Sports Notebook: Bears' Playoff Run Ends; Eighth Grader Finishes Strong in Wrestling

After ripping through league play with an 11-1 record and winning the league, county, and Long Island championships, the Stony Brook School girls' basketball team finally met its match in Haldane, falling by a score of 34-23 in the New York State final eight last week.

Senior Brannon Burke, a 1,000 point career scorer at Stony Brook, led the offensive charge with 18 points.

“We played well enough defensively to win,” Stony Brook head coach Amy Helm said. “If you told me going into that we’d hold Haldane to 10 points at the half and 34 for the whole game I’d say we win that game. Offensively we had a rough time executing.”

Stony Brook played a defensive brand of basketball all year long and prided itself on holding its opponents offense in check. The game against Haldane was no different, and Helm said she was also pleased with the way her team controlled the boards at both ends.

The loss in the state playoffs didn’t put a damper on a successful season for Stony Brook. Led by seniors Burke, Jessica Winston, Natalie Istrati and Danielle Pappas, Stony Brook finished the year with a 15-7 overall record. Burke led the team averaging 17 points and nine rebounds per game.

The team's goals included holding opponents to a certain number of points on the defensive end. “It put us in a good place to win, but we just couldn’t finish it on the other end,” Helm said.

Ward Melville’s Piccininni Shines at States

Ward Melville’s Nick Piccininni, an eighth grader wrestling in the 96-pound weight class, placed third in New York State at the 2011 state wrestling championships in Albany. Piccininni’s only loss came to eventual state champion Kyle Kelly in the semi-finals.

“He’s the hardest worker we have in the room,” Ward Melville wrestling coach Kurt Ferraro said. “He’s very strong for an eighth grader. He’s a good technician and he’s very polished. He just loves the sport and wrestles as much as he can wrestle.”

Piccininni placed first in league as well as Suffolk County and according to Ferraro finished the season with a 44-1 overall record.

“This wasn’t a fluke,” Ferraro said. “It was something that he deserved and earned and worked for.”

Piccininni still has a lot of work to do during his high school career in order to rank with some of the best ever on Long Island but he is off to a very strong start.

“It only gets tougher from here,” Ferraro said. “He has a chance of wrestling more upperclassmen next year than this year but he’s aware of that and he seems to be ready to meet that challenge.”

Stony Brook’s Khoren Lawson Impresses at New Balance Indoor Nationals

Another Stony Brook athlete, Khoren Lawson, put up an impressive showing at the national championships held in New York City recently.

Lawson set a school record, according to the Stony Brook Bears athletics blog, with a jump of 44’3.25” in the triple jump, which was enough to place him fourth overall.

Lawson also qualified for the 60-meters final by running a 7.11 in the preliminaries, finishing sixth out of 28 competitors. He ran a 7.16 in the final to place seventh.