. It was probably one of the biggest games we ever had — we never pulled back from that far. We were down 10 points, maybe? And we pulled it back, but I think … we really clicked tonight and it worked out.”

Foley said things started off well with the home crowd on hand energizing her team. But then her players got a little complacent and “lax,” thinking they were just going to roll to a victory. To their credit, though, the Bonackers responded well in the third game and then really showed their head coach something in that come-from-behind victory in the fourth.

“Sometimes, my team, it takes a lot for them to come back from that much of a drop, but they pulled it together,” she said. “I talked to them during one of our timeouts and I was just like, ‘Guys, show me you can do this. I know you can. I've seen it in practice. I've seen it in other games before. You got this.’ And we chugged away, chipped each point off … I’m really proud of them.

“Our defense was amazing tonight,” Foley continued. “Our serve/receive was amazing, my setting was great. We had a few, you know, hitting errors, just trying to get the ball on the court, not playing smart when we had to hit, not looking for those open spots just trying to smack it as hard as we can. But we got together, we got the train moving and, you know, they pulled it off.”

With reporting from Michael Heller.