The Newest Member Of The 2,000-Point Club, Alexis Fotopoulos

Former Hampton Bays girls varsity head coach Pat McGunnigle remembers his first interaction with Alexis Fotopoulos. Years before he became head coach, he was sitting in the stands, watching a girls varsity basketball game when an energetic fifth-grader caught his attention."Down in the front row near the court was this little peanut with a basketball as big as her head, she was so intently involved in the game, almost like she wanted to be a part of it," the now retired coach said. "Even at that age she had that spirit, that desire, and that’s when I first noticed her. At that age her problem was that she was too small, but she could shoot like crazy."Two years later, running the girls basketball program at Hampton Bays, McGunnigle made what was then an unprecedented decision to call up not just one seventh-grade player to varsity but two, in Fotopoulos and Hannah Reed, who are now seniors on the team. It's a decision that McGunnigle said he didn't hesitate to make back then, and one he certainly doesn't regret now.Fotopoulos joined the prestigious 2,000-point club last week after scoring 46 points in a home victory over Miller Place on Thursday, January 21. She reached the plateau on a free throw with 6:30 remaining in the game, at which point play was stopped and Fotopoulos was congratulated by her current head coach, John Paga, along with her teammates and eventually her parents, Andy and Helen, who are both teachers in the Hampton Bays School District. Fotopoulos became the 21st high school girls basketball player on Long Island to join the 2,000-point club and the first since Bellport's Arella Guirantes joined last season. Earlier this season on December 3, Fotopoulos became the all-time leading scorer at Hampton Bays in a 33-point effort during a 78-22 rout at home over Mercy, giving her 1,717 career points and surpassing Andrea Dwyer’s 27-year record of 1,716 career points."This is a huge accomplishment for any player that plays basketball. Only 20 other girls have reached this milestone so we're very excited," Hampton Bays Athletic Director Drew Walker said. "We're happy for her. Her commitment and dedication to the program here and her playing the game of basketball has been outstanding. She put in a lot of time and effort into the game that she loves to reach this accomplishment. We're very proud of the way she's handled herself and the way she's competed."Though it's a very rare accomplishment, McGunnigle was not at all surprised that his former protege reached the 2,000-point mark. Watching an old tape from that seventh-grade season, he saw Reed grab a rebound, Fotopoulos running down the court calling for the ball, Reed throwing a baseball-like pass to Fotopoulos, who scored on a driving layup. "I just shook my head," he said. "The two of them possess such great talent. "[Fotopoulos] is such a good shooter, and she had six years to do it, it didn’t surprise me she was going to score 2,000 points," McGunnigle continued. "It's in her genes, with her dad being such a great athlete himself. But you have to want to be great, you need to put in the time, and Alexis is always playing, always traveling, and to sacrifice the time and money that her family did for her ... the reward was a full scholarship to Adelphi."Last week's game against Miller Place was impressive in more ways than one for the Adelphi-bound senior. Fotopoulos scored 19 of her 46 points in the third quarter alone, and she sunk six 3-pointers to go along with 10 rebounds, eight steals and four assists. The 46 points are her second-highest total in a game; she scored 50 points in a victory over Southampton on December 16, 2014.Questions will always come up—is Fotopoulos the best girls basketball ever to come through Hampton Bays? All agree that different generations and different eras make it hard to come up with a definitive answer. But her current coaches in Paga and Greg Flynn, her AAU coach with the Long Island Lightning, who is also the girls varsity head coach at Lindenhurst, don't think it's a tough question to answer: Alexis Fotopoulos is the best player ever at Hampton Bays. And possibly the best ever on the East End.Flynn has coached some of the most recent top East End players from Southampton's Kesi Goree and Paris Hodges to East Hampton's Kaelyn Ward, and according to Flynn, Fotopoulos probably tops all of them. On Flynn's Long Island Lightning team, he currently carries seven players who received full scholarships to play in college, and Fotopoulos is the leading scorer on his team, and one of the better defenders as well. Her sophomore season on the Lightning, Fotopoulos made 115 three pointers in 40 games. "I think she's one of the best East End players ever, so she's definitely the best Hampton Bays player ever, for sure," Flynn said. "Not only because of the points, but because she's done it all against some of the best in country. We've been all over the place and she's taken on each challenge. She's a special talent."To put her scoring 2,000 points in perspective, only 20 kids have accomplished that feat in the 50 years of Long Island basketball," he added. "With 600 kids playing a season for 50 years, less than one-tenth of the kids who have played the game have done it, so it is an enormous accomplishment."Paga puts Fotopoulos in high regard because of her intangibles. Sure she can score, he says, but she's also leading the team this season in rebounds and assists. Plus, he adds, what 17-year-old girl will go scout games with her head coach either after practice or on the weekends? "She's like having an assistant coach," Paga said. "I've only been coaching for two years, she's been on the AAU circuit for six years, she knows all of these girls. She's certainly active in our game plan and she deserves everything she gets. She's a great kid and I was just glad I could be a part of it."