Mount Sinai boys basketball's Hunter Seale is Newsday's Athlete of the Week
Hunter Seale of Mount Sinai. Credit: Kelvin Loarca
Mount Sinai senior Hunter Seale became a hero for his boys basketball team when he made a game-saving block with 18 seconds left and his team down two points against Amityville in a Suffolk Class A semifinal. He then scored all nine of his team’s overtime points, finishing with 19, to lift the Mustangs to a win on Feb. 26 over the defending champions.
But his ability to persevere began over a decade earlier. In 2014, a house fire forced the Seale family out of their home and into Hunter’s grandparents' house for around a year.
“Losing the house in the fire, it was definitely a pretty sad moment,” Seale said. “It was definitely rough on my parents, going through that.”
It wouldn’t be all he had to endure. In September 2020, he began complaining of headaches. After numerous unsuccessful emergency room visits, he was taken to a Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. That’s where he learned he had bacterial meningitis and that it had begun to spread to his brain.
Parents Andrew and Jayme Seale were told Hunter could’ve died if he hadn’t received treatment. Hunter’s eye, according to him, had swollen “to the size of a golf ball.” He and his mother were there, isolated due to COVID-19 restrictions, for 10 days.
“It was really scary going from different hospitals, with some of them not even knowing what I have,” Hunter said. “My mom was always there for me . . . I got a lot of messages, people saying they were praying for me, which really felt deep to me.”
Hunter still wears a contact in his left eye as a result of a staph infection. Yet his positive attitude proved true what Andrew Seale said of his son: “You couldn’t take away his spirit.”
“I’m always a positive guy. I’m always laughing, trying to joke around with guys during practice,” Hunter said. “It’s just who I am.”
It’s what Mount Sinai coach Ryan McNeely sees every day.
“He’s one of those guys that can read the room,” McNeely said. “Sometimes when we’re in a bad stretch, and I call a timeout, he’ll come in and say, ‘We’re fine! We’re fine! Sit down and relax.’ He sets the tone for us.”
McNeely first met Hunter during a youth basketball camp he used to run at St. Joseph’s years earlier. He praised his growth from a competitive kid to a natural-born leader.
“I remember when he’d lose a contest, he’d be really down on himself, almost visibly upset,” McNeely said. “I don’t see any of that now. Now, I see a different emotion, where it’s a fiery emotion where it’s like, ‘Let’s pick the guys up, let’s go make a play.’ ”
An honor roll student, Hunter averages 12.2 points per game and 21.5 points across two playoff wins. He is the president of Athletes Helping Athletes' Mount Sinai chapter and mentors other students. Fittingly, he plans to study adolescence education in history and hopes to become an assistant principal on Long Island.
Seale will suit up Saturday against Kings Park to try and lead Mount Sinai to back-to-back county titles. But there’s no doubt in the winning nature of the senior himself and the example he sets for those around him.
Michael Sicoli covers high school sports for Newsday. He graduated from Quinnipiac in 2022 and left with a master’s degree in sports journalism in 2023.
