East Hampton/Pierson Girls Lacrosse Moves Up to Division I/Class A

It’s a bit of a new dawn for the East Hampton/Pierson girls lacrosse program.

After playing in Division II/Class B for the past several seasons, the Bonackers have made the jump up to Division I/Class A due to larger enrollment numbers. The program, which is also combined with Bridgehampton and Ross, though neither of those schools currently have a player on the varsity roster, is playing this season under an enrollment number of 1,165 — all schools with over 1,000 students are considered a large school.

Couple that with the fact that the program graduated a dozen girls after last season, so the team is going to look different in many different ways.

“We do have a good amount back, but we also have a lot of newcomers who are stepping right onto the field with not a lot of experience, so we’re going to take things game by game,” head coach Joe DiGirolomo said. “We also have low numbers this year, so not a lot of subs. We are expecting a couple of them to come back soon. There are some girls who don’t have enough practices yet, but we’ll be working with about five subs, I think, total.”

East Hampton senior midfielder Ava Tintle, entering her fifth year on varsity and set to play at Washington and Lee University next year, is the focal point of the Bonac offense this season. After surpassing the 100-point milestone last season as a junior, Tintle is set to surpass the 100-goal milestone as soon as this week. She scored seven goals in a 19-18 season-opening victory over Hampton Bays on March 25, and then another goal in a 14-4 loss to Hauppauge on Thursday, March 27, so Tintle has 97 goals into this week’s games.

Pierson senior midfielder Cali Wilson is going to be right there alongside Tintle, and so will be Pierson sophomore Lola Eldridge. DiGirolomo is expecting big things from both Sag Harbor players this season. The Bonackers started off the season working without their expected starting goalie, Pierson junior Hannah Salazar Sierra, who DiGirolomo said will return to the team in about a week.

The rest of the roster includes: East Hampton senior Lila Gabbard (defense), Pierson seniors Bella Eldridge (defense), Ani Bedini (defense) and Angely Chaves (attack), East Hampton juniors Carly Fromm (attack), Marykate Hosey (attack), Cassie Ceva (attack), Katie Grande (attack), Hailey Welsch (midfield/defense), Sophia Sanchez-Cleary (attack) and Caeleigh Schuster (goalie), Pierson juniors Abby Perello (attack), Clio Halweil (attack) and Lily Caplin (defense), East Hampton sophomore Samantha Rodriguez, East Hampton freshman Bella O’Connor (attack) and East Hampton eighth-grader Lorelei Briand (attack/defense).

Moving up to Division I means playing large schools such as Patchogue-Medford, Sachem East and North, Middle Country, Longwood and Brentwood. While the larger schools pose different issues than that of the smaller schools, such as large rosters, historically the teams have been a bit a weaker, and so DiGirolomo is hoping to take advantage of that this season.

“We’re going to be playing teams that we feel like we can compete against,” he said. “Our goal this year is to try to go .500. It would give us a shot,” at making the playoffs, he added. “We’re playing a lot of new schools that we don’t really know. At the same time they don’t know us, so it could work to our advantage.”

Bonac is scheduled to play at Pat-Med this Saturday, April 5, at 10 a.m. and then will play at Sachem North on Wednesday, April 9, at 4 p.m.