A Century of Bonac Football To Be Celebrated This Weekend

The story of 100 years of East Hampton football has been passed down through generations — by families with names like Edwards, Conklin, Lester, Bennett, Lynch, King, Schenck and Dayton — most of whom had to answer the same question at their road games.

“What the hell is a Bonacker, anyway?”

The answer — aside from referring to the baymen, fishermen and farmers who settled the area of Springs around Accabonac Harbor — is that a Bonacker grew up in East Hampton and attended its high school, coming from the hamlets of Montauk, Amagansett, Wainscott and Springs, along with East Hampton Village, of course.

East Hampton Town this weekend will celebrate its 375th anniversary, dating back to the early days of English settlers who went on to become the earliest Bonackers. The school’s football team will host Harborfields at 1 p.m. as the culmination of its homecoming celebration, and a 100th anniversary party will be held following the game from 5 to 10 p.m. at The Clubhouse in Wainscott.

“We’d really love to see anyone who was ever involved with the program down at The Clubhouse,” McKee said. “It’s going to be a great time where I’m sure a lot of memories will be shared.”

The Early Years

The first football game ever played by a team from East Hampton High School, according to Norton “Bucket” Daniels, who wrote about “The Early Years” in a journal celebrating 75 years of Bonac football in 1998, was against Riverhead in October 1923, with the “Maroon and Gray,” as the team was first called, losing, 40-0.

The team’s first home game, played in the Herrick Park “Playground,” where all games were played prior to World War II, was a 14-0 loss to Southampton, marking the beginning of a long rivalry between the two South Fork high schools. The head coach was Robert “Pop” Cheney, who coached for three seasons at East Hampton and has since been followed by just 12 other head coaches.

“Football was primarily a running game,“ Daniels wrote about the early days of the game, which had been around for about 50 years prior to its arrival in East Hampton, “as the pigskin was shaped similar to a small watermelon, which made it difficult to throw, especially when it became wet.”

The Maroon and Gray went winless in its first two seasons and won the program’s first-ever game in the fall of 1925, a 38-0 victory over Sag Harbor, according to the history provided by Daniels.

George Kuhn took over as coach in 1926 and won his debut over the Greenport Oystermen, 28-0. It was the only win for East Hampton that season, but the program was clearly making improvements and had become more competitive. The next year, the team won its first four contests, but lost its last three, including against Southampton, which never lost to East Hampton during those first five seasons.

The up-and-down results continued into the tenure of head coach Chester Gottschall, who led the team during the 1928 and 1929 seasons, and under coaches Frank “Sprig” Gardner (1930-1935) and Howard Jones (1939-1941). Southampton, meanwhile, was considered the best team in Suffolk County, if not all of Long Island, and it would take 11 seasons for East Hampton to beat its rival to the west. According to the history provided by Daniels, East Hampton and Southampton met 21 times between 1923 and 1941, with East Hampton winning just twice, in 1933 and 1934.

The 1933 game was played in Herrick Park before “one of the largest crowds ever to assemble at the Playground,” according to Daniels’s history. Mark Ryan and Dave Gilmartin scored touchdowns for the Maroon and Gray in a 12-0 victory, the program’s first ever over Southampton.

East Hampton’s football program was shut down for two years during World War II, and when the team returned in 1944, it was a under a new coach in Sam Meddaugh and under the banner of a new mascot. The Bonackers would play just one season under Meddaugh before embarking on 16 years under Fran Kiernan and another eight under Gary Golden.

A New Era

Following the war, it was as if the football program at East Hampton was brand new once again. Things got off to a rough start in 1944, with Kiernan working as an assistant under Meddaugh that first season, and the Bonackers losing their first game against Smithtown by a huge margin. “The rest of the season didn’t go too well as far as winning, but I could see signs of things to come,” Kiernan wrote in a 75th anniversary journal.

“The highlight for East Hampton football,” during those years, according to Kiernan, “was the undefeated 1952 season,” which, he said, was the only unbeaten, untied season in the history of the program. Standouts, according to Kiernan, were LeRoy and Billy DeBoard, Rich Cooper, Fritz Schenck, Bill Conway, John Tilley, Ed Ecker, Harry O’Rourke, George Cafiso, Jim Clark, Charlie Gould, Fred Yardley, Junior Cafiso and Bob Yardley.

Golden took over as head coach starting with the 1961 season, and according to a history piece written by East Hampton Star sports reporter Jack Graves, Golden compiled a respectable 36-15-7 record during his tenure, which lasted through the 1968 season.

“If you look up at the banners in the high school, you’ll see that we had a string of championships in the early ’60s,” Jim Brooks, one of the first high school kicking specialists on Long Island, said to Graves in his journal piece. “There was a long stretch between the football championship of 1952 and the one we won in ’65. Before Golden came, we were kind of known as the patsies. That changed when he arrived.”

The 1965 team won the league title with a 6-0-1 record and, according to Kiernan, “has to stand out as one of the best in East Hampton football history.” The 1967 team, with a 6-2 record, shared the league title with Southampton and Riverhead.

Billy McDonald, who received a high school All-American honorable mention nod, led the championship teams before going on to play nose guard at Vanderbilt. Graves noted that John Henry Albert, F.J. Kiernan, Steve Cary, Ernie Green, Jim Miller, Ray Bimson, Buddy Webb, Rick Lawler, Milton George and Gary Greene also helped to anchor the team.

And it was the 1967 team that scored what Graves painted as one of the era’s most significant victories, an 18-13 triumph over Southampton that sent the town into a frenzy. “The entire town turned out to welcome the team,” Charlie Whitmore told Graves. “Everything shut down. People were in the streets. They were kissing and hugging the players. It seemed as if the whole town turned out to greet us.”

Bob Budd, who was an assistant coach under both Golden and Rich Cooney, said it was one of the greatest upsets he’d ever been a part of. Southampton was 6-1 going into that game and had a much larger team, physically, than Bonac, Budd said, and had started celebrating the victory well before the game was even played.

As he recalled during an interview in 2017, when he joined his son Eddie in the East Hampton Athletic Wall of Fame, Budd said that when the East Hampton bus arrived in Southampton that day, victory balloons were let go, then, as the East Hampton players were getting dressed in their locker room, a victory cake could be seen rolling into Southampton’s locker room.

East Hampton trailed, 13-12, in the fourth quarter. Southampton had the ball, but Bobby Peters stole the ball away from a Southampton running back, which set up William Myrick to catch the game-winning touchdown pass, and the Bonackers upset the Mariners.

“And I got to say, that was the best piece of cake I ever ate,” Budd chuckled. “Tremendous upset. Coming home on the bus, we got to the East Hampton town line, and the road was lined with cars and trucks honking their horns.”

Joe McKee, the current varsity head football coach, did not play in that ’67 game, but added that the rivalry between East Hampton and Southampton football is one that runs deep. Eventually, in the mid 1980s, the Bank of the Hamptons, under the leadership then of Dick Hoadley, created the Hamptons Cup, played for each season by the two rivals that added so much more to a regular season game.

“Southampton is a school that’s 20 minutes down the road. Both have had a football program for 100 years and it’s really one of the longstanding rivalries from when the programs started until the early 2000s,” McKee said. “Unfortunately, due to the realignment in the county, that rivalry hasn’t really been around. But I would say prior to 2000, it was one of the oldest and biggest rivalries in the state of New York that had some of the most memorable games.”

The Next Generation

Rich Cooney took over the East Hampton program in 1969 and was the Bonackers’ head coach for 16 seasons, including eight straight winning campaigns between 1970 and 1977. Cooney led the Bonackers to a 6-1-1 overall record in 1981, including a Suffolk County Class “B” Championship, with a team that included standouts Ed Budd, Justin Winter, Murry Hanty, Rich Cooney and an excellent offensive line of Rob Greene, Phil Seigal, Jamie Marley, Charlie Ecker, Paul McGowan and a young tight end named Joe McKee, who went on to become the current head coach.

Ted Meyer took over as head coach in 1985, with his league championship team in 1990 standing out. The team was led by a dynamic backfield duo of Kendall Madison and Ernie Vorphal, with quarterback John Barbour and a strong defense led by Scott Loper and Scott Fenelon as linebackers.

Coach David MacGarva took over the program in 1991, and led the Bonackers to a Division III Championship in 1994 with a team led by Robbie Peters, Earl Hopson, Robbie Balnis, R.J. Etzel, Steven Redlus, Troy LaMonda and Louis Carr.

Bill Barbour Jr. coached the team for several years in the early 2000s. After Barbour Jr. stepped down in 2012, after making the playoffs, Steve Redlus took over the program and brought the team back to the postseason, marking the first time since 1995-1996 that the team had made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.

But in 2014, due to poor numbers, East Hampton had to disband its varsity program and go JV only. While Joe McKee came on board in 2015 to steer the ship, the writing was on the wall, so to speak. East Hampton didn’t have a varsity or JV football team in 2017, then went JV only in 2018 and 2019.

“From my aspect of it, growing up as a little kid — I wasn’t born and raised out here, I came here when I was 5 years old — I had a large family, a lot of older brothers, so by the time I became a player, that’s all I was waiting for my whole life,” he explained of his early years in Bonac football. “I loved it. I loved the school atmosphere here and I was fortunate enough in my junior year to have won a county championship.

“I still have strong friendships with all of my teammates. We have a bond of playing football together, which is hard and can be grueling at times. It’s tough, but you know there’s a certain bond that’s stronger in football than any other sport, in my opinion. It’s nice that at 59 years old I still see a lot of my buddies who I played with. It’s still nice to have those strong relationships.”

With no fall season during the COVID-19 pandemic, the county did bring back a shortened football campaign during the spring of 2021. McKee admitted on Monday that if it weren’t for Kevin Bunce Jr., a senior that year who recruited enough players to have a team, that may have been the end of the program altogether.

McKee, though, was steadfast in rebuilding the program from that point forward.

“You can go back, there were times probably in the early ’70s, late ’60s, when numbers here were really low. But you have to remember, this is a small town. That’s what East Hampton Town is,” he explained. “They were never up and running over 30 players on the team. Even during the years we’ve been really good, we had 25, 26, 27 players. We’re a small community out here. I wouldn’t say there was ever a threat of not having a team like eventually what happened, but numbers were never staggering here, that’s for sure.”

Maybe it was that type of mindset that kept McKee fighting for the program during the years the school didn’t have one. Eventually, the Bonackers came back to the varsity ranks in 2021 and have even rejoined Division III, arguably the toughest division in Suffolk County. All the while numbers are progressing each year, thanks in large part, to a burgeoning youth flag football program that has helped spark interest in the sport from a new generation.

McKee said his number one priority when he created the program was “to make football fun again,” but it has also had an impact on helping to revitalize the junior high, JV and varsity teams in East Hampton, leading to a jump in numbers that the district hasn’t seen in some time.

The reengagement with football by the community and student-athletes in the district has paid dividends. The Bonackers finished their third straight season last year competing at the varsity level — their first season back in Division III since 2011 — with a 41-20 win at Eastport-South Manor on October 28, to finish 2-6. The team is 1-2 so far this season with a solid victory over Rocky Point already in hand.

“I think we’re making strides, we’re making progress,” McKee said. “Out of our eight games [last season], we won two, in two we were over-matched, and in the other four we had multiple opportunities to possibly win.”

In addition to the years of playing varsity football and seeing numbers increase, Finn Byrnes became the first Bonac football player since Matt Paul in 2008, who played at Temple University, to play Division I football. He plays at Stony Brook University, and joins the likes of others such as Ernie Vorpahl, who played at Lafayette, and the late Kendall Madison who played at the University of Connecticut.

The success of the flag football program and the way it has helped feed the resurgence of the school program has been a testament to the dedication of McKee, who did not give up on the sport he loves despite knowing it would be an uphill battle to bring the team back to prominence.

“I was determined to give it another try,” McKee said, adding that it was far from a solo effort, but rather a result of the dedication of several people, from assistant coaches to school administrators, who shared his vision and determination and supported the efforts he spearheaded.

“It’s been a work in progress,” McKee said of the program. “I really have to commend the administration at the school by my side all those years when we were JV only. Football is an expensive sport, and at any time they could have pulled the plug. But they stood by me, and I appreciate that very much.

“Ever since the spring of 2021, the program has been on the up and up,” he added. “I think last year we took a big step when we were bumped up to Division III, and numbers were great with over 30 kids on JV, almost 30 on varsity. We’re pretty competitive this year. And I think by the time it’s all said and done this season, we’ll be even better than we were last year.”

All are welcome, including former players, families and fans, at the party at The Clubhouse this Saturday. There is a $40 entry fee that includes one drink and passed appetizers, and there will be arcade games and football activities for children. All who are attending are asked to RSVP with varsity football head coach Joe McKee via email, joemowseh@hotmail.com.