East Hampton Bonackers Open Home Season With Dominant 6-1 Win Over Riverhead

Henry Cooper did not drop a single game. The East Hampton senior swept through his singles match 6-0, 6-0, anchoring a 6-1 Bonackers home-opener victory over Riverhead on March 23 that revealed both the program's firepower and its generational range.

The win stretched across the entire lineup. Freshman Chase Bohnsack, in one of his first competitive high school outings, posted a 6-2, 6-0 singles result, while first doubles partners Griffin Beckmann, a senior, and Harry Schultz, a freshman, combined for a tidy 6-1, 6-1 victory. At third singles, middle schooler Alex Valentine held his nerve to close out the second set in an 8-6 tiebreak, a moment that underscored just how broadly coach Pablo Montesi has cast his roster net.

Not every match was one-sided, and the coaching staff seemed to value that. At second doubles, seniors Joseph Martinez-Garces and Lucas Centalonza split sets before grinding out a 12-10 super tiebreak to secure the point. The team's lone loss came at fourth doubles, where Evan Schaefer and Justin Arias fell in a tight super tiebreak, their first competitive doubles match together. Montesi drew a clear lesson from that result: "At doubles four, Evan [Schaefer] and Justin [Arias] lost in a very close super tiebreak, but it was their first time playing doubles together, and their first match, so they did very well."

Cooper, after going unbroken for two sets, kept the team's expectations calibrated. "We were the better team here, but at the same time this is the first team we've played so we have to play more teams to get an accurate reading of where we're at," he said. "I'm looking forward to later in the season when it starts to get really nice out and everyone is having fun."

Beckmann noted that the result "definitely brought our spirits up" and pointed to team chemistry as a foundation heading into the rest of the spring schedule. He also flagged East Hampton's home courts as a competitive variable worth monitoring: the Hamptons wind is a constant presence, and players who train in those gusts every day build an adaptability that visiting opponents often lack. That familiarity could translate into a meaningful edge when league standings tighten later in the spring.

The Bonackers host Eastport-South Manor on April 14 in their next home match. With Cooper and Beckmann providing senior anchors, Bohnsack and Schultz already contributing at the top of the draw, and Valentine winning points from the middle school ranks, East Hampton enters that match with the kind of lineup depth that makes a 6-1 opening result feel less like a ceiling and more like a baseline.