Rocky Point Celebrates with Spring Festival

The sun made brief and sporadic appearances in the mostly overcast sky Saturday afternoon as celebrated its first ever Spring Festival, a showcase that involved many of the school’s sports programs.

Besides watching one of the five varsity games the Eagles hosted on this day, community members had a chance to patronize booths selling memorabilia such as sweatshirts and t-shirts, flowers and candy and refreshments. There were games for the children, including a radar gun to test your arm strength and a toilet paper toss for the little ones. All in all the day was about members of the town coming together and showing pride for their community.

“The hope is that this will continue to grow and in years to come this whole parking lot will be filled with booths and maybe even rides or things like that to make it a true carnival type atmosphere,” Rocky Point Athletic Director Amy Agnesini said.

Volunteers from the community set up shop early in the day and helped keep things running smoothly. There were members of many of the school’s booster clubs – including the general athletic, baseball and cheerleading clubs – trying to raise money for their programs, Agnesini said

“Any time community and families get together you consider it a success,” she said.

The main attractions were the five varsity games that the Eagles hosted throughout the day. Starting at 10 a.m., the boys lacrosse team picking up its first victory of the season and ending well after 4 p.m. when the softball team finished up its game against Sayville.

“Fall sports has homecoming and spring sports really doesn’t have anything so we wanted to make sure that spring sports were showcased as well,” Agnesini said.

Here’s a look at some of the results of the varsity games:

Boys Lacrosse vs. Hauppauge:

The boys lacrosse team picked up its first win of the season after a back and forth tussle with Hauppauge. Junior Nick Loscalzo ripped a shot from the middle of the field with 37 seconds left that gave the Eagles the 9-8 victory.

“It feels great, it feels really great,” head coach Mike Bowler said. “We’ve had a couple of opportunities where we should have come out on top and we didn’t. The kids played really hard today and we put it together offensively and defensively.”

Loscalzo echoed his coaches sentiments.

“It felt great,” he said. “We should have been winning earlier but we finally came through with the win."

Girls Lacrosse vs. Hauppauge:

Although the game was relatively even for the first ten minutes, Hauppauge pulled away in the first half en route to a 16-5 victory that keeps them undefeated on the season.

Caitlin Gargan paced the Rocky Point offense, scoring three goals and assisting on another. Coach Fucich was not pleased with her team's overall effort after the game but praised Gargan.

“(She) played 110 percent from end to end for all 50 minutes,” Fucich said. “She put the effort in.”

The loss drops the Eagles to 5-5 on the season. They play at Kings Park on Monday.

Baseball vs. Westhampton:

Westhampton starter Brett Pisaneschi hurled a complete game striking out five and drove in three runs himself as the varsity baseball team fell, 9-3

The Eagles got off to a quick start, jumping ahead 2-0 after one inning. But the lead quickly evaporated and the Eagles found themselves down 4-2 in the top of the second with more trouble looming. Starting pitcher Tyler Piccolo minimized the damage by striking out the last two batters of the inning but in the end it was not enough.

Softball:

The softball team’s luck was no better. After the start of its game was delayed nearly two hours due to extra innings in the JV contest, the Eagles were no hit by Sayville junior Merissa Selts in a 1-0 loss.

Selts also drove in the only run of the game as Rocky Point’s Annie Kennedy took the hard-luck loss.