Warriors show improvement, but fall in season closer

WEBUTUCK — The last time the varsity boys basketball team squared off against the Liberty Indians, the 65-36 loss wasn’t pretty.

Last Friday was the Warriors’ final game of a winless season. Although they walked away with a 55-84 loss, there was more to the game than the final score, coach Pete Stefonowich said, and there was a huge improvement from the last Webutuck-Liberty matchup.

Webutuck’s strongest stretches were  in the first and final quarters. After Liberty opened the first two minutes of the game with a 9-2 run, Webutuck fought back to bring the score to 9-11 over the next two minutes.

But spurts of effective defense were all Webutuck could manage against a team with more depth in its bench and significant height advantages. The first quarter ended with a 19-9 Liberty lead, and the rest of the first half wasn’t much better, with the Warriors heading into the locker room for halftime down 39-19.

The second half saw Webutuck coming out with little to lose, and their field goal percentage skyrocketed. They initially did little to quell Liberty’s offensive consistency but instead started lighting up the scoreboard themselves. Third-quarter scoring was tied 18 all, even if Webutuck were still down by their 20-point halftime deficit.

The beginning of the fourth quarter was even better, with the Warriors eating away at the Indians’ lead with a 10-2 run to bring the score to 47-59 with less than six minutes left in the game.

But that was as close as the Webutuck underdogs ever got. Liberty found their offense again while Webutuck struggled to maintain their high shooting percentage and found their fuel reserves running on empty. The Warriors’ fate was sealed after a controversial call led directly to a Liberty alley-oop dunk that was quickly followed by another jam that deflated Webutuck’s chances of a come-from-behind victory to finish the season.

Warrior scoring was led by Matt Matteo with 22, Justin Lind with 19 and Pat McCaffrey and Andrew Schultz with five points each.

“The depth definitely hurts us,� said Stefonowich after the game, but noted the difference in tone between this game and the last time Webutuck played Liberty.

“The last time we were down something like 30 by the end of the first quarter,� he remembered. “But we competed tonight. They’re a good team, and well coached, and we contained them most of the time.�

This was the last game for seniors Lind, McCaffrey and Andrew Milano, but Stefonowich, who was in his first year coaching, said his team “went out with a bang.�

The coach said he is planning to return next year and is working on a spring basketball program that will help condition interested Webutuck athletes (Stefonowich said 25 have signed up so far) and work on building up the school’s basketball program.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less