On this day seven years ago, the football team turned away Hampton Bays in a 42-30 victory under the Buyers’ Park lights.

The turning point came when the Bears scored two touchdowns in a span of nine seconds to turn a 14-14 deadlock into a 28-14 lead just before halftime.

Here is Brett Mauser’s story originally posted in the East Hampton Press.

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Hampton Bays head coach Mike Oestreicher knows that somewhere down the road, there will very well be thrills of victory, complete with clutch plays followed by Gatorade baths. There could be playoff games and playoff wins. Unfortunately, to get to that promised land, the Baymen have to endure their lumps and losses, bringing home a fair share of black and blues.

Friday night will be filed as one of those learning experiences, however. When Stony Brook quarterback Cory Gilbert wasn’t finding his receivers underneath, he found them deep. When they weren’t open down the sidelines, they were catching passes on shorter routes and breaking tackles. Hampton Bays hung around and hung around, yet in the end, the Baymen had no answer for a more polished Bear squad, which pulled away for a 42-30 victory in front of its home crowd.

“Right now we’re not good enough to win a varsity football game; that’s why we’re 0-4,” Oestreicher said. “We haven’t had a raw deal, we haven’t had a bad call or a freak event. We’ve just been outplayed by everybody we played, and you know what? That’s OK. We were there [Friday]. We had a shot, absolutely, but when push came to shove, we played a team with a lot of juniors and seniors who, as the game wore on, started making plays against kids that weren’t prepared to stop them.”

Stony Brook (2-2 Division IV) steadily moved the ball all evening, yet the back breaker came during a 15-second span just before halftime. With less than a minute left in the second quarter, Hampton Bays (0-4) could very well have run out the clock and gone into the break tied at 14-14. Instead, the Baymen tried to seize the moment late but the move backfired. Gilbert picked off a deep pass from Aaron Besch, who took the ball on a reverse, and returned it 28 yards to the HB 30. One play later, the Bears were in the end zone as Gilbert hit Ed Dawson deep for their second connection of the night.

Stony Brook then tried and succeeded with an onside kick, a la Greenport’s attempt in the first half two weeks prior, only deeper downfield. It worked, and one play later, Gilbert found Brian Harrington down the left sideline for six more points. In just nine seconds of game time, Hampton Bays went from tied to down two touchdowns. To make matters worse, Stony Brook started the second half with the ball and needed just two plays to cover 67 yards, the latter a 45-yard Gilbert-to-Harrington strike that put the hosts up 35-14 with less than two minutes gone in the second half.

Dawson hauled in the first of four Gilbert TD passes midway through the first quarter, a 39-yard catch-and-run, but Hampton Bays was able to respond later in the quarter. The Baymen would have been happy with an extra point yet instead received a bonus. A botched snap left holder Aaron Besch under fire by an incoming Stony Brook stampede; still, he kept his cool and lobbed the ball to Oskar Ramirez for the two-point conversion and an 8-6 lead with 11:15 to go.

Stony Brook again went ahead on a short touchdown run by Kenny Ruddick. Hampton Bays, which has shown to be resilient in its first four games, exhibited that asset again. The Bears recovered an onside kick (the first of two) and threatened to punch the ball in for another score. Instead, Anthony Rodriguez jarred the ball loose from Ruddick, and Ramirez jumped on it at the Hampton Bays 40-yard line. One play later, some trickery from the Baymen caught Stony Brook off guard. King zipped a lateral pass to Leite near the left sideline, and Leite flung a perfect spiral to John Havens, who had slipped behind the Bear secondary. Once he hauled it in, Havens went untouched to the end zone, a 60-yard connection.

The Bears’ attack put up some remarkable numbers. Gilbert finished the evening 18-for-27 for 322 yards and four touchdowns. Two of those scores went to Dawson, who hauled in 11 passes for 176 yards; he also ran the ball in from 10 yards out for Stony Brook’s final points in the fourth quarter. Brian Harrington added 70 yards receiving on two catches, both of which went for touchdowns.

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