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The six East Hampton girls cross country runners this season include Laura Martinez, Heidi Jimenez, Danette Gonzalez, Cali Jordan, Olivia Chapman and Madison Giraldo. JACK GRAVES
Kevin Barry will have five runners on the East Hampton High boys cross country team this fall who have broken five minutes in the mile, and the team of 15 will be rather deep, although relatively young.
There are only six on the girls squad coached by Diane O’Donnell, “but don’t forget,” she said at a September 3 practice, “we only had six when we went to the states in 2019.”
Although the girls didn’t make much noise last year, O’Donnell noted that a one-point loss to Rocky Point had kept her team from competing in the county championships at Sunken Meadow State Park in Kings Park. The boys did make it, finishing ninth among Class B entries.
Barry said he was “pretty sure we’ll do better this year. We’re off to a pretty big start — everyone’s been turning up for the workouts the past two weeks. They’ve been fantastic — their work ethic is really good … it’s a tough league, but if we can get by Harborfields and Rocky Point, that would set up a showdown with Sayville for the league championship on October 7.”
Both teams made their debuts versus Harborfields peers at the high school course on Tuesday, results of which occurred too late to appear in this week’s edition of The Press.
The boys’ senior co-captains, Liam Knight and Max Bellenoue, are four-year varsity veterans. They, Sean Perez, a first-year senior, and two sophomores, Watts Comly-Bolick and Jasper Samuelson, broke five in the mile last spring. Barry said he hopes to get them all running under 18:30 on the Meadow’s hilly 5K course come November.
The coach said his sixth and seventh runners ought to be Andrew Perez and Alistair Ramsey, both juniors, “and then we’ve got some ninth-graders Nick Finazzo coached at the middle school who want to challenge the older guys,” a group that includes Carson Diamond, Chase Bohnsack, Jay Barrera, Zimmerman Levy and Justin Peters.
Knight, Finn Peterson, a sophomore, Comly-Bolick, Diamond, Levy and Bohnsack all participated in the Great Bonac 5K in Springs on Labor Day. Knight was the runner-up, in 18:32.94. Comly-Bolick was fourth in 20:13.15.
“I really like this group,” Barry said, “but we can’t afford injuries — we’re not that deep.”
As for the girls, Laura Martinez, a junior, will be the top runner.
“We’ve got no seniors, and we’ve got a couple of injuries at the moment, though we should have a decent season,” O’Donnell said, adding that her lineup would be rounded out by returning sophomores Heidi Jimenez and Danette Gonzalez, Cali Jordan, a sophomore who ran cross country at the middle school but played tennis last fall, Olivia Chapman, a first-year junior, and Madison Giraldo, a ninth grade transfer from Our Lady of the Hamptons School in Southampton.
Martinez placed 32nd in last year’s county meet at the Meadow, in 22 minutes and change. O’Donnell expects her to be faster this time around. Twenty-two minutes for the 5K — “a good time” — was the state-qualifier cut-off, she added.
“It would be nice if we could make the counties as a team — I think we can if we do the work,” O’Donnell added.
Back to the boys, Barry said the 3:55 mile Ryan Fowkes — who was on East Hampton’s county-championship teams in 2015 and 2017 — ran recently in New Jersey “was a huge breakthrough. He’d been stuck at 4:01, 4:04 … dropping six seconds was huge. He deserves every accolade he gets … nobody from here has run faster. The couple of times I saw him at the high school track this summer I paced him on a bike! He’s one of the best milers in the country. I’m happy he kept on going. The Olympic Trials are in a couple of years.”
