Coach Is Not Quitting on Season Despite Her Bonac Softball Team's Tough Start

Despite her team being 1-6 through the first half of its League VII schedule, East Hampton softball head coach Annemarie Brown isn’t panicking and isn’t ready to call it quits on the season.

Brown’s Bonackers (1-6 overall) lost their two games last week, an 8-1 decision to Comsewogue on Friday followed by a 12-0 loss to Sayville the following day, both at home. Their only league victory so far came at Rocky Point on April 4.

But as Brown noted after her team’s loss to Comsewogue, there is still a lot of season left, and she’s not kidding. Crossovers against League VIII opponents start this week and run for the next two weeks, followed by the second half of the League VII schedule. Picking up key victories against some of the small schools in League VIII will go a long way in what Brown still thinks is an achievable goal of reaching the postseason.

“I’m not looking at this season that it’s going to be over,” she said on the infield just moments after the final out against Comsewogue last week. “I just told the girls, we haven’t even gotten to our second round yet of playing everybody. We still have a bunch of nonleague games — we have a Hampton Bays nonleague, a Pierson nonleague. We’ve only had one win so far, obviously, but we do play in a competitive league.”

Brown is looking forward to getting her team back at full strength going forward. Senior Caroline DiSunno was expected to be the team’s number one starting pitcher heading into the season, which would have allowed players like junior Katie Kuneth to shore up the defense either at third base or center field. But a finger injury suffered during the winter basketball season has lingered enough to the point where DiSunno hasn’t seen the field yet, forcing Kuneth to do most of the pitching. Brown is hoping DiSunno is back in the circle sooner rather than later, so things can line up a little more effectively for her team.

One thing that disheartened Brown a bit was that a handful of players opted to go on vacation last week during the school’s spring break rather than play in the team’s pair of league games. A few of the absences were expected, with a few girls going on the BuildOn trip to Guatemala, planned a year ago. But some of the absences were unexpected, Brown said, which had a trickle down effect. Brown needed to call up a few freshmen from the junior varsity to have a full team last week — she started six freshmen against Comsewogue — which left the JV team even more shorthanded — to the point where it had to forfeit its game at Comsewogue. The JV team was also dealing with some unexpected absences.

Brown said she’ll be looking for players who are fully committed going forward.

“This [freshmen] group is the one that is starting to be committed … but I need full commitment from all players,” she said. “If I have to scrap right now to get nine or 10 to play, I will. I only had one on the bench today.

“I think I can scratch off some wins with these girls, too,” Brown said of her freshmen group. “These three girls I pulled up yesterday, I told them, you may stay with us and go back down, you may come up and someone else might come back and go down. I don’t care if they’re the best girls out there, if they’re not committed. I will take girls who are committed and I will mold them into a player.”

East Hampton hosted Mount Sinai on Tuesday, is expected to play at Shoreham-Wading River this Thursday at 4 p.m. and will host Hampton Bays this Saturday, April 22, at 10 a.m. before playing Pierson/Bridgehampton at Mashashimuet Park in Sag Harbor this Monday, April 24, at 4 p.m.