Girls Basketball Team Falls to Walt Whitman

In what is a rebuilding year, as nine talented players graduated in 2019, the Connetquot High School girls basketball team is braced for a tough season but eager to make their mark on the court. The team’s Jan. 11 home game against Walt Whitman tested the girls from the opening tip. Undefeated conference rival Walt Whitman used its size, experience and depth to take an early lead, and made it challenging for the T-Birds to catch up.

Whitman improved their league II record to 5-0 with a 54-17 win. Connetquot coaches Charlie Hafner and Sal Piscitelli were proud of the fact that their players did not quit and kept playing hard until the final buzzer. Connetquot’s girls basketball team continues to improve and will certainly surprise opponents before the season is over. Katelynn Marx led the home team with six points.

Boys Track Breaks Records

Last weekend, members of the boys track team competed in the Molloy-Stanner Games at the Armory in New York City. They ran in the 4x400m relay with a time of 3:28.91, which broke the school record of 3:32.00 and is the 3rd fastest time in the county. The standard mark to compete at Nationals is 3:28.00 so the boys are less than a second away from possibly competing at the national level.

In pole vault, there are three vaulters in the top 7 in the county; Mike Domozych is ranked 2nd, Micah Cooper is 5th, and Justin Miele is ranked 7th. Dom Katrivanos time of 1:25.75 in the 600m places him 4th in the county. Jeremy Bertolet is currently 5th in the county in triple jump with a jump of 42'10". With Leagues, Counties and State Qualifiers coming up, the team hopes to improve on their record and make it to Nationals!

Bowling Team Defeats Patchogue-Medford

Connetquot High School Bowling coach Nick Sturtz and his talented T-Birds met with their Patchogue-Medford opponents on Jan. 15 and came home with a 3-0 win. Connetquot’s Anna Polcini shot a 258 in the first game of a 687 series, and Kevin Wilk shot a 255 in the third game of a 681 series.
Connetquot improves to 6-5 in Suffolk league II, with a shot at the Suffolk County playoffs as the season winds down.

Varsity Wrestling Team Soars to 11-1 vs. Walt Whitman

As an appropriate way to celebrate Connetquot Wrestling’s “Senior Night,” the T-Birds defeated visiting Walt Whitman by a score of 51-23, and improved to 11-1 overall, and 5-1 in Suffolk conference play.

For Connetquot, Steve Wilkinson defeated Carlos Alfaro Orte; Dalton Otto defeated Juan Mata Mata Flores; Colby Frunzi over Angel Catalan; Ion Boboc over Kelvin Sanchez Torres; James Deluca defeated Liam Villani; Scott Gifford over Pedro Benitez; Eddie Stepanek over Saul Ulloa and Miguel Lozano over Nicholas Campanelli. The Connetquot community celebrated the careers of this year’s graduating seniors and thanked them for their leadership and dedication to the program.

On Jan. 8, Connetquot High School hosted its second annual career fair featuring representatives from 20 different companies and organizations who set up informational stations in the gymnasium.

Through visiting each station, students learned about a diverse array of post-secondary careers and internship placements, as well as how to pursue these opportunities. The district thanks all those who spent the morning awakening students to the possibilities of their futures.

In November, seniors Bipro Das and Melissa Oz conducted scientific research at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s National Synchrotron Light Source II. Through X-ray diffraction studies, they investigated the binding of the TrmD protein from Mycobacterium abscessus with its ligand, S-Adenosyl-l-homocsyteine. The data that Bipro and Melissa collected indicates a possible novel structure, which they will be presenting at the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair on Feb. 5, and could one day help scientists develop the next generation of antibiotics.