You Can Come Back Again

The East Hampton football team, for a lack of better words, was dead in the water seven years ago.

Despite making the playoffs in the two years prior, participation numbers had dwindled so much for the program that it had just a junior varsity team in 2014. The lowest point in the program came in 2017, when the Bonackers didn’t field a varsity or JV team at all.

But in 2018 and 2019, East Hampton had brought its JV programs back. With no fall season in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Suffolk County did bring back a shortened football campaign during the spring of 2021, during which Bonac returned to the varsity scene — thanks in large part to Joe McKee’s flag football idea, which recreated a new interest in the sport for new generations of Bonackers.

Since then, the program has been on the rise, all the while competing in the county’s most competitive division, Division III.

Things came full circle for McKee and his rejuvenated program this past weekend, when it finished the regular season 5-3 after its lopsided victory over Eastport-South Manor on Saturday, and with it the seventh seed in the upcoming postseason.

It cannot be overstated how important and impressive this is and how much McKee and his coaching staff of Jaron Greenidge, Jason Menu and coaches before them, such as Lorenzo Rodriguez, should be lauded for their efforts.

I was in the Southampton cafeteria and reported on the conversations that were had years back, when McKee and East Hampton approached Southampton, more or less hat in hand, in combining their efforts to create one team. That particular year, East Hampton was facing a dire situation in which its numbers were dipping severely, whereas Southampton, with a strong class of seniors, was expecting a successful season.

Even in the face of adversity, McKee made it clear that night that it was now or never, that combining efforts was a one-time offer, and that he would put aside years of a longtime rivalry between the two schools, which he enthralled in as a player himself decades before, and treat all of the kids, Southampton and otherwise, like they were Bonackers.

The Southampton community declined the offer — and it was almost like McKee took it as a challenge, one that he has finally championed this season.

And, again, make no mistake, win or lose at Half Hollow Hills West this Saturday afternoon, he is a champion — for East Hampton, its football program and the community at large — proven when just a few weeks ago he was honored with a proclamation by East Hampton Village and its mayor, Jerry Larsen.

East Hampton’s resurgence is a prime example of how programs that once thought themselves done for can be resurrected. As low as the Southampton football team might be feeling right now, after being forced to forfeit its second game in a row and its season finale this past Friday, no less due to not having enough players, keep going. There are prime examples all around of you programs coming back — even in your own school.

Jorgine Buccio thankfully reminded me this past weekend, when her Southampton girls volleyball team defeated Babylon to reach the Suffolk County Class B Championship, that she brought the program back 20 years ago. It took a lot of time and the complete dedication of a handful of players to get that program back on track, but it did happen.

And while volleyball is a completely different sport from football, the Mariners need look no farther than to their neighbors to the west in Hampton Bays, which just finished off a 3-5 season in its first varsity football season in two years.

Make no mistake, McKee and his stable of coaches and volunteers worked tirelessly to make sure football stayed in their community. It’s going to take the same to keep it going in places like Southampton.