The 10 most memorable scholastic sports events that were highlights of P.C./B.B. winter season
March 14, 2024 at 1:05 a.m.
During the local scholastic sports winter season, the schedule brimmed over with stirringly thrilling performances and many moments to remember at both Port Chester and Blind Brook on the high school level.
Here are 10 of the most memorable winter season happenings with more athletic accomplishments waiting to happen now that the spring sports season has started. Official practices got underway at both schools this past Monday (3/11).
1. RAM POINT MACHINE: Guillermo (Memo) Zabala started the season by hitting two late threes to beat Tarrytown 47-40, scored 25 in the second game, a 67-32 loss to Ossining, and went on to become the first Ram basketball player in Port Chester history to score more than 1,000 career points in just two seasons. Along the way, Zabala, who came to Port Chester from the Dominican Republic for his last two years of high school, scored a school record 60 points in a home loss to Lincoln, hit for 45 in an away loss to the same team a few days later, went over the 1,000-point mark with 19 against Fox Lane away and wound down his career with 19 in a season finale home loss to Horace Greeley. He was named to the All-Section and All-League teams, the only Ram to receive those honors. And the ball he used in his final game as a Ram was inscribed with that grand point total and placed in the Port Chester Wall of Fame alongside the 1,000-point game ball inscribed with Lady Ram Kayleigh Heckel's name as the only other Port Chester player to ever hit the 1,000-point career mark.
Among those winning post-season basketball awards was Blind Brook’s Noah Brookman who made the All-Conference and All-League teams.Courtesy of Anna Vnenchak
2. KK B.B. WUNDERKIND: Lady Trojans sophomore hoops sensation Kendall Konigsberg was named the Lower Hudson Valley Basketball Player of the Week, made the All-Section and All-League teams, and made her grandparents extra proud. Especially after Kendall really stepped up during the Homecoming game that honored the Lady Trojans in general for 50 years of competitive basketball and her grandparents, Donny and Jenny, in particular for being longtime Blind Brook fans. Kendall scored 28 points and had 10 rebounds during that final home regular season 58-35 win over Pleasantville, a game that will be hard to beat in familial and Blind Brook lore.
3. HOOP-DI-DO: While you could count the number of Rams basketball season wins on the fingers of one hand and still have fingers left over, both Blind Brook Trojans and Lady Trojans hoops teams finished with identical 13-8 records, both lost to Westlake in the playoffs, and both scored multiple post-season All-Star team selections: Eli Zimmerman and Noah Bookman made the All-Conference team as well as the All-League team, Kyra Mak made the All-League team along with Konigsberg and Bailey Estep and Tyler Taerstein received All-League Honorable Mention. Estep may have made the season's most dramatic shot when he hit a driving layup with five seconds left to beat Carmel 58-56 in the playoff quarterfinals. And Zimmerman and Bookman, both team captains, made various other All-Star teams during the two tournaments the Trojans won. Zimmerman, for example, was named the MVP of Port Chester's Louie Larizza Memorial Tournament as well as the North Salem Tournament while Bookman was named to the All-Tournament Teams alongside him.
4. STILL KICKING: The announcement came late yet early in winter and well after the Fall soccer season ended, but Blind Brook's Nico Palacios and Port Chester's Ramaul Morgan received Honorable Mention on the LoHud Soccer All-Stars comprised of the best players in Westchester and the Lower Hudson Valley. Both were named All-Section and All-League earlier, but better late than never.
5. ROCK & ROLLERS: Port Chester's wrestling team Big 5 became part of the first wave of local grapplers to ever compete in a tournament filled with 13 different weight class categories in the Sectional Wrestling Championships at the storied Westchester County Center in White Plains, the local version of Madison Square Garden. Laila Builes (101 pounds), Erik Coyt (108), Eduar Polanco (124), Nick Pereira (138) and Jaden Barbour (215) had to wrestle their way through the Divisional Qualifiers to get there—and if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. Builes made it the hard way. Because Laila, an eighth grader as well as an international age and weight group jiu jitsu champion, wrestled against the boys. And the kid did all right with great things expected from her before she graduates, maybe even the first state championship in school history.
6. ARMS & THE MAN: Trojans ace pitcher Andrew (The Arm) Rogovic became the only Blind Brook or Port Chester baseball player to sign an ultra-competitive Division One college athletic scholarship commitment when he signed with Northeastern on National Commitment Signing Day. And no wonder Northeastern wants him. Rogovic is coming off a season where he was named the All-League and All-Section Pitcher of the Year after he led Westchester with 115 strikeouts in 52 and two-thirds innings pitched with an earned run average of 0.78 and two playoff shutouts including a masterpiece against Pawling when he struck out 19 of 21 batters for the league champion Trojans.
7. MAKING A SPLASH: Rams sophomore Santiago Marquez broke the school's 500-meter swimming record set by Mario Flores in 2018 (6:53.10) by almost 40 seconds first time out in a season-opening 48-42 loss to Harrison and then broke his own record by five seconds in the Conference Championships in Mount Vernon when he clocked 5:59.32. However, Santiago may not come out for the swim team next year because he is even a better runner than swimmer, the only Ram to make the All-League cross-country team. And even though he is already the best Rams swimmer in history, he thinks he may have a better shot at a college athletic scholarship as a long-distance runner because he is already a triathlon standout and has run marathons in his native Venezuela.
8. AND THAT AIN'T ALL: Marquez, a former ocean swimmer and mountain bike rider in his old country, excels in multiple swim strokes, from the backstroke and breaststroke to the butterfly as well as freestyle, and was one of the first four Ram swimmers to ever be named as among the area's best swimmers to watch in Westchester and the lower Hudson Valley by Lohud. The rest of that Ram top aquatic quartet includes tri-captains Miguel Infante-Rojas and Matt Palmer and sophomore Tiernan McLoughlin. His kid sister McKayla, a precocious eighth-grader, led the Lady Rams basketball team in scoring (including a season high 35 points in a single game while playing point guard), quarterbacks the Port Chester Middle School football team, on which she is the only girl, and is one of Port Chester's best up-and-coming lacrosse players.
Lady Trojans sophomore Kendall Konigsberg was named the Lower Hudson Valley Basketball Player of the Week and made the All-Section and All-League teams for her outstanding play throughout the season.By File Photo
9. ICY RAMS & TROJANS: The league champion Rye Town-Harrison Trojans ice hockey season may have ended with a loss to Clarkstown in the semi-finals at Playland, but they couldn't have gotten that far without a strong assist from some very good Port Chester and Blind Brook skaters including such hot shot Trojans as freshman Nico Corvalan and Jackson Scala, senior Jared Rosen and standout junior goalie CJ Stumpf who had a season high 40 saves in a win against New Rochelle and 20 against Cortlandt before the Titans lost to Clarkstown in the semis. The top Ram contributors included the Villanova brothers, Billy and Bobby, and Messier Mollica, and if you have to ask what kind of name Messier is, you don’t know hockey because Mark Messier was an all-time great for the Rangers and, oh Canada, Edmonton and Vancouver.
10. ON THE RUN: The Track & Field Lady Rams did all the Port Chester medal-winning in the indoor League championships at The Armory in New York City while the Rams were shut out. The most exciting race for the locals may well have been the fastest, the 4x200-meter relay, with Port Chester's fleet foursome, Casey Schultz, Juliana Castillo and sisters Alexandra and Liz Cruz right in the thick of it with Liz kicking it in and catching the White Plains anchor at the tape for the bronze medal. Castillo also took a bronze in the broad jump while Chenoa Marquez won a bronze in the 1,500 meters, the metric equivalent of the mile run.
11. HIP, HIP HOORAY: Okay, the outset of this story said it was going to be about the 10 most memorable local winter sports moments, and most aficionados don't think cheerleading is a sport, but during a winter when there wasn't much else to cheer about in Port Chester head coach John Gonzalez's athletic, acrobatic and beautifully choreographed coed cheerleaders wheeled and dealed, twirled, tumbled, lifted and rah rahed as they gave Port Chester something to cheer about because they won local and regional championships to qualify for the National Cheerleading Association Championships at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. They came home as the nation's 12th-ranked team. And that is something to cheer about, so here's a shout out for the team that revolves around Johnny Borzoni, a triple threat athlete (football, baseball, ice hockey), Adrian Osorio, Christian Flores, Fiona Lovallo and Morgan Mollica, pivotal members of a group ensemble that includes captains Mayelin Gonzalez, Allison Recinos and Alegra Burke along with Valeryn Dera, Angela Esquivil, Olivia Tejada, Mariana Gomez, Kate Richardson, Charlotte Burke, Myisha Cruz, Natalie Ceruzzi, Elisabeth Magana, Mia Pagnotta and Amy Navis.
That cheer leads us into the present when the schedule says the spring sports season is underway with the first official practices that began this past Monday, but the calendar and the temperature said otherwise with who knows what kind of crazy March weather tomorrow will bring. But snow, wind, rain, chill, sun or not, spring forward because there's no telling what will happen next.
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