Thursday, April 4

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, Miller Place at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, April 5

BOYS TENNIS, Commack at East Hampton, mandatory nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, South Fork Islanders at Lindenhurst, 5 p.m.

Saturday, April 6

GIRLS LACROSSE, Port Jefferson at East Hampton, 9 a.m.

Monday, April 8

SOFTBALL, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TRACK, Wyandanch at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS TRACK, East Hampton at Wyandanch, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Center Moriches, 5:45 p.m.

Tuesday, April 9

BOYS TENNIS, Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, Westhampton Beach at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, South Fork Islanders at Copiague, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, April 10

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Bellport, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

Having been moved up a division in interscholastic youth rugby, the Section XI Warriors, an 18-and-under side coached by two former Montauk Rugby Club players, Kevin Bunce of East Hampton and by Mike Jablonski of Mattituck, won its first game of the spring season on March 10 at Iona College, defeating the Blackthorn R.F.C.’s interscholastic side 17-5.

“It was a big win for us — I don’t think Blackthorn was expecting it,” Bunce said during a recent conversation at The Star. “They were the runners-up in their division in Pennsylvania last year. They scored first. It was 5-0 at the half, but then we went at them and beat ’em pretty good.”

The Warriors scored three unanswered tries in the second half, two by Bunce’s son, Kevin Jr., and one by Dylan Meloni of Mount Sinai. 

“It was freezing that day and wet, so it was a forwards’ game,” the elder Bunce continued. “We’d send our big guys, Nick Lavelle and Rob Lechner of Mattituck, ahead with the ball and then work from there.”

Lavelle, who is a lineman on East Hampton High’s football team and one of the Warriors’ most imposing players, was delighted when Bunce and Jablonski told him he’d be running with the ball a lot that day. “We told Nick, ‘Every time you get it you run till the end, then get it out to your teammates behind you.’ You could hear the bells go off — ding, ding, ding. ‘You mean I get to run, man?’ He must have run it 10 times in that game. You know, when your big guy runs with the ball, the other team sends its biggest guy at you — the big rams come up, boom, boom. Nick ran him over. Pretty soon, they’re sending another guy when he had the ball.”

“We pushed hard in the second half,” said Bunce. “We were good in all the phases . . . just as it should be. We’re trying to get our guys to work in groups of three and to use any of the four options they have — switching, for instance, off of moving picks, if you will, or crashing ahead with guys trailing behind you. . . . Our goal is to get them to make their own decisions, to make it their game.”

There are 25 on the older Warriors’ roster at the moment, a good number. Practices are held at Veterans Memorial Park off Route 25 in Calverton on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, beginning at 5:30, and on Sunday mornings, from 10 a.m. to 12:30.

There were, said Bunce, players — a good number of them wrestlers — from East Hampton, Sag Harbor (namely the Brindle twins, Hudson and Cooper), Mattituck (where Jablonski is a high school teacher), Shoreham-Wading River, Mount Sinai, and Babylon. Sebastian Sanchez and Nick Lombardo are other players from East Hampton.

“Our younger sides, the under-12s and the under-14s, are doing well too. Simon Young and Rob Fioresi, Maureen Rutkowski’s brother, do the under-14s, the Babylon Southside Hookers. The under-12 team plays at Heritage Park in Mount Sinai. I’m hoping we’ll get some young East Hamptoners to start going up there. They went 4-0 last year.”

In general, Bunce said he thought rugby was catching on in this country, whose national 7s side, he said, is the world’s best, and whose 15s side is at present ranked 12th worldwide. The sport could serve as an entree to a college scholarship, and to international play, he added.

Bunce’s son, Kevin Jr., one of the Warriors’ backs, recently attended a “player identification” camp near Phoenix, and, as a result, is to play games for one of USA Rugby’s developmental sides in Ireland this June.

A former protégé of his, Brandon Johnson, also of East Hampton, “played in the Las Vegas 7s tournament for Starz Rugby of New Zealand. He’s been on their team a few times. He’s right there. He’s just got to make the effort. He should be playing for Old Blue, in the city. If he does that he’ll be on a pro roster in the next two years. He’s really knocking on the door.”

The coach at Mount Saint Mary’s, in Maryland, may oversee a two-day high-performance camp here this summer, “in late June sometime. It will be free . . . it should be free. Up the Island, travel team coaches tell you if you give them $6,000 a year they’ll guarantee your kid gets a college scholarship, in softball, soccer, lacrosse, whatever. That’s $40,000 in seven years. You pay to play up there. Here, it’s $120 to join our club, and if you can’t afford it we pick it up.”

The Warriors’ sponsors, among them Charlie and Sons Landscaping, a business owned by Charlie Whitmore, founder of the Montauk Rugby Club, Bistrian Sand and Gravel (having stepped in as a sponsor following the deaths of Ben and Bonnie Krupinski last summer), Scott and Holly Rubenstein of East Hampton Indoor Tennis, and two former Montauk players, Garth Wakeford and Dan Voorhees, had been generous, Bunce said.

As for concussions, “they can happen in rugby, but our ‘ear to rear’ or ‘cheek to cheek’ tackling, keeping the head out, rather than just diving in, has proved to be a safer way of tackling, and we always warm up using balance exercises developed at the University of Bath in England that enable players to maintain their centers of gravity while they’re moving, which helps prevent injury. . . .”

The Warriors have three home games coming up, at Mattituck High School, with Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School of Brooklyn, on Sunday, April 7, with Rockaway on April 14, and with St. Anthony’s of South Huntington on April 28. The games begin at noon, the coach said.

Win or lose, things are expected to go better this year on East Hampton High School’s baseball and softball diamonds.

Annemarie Cangiolosi Brown, the new head softball coach, and her assistant (and first cousin), Melanie Anderson, said they were pleased with what they’d seen following a scrimmage here with Pierson High on March 19.

By the same token, Vinny Alversa, the baseball team’s coach, said following an 11-3 nonleague loss here to Mattituck on Friday — a game that the Bonackers led 3-1 going into the fourth inning — that “if we can continue to put the ball in play, and if our pitching is consistent, we should be able to play with anybody.”

“Mattituck had 12 hits, we had 10,” Alversa said, “but we left 13 on base, so, obviously, we need to get more timely hits.”

Pitching-wise, it could have been better. Kurt Matthews, a senior and, along with Austin Brown and James Foster, one of the team’s captains, got through two bases-loaded jams without incident in the early going, but things began to unravel in the fourth after Matthews loaded the bases again. Jackson Baris came on in relief, but he had control problems too.

Alversa and Henry Meyer, once teammates, and pitchers, on the Islandwide semipro-champion East End Tigers, can be expected to help Matthews, who at times has been spot-on, and Baris, whose delivery is smooth, brush up on their mechanics. They’re both hard-throwing. “You want them to be pitchers rather than throwers,” Alversa said, adding that in a summer league game Matthews had totaled only 103 pitches in 10 innings. On Friday, in four innings, he totaled 92. 

“For half the game, we did quite well,” the coach said. “Now, we’ve just got to play the full seven.”

It should be added that East Hampton turned a 5-4-3 double play that day, an around-the-horn D.P., the ball going from Elian Abreu, who started at third base, to Brown, to Colin Ruddy, the tall freshman who’s playing first base, prompting this writer to say he hadn’t seen that in a while, a long while.

Abreu, moreover, drove in all of East Hampton’s runs with opposite-field line drives. More of his hitters should do likewise, said Alversa, when this writer noted he’d seen a lot of them waving at curves out of the strike zone.

Further concerning the buoyant dugout mood, Alversa said a lot of it was owing to his captains, the aforementioned Matthews, Brown, and Foster, who was to have returned to the lineup this week after rehabbing a broken hand the past four or so months.

“The good news,” said Alversa, “is that our first league game isn’t until April 9. . . . If we play with the intensity we had in the first four innings the other day, and if we throw strikes, we’ll be all right,” the coach said.

How the softball team will do this season remains to be seen, but so far, so good. “They hit well and ran the bases aggressively in the scrimmage with Pierson,” Cangiolosi Brown said during a telephone conversation Sunday.

First off, Sophia Swanson, the junior pitcher, and Katrina Osterberg, the sophomore catcher, couldn’t have better coaching than they’ll get from Brown, whose pitching records still stand at the State University at Cortland, and from Anderson, who was Bloomsburg University’s catcher in two college World Series.

Swanson is primarily a fastball pitcher at the moment, though Brown said she would work with her so the junior can add others to her repertoire.

Defensively, the team looked good, the coach added. To bolster the infield, Rebecca Kuperschmid has moved to shortstop from center field. An eighth grader, Emily Kennedy, is at third, Maddie Brown, a ninth grader, is at second, and Ella Gurney, a senior, is back at first.

Erin Decker, a senior, is in left field, Emma Silvera, a junior, is in center, and Raven Biondo, a senior, is in right. Osterberg, who has a good arm, is, as aforesaid, behind the plate. 

Biondo hit leadoff in the Pierson scrimmage, followed by Swanson, Osterberg, Kuperschmid, Silvera, Gurney, Kennedy, Brown, Decker, and, in the 10th spot, Claire Hopkins, a senior outfielder.

“We’re toying with the idea of a designated player,” said Coach Brown, “which can give you more options. Reale used to do that,” she said of Lou Reale, East Hampton’s former coach, for whom both Brown and Anderson played.

Wet courts caused Friday’s scheduled boys tennis nonleaguer with Half Hollow Hills East, one of the top teams in the county, to be postponed until yesterday, but Kevin McConville, East Hampton High’s coach, said during a conversation Saturday that he and his players were very much looking forward to it.

“It should be really good,” the coach said of the showdown, inasmuch as going into it both teams had done similarly well versus other top-notch teams, namely Half Hollow Hills West and Westhampton Beach, East Hampton’s archrival in league play.

Hills East and the Bonackers each defeated Hills West 4-3. East Hampton bageled Westhampton 7-0; Hills East defeated the Hurricanes 6-1. 

East Hampton, in another recent match, also shut out Shoreham-Wading River, a league foe, but the 7-0 win over Westhampton was harder to come by.

Jonny De Groot, the Bridgehampton senior who has a booming serve and a variety of shots, enabled the Bonackers to complete the rout at home on March 19 by outlasting Westhampton’s number-one, Josh Kaplan, 10-7 in a super tiebreaker that came about after each of them had won a set.

McConville said the strategy employed against Kaplan, a very good baseliner with a punishing forehand, was to take him out of his comfort zone with feathered shots low to his weaker side whenever the opportunity arose, either off second serves or relatively early in rallies.

That kind of play served De Groot well in the first set, although, in the second, after Kaplan had put a couple of successful shots at his feet, De Groot — whose hard, high-kicking serve into the body (“just one of the serves he has”) gave Kaplan trouble all afternoon — tended to get sucked into long rallies in the second set. 

In general, though, McConville said his four singles players — De Groot, Ravi MacGurn, Luke Louchheim, and Max Astilean — were, when faced with strong baseliners, changing it up very well, their more varied games accounting in large part for the team’s early success.

It was Astilean, an eighth grader who was a Ross Tennis Academy student last year, who caught McConville’s eye in the season-opening match at Hills West. 

“It was Max’s first varsity match, and he was so impressive,” McConville said. “He had the clinching win. He was down 4-1 in the first set. I walked over and got him settled down. He was going for too much and missing. After that, he took the other kid’s backhand apart, that being his weaker side, and the other kid started breaking down, and lost confidence. Max took him apart tactically. He wound up winning the first set 6-4, and the second 6-4.”

De Groot’s was the only match to go the whole way versus Westhampton as MacGurn, Louchheim, and Astilean all won in straight sets. 

The doubles teams, despite the absence of Alex Weseley, who, with Jaedon Glasstein, is at the top of the duo heap, also did well in the Westhampton match. Glasstein and Jamie Fairchild, at one, won 6-3, 6-3, Brad Drubych and Matthew McGovern, at two, won 4-6, 6-0, 6-2, and Miles Clark and Jackson LaRose won 6-2, 6-2 at three.

“It’s been a great advantage having the whole team back,” said McConville. “Everyone’s improved; everyone’s a year older and a year wiser. In doubles, we’ve been trying to be aggressive, to get two to the net rather than have one stay at the baseline and the other stand statue-like at the net. They were getting it last year, but their overheads weren’t as good as they are this year, nor were their putaways as good. They’re more in sync this year, their positioning is better — they’re getting it.”

Interestingly, Weseley was missing from East Hampton’s first three matches, all, as aforesaid, wins. He was to have been back in the lineup yesterday. 

It had been “serendipitous,” McConville said, that Astilean had beaten Glasstein, who shared fourth singles last season with Drubych, in a recent ladder match. With his big serve and strong groundstrokes, Glasstein has further strengthened East Hampton’s doubles lineup. Just about all of his doubles players were “interchangeable,” McConville added.

Back to singles, “Jonny is as good as you’ll see in the transition game, and that’s been good for Ravi, Luke, and Max to see, all of them being good groundstrokers. Bringing these kids up to the net who don’t want to come up to the net has been hugely helpful.”

MacGurn had been winning many points with topspun forehands hit to his opponent’s backhand side, and Louchheim this year had added topspin to his forehand, the coach said. “He’s no longer just blasting it flat and deep. I’ve been preaching variety to Luke too. Every day we practice the transition game.”

“They all have cool heads,” McConville agreed. “They have just the right mentality to be good, to stick with the game plan, and to execute — they’re relentless.”

March 3, 1994

Two local former high school basketball stars, Bobby Hopson of Bridgehampton and Scott Smith of East Hampton were to have played in conference tournaments this week that could lead to berths in national championship tourneys.

Hopson is a Wagner College senior, and Smith a New Hampshire College freshman.

As of Tuesday, Hopson was in seventh place on Wagner’s all-time scoring list with 1,514 points, just 19 points shy of fifth place. The 5-foot-10-inch senior, who has captained his team since his sophomore year, is averaging 17.1 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 2.4 assists per game.

March 10, 1994

Joe Landi is in his fourth year a dart player, and is as enamored of the traditional pub game as most golfers are of golf.

The East-West League at Southampton’s Treasure Inn is one of three that Landi, who has a dartboard hanging not far from his store’s checkout counter, throws in. . . . “They still throw nails in England and Scotland. It’s like any sport. You step in the box, you watch the ball, and, with practice, you get better.”

Having taken up a solid position at the toe-line, seven feet and nine-and-one-quarter inches from the board, one should hold the shaft of the dart between thumb and first finger, Landi said, with the second or third finger along the point. The arm should be parallel to the floor, and the thrower should sight along the flighted stem. 

“Aside from the forearm, nothing moves. People who score well, their bodies don’t move. You take a full breath, let out half of it, and hold your body still. No, you shouldn’t snap hour wrist — just let it go. Be careful not to push.”

As this writer can testify, it’s a lot harder than it looks, a lot more challenging, and a lot more fun.

—

“We try to stress the fundamentals of the game, not so much winning,” Scott Rubenstein, who’s helping Joe Marciniak coach East Hampton’s 9-and-10-year-old Biddy basketball team, said during a recent practice session at the John Marshall Elementary School.

“If Scott had his way, it would be nothing but drills,” said Marciniak. “If it were me, there’d be nothing but scrimmages.”

Tom Mac, Sag Harbor’s Biddy coach, said during a telephone conversation later in the week, “The main thing we’re trying to teach these kids is that good sportsmanship and good teamwork enable you to win. I’m getting tired of what I see at these high school games — the temper tantrums, the posturing. . . . We’ve got a friendly, competitive rivalry going with the East Hampton team. We tell the kids that after the game it’s okay to talk to the other guys.”

Of the dozen or so who played for East Hampton’s Biddy team in 1970 and ’71 — Howard Wood, the best-known alumnus, could not play because he exceeded the former 5-foot-6-inch height limit — seven wound up playing on East Hampton’s 1977 state championship team that went 22-1, said Rubenstein.

“There was Kenny Carter, Eddie Petrie, Tony Gilliam, Randy Strong, Jerome Jefferson. . . . We played in national tournaments in New Orleans and Puerto Rico.”

Thursday, March 28

GIRLS LACROSSE, Islip at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Southampton at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, Smithtown East vs. South Fork team, Southampton High School, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, March 29

SOFTBALL, Mattituck at East Hampton, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 30

BOYS LACROSSE, South Fork team at Half Hollow Hills East, 10 a.m.

Monday, April 1

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Miller Place, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 2

GIRLS LACROSSE, Babylon at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Southold-Greenport, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Bayport-Blue Point, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TRACK, East Hampton at Sayville, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, April 3

GIRLS TRACK, Sayville at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Sayville at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, Walt Whitman vs. South Fork team, Southampton High School, 4:30 p.m.

When a longtime spectator said he hadn’t seen so many hits in 10 years, Vinny Alversa, who’s in his third year coaching East Hampton High’s varsity baseball team, said Saturday’s display here versus Hampton Bays had surprised him a bit too.

Granted, it was a scrimmage, and the Bonackers, who won three games last season and none the year before, have been playing the year round, but still.

The Baymen, who had only one league win last year, it should be said, led the scrimmage off by touching the first of East Hampton’s pitchers, Kurt Matthews, for a two-run home run, but thereafter it was all good news as Alversa’s charges, all of whom swing the bat, amassed 19 hits and as many runs over the course of seven innings. Hampton Bays, thanks largely to an infield throwing error, were to score three more times, in the top of the fourth.

Hitting-wise, for starters, Matthews had a triple and a double; Austin Brown, the second baseman, had three hits; Colin Ruddy doubled to the base of the left field fence, and Henry Garneau, the center fielder, had two hits. . . . 

But lest one get too excited, Alversa, during a telephone conversation Sunday, reminded this writer that the team has been kicked up a league, and, as a result, would “definitely face really good pitching . . . fastballs in the 80s.”

But win or lose, there is a playful mood in the dugout these days — thanks in part to Alversa’s and his assistant Henry Meyer’s young sons — Kai, 10, and Finn, 8, in Alversa’s case, and 11-year-old Hudson, the official batboy, in Meyer’s.

“Yes, there is a different feel,” Alversa agreed, adding that his players had enjoyed success in the Brookhaven Town summer league and were a little bit older. 

The coaches have seven pitchers at their disposal, beginning with Matthews, Jackson Baris, and Lou Britton, all of whom threw in Saturday’s scrimmage — Matthews for three innings, Barisfor two, and Britton for two — and including Elian Abreu, Charlie Condon, Tucker Genovesi, and Colin Ruddy, a 6-foot-5-inch freshman, the only ninth grader on the 18-man team, which also has four seniors, seven juniors, and six sophomores.

Britton, one of the seniors, a left-hander, had played baseball as a freshman, but had been hobbled by a bothersome foot injury, which required surgery, in his sophomore and junior years. 

James Foster, the first-string catcher, was on the bench Saturday owing to the cast he’s been wearing since breaking his left hand in a gym workout in November. He’s expected to return soon, though, perhaps this week.

Meanwhile, Zach Barzilay did well in standing in for Foster Saturday. Of Barzilay, Alversa said, “He’s the ultimate team guy. He’ll play anywhere — first, catcher, third. . . .”

Defensively, the team did well too, Alversa added in answer to a question. Condon and Colin Ruddy alternated at first base, Brown was at second, Genovesi at short, Abreu and Owen Ruddy took turns at third, Britton was in left field, Garneau was in center, and John Rutkowski was in right.

Others on the squad not heretofore mentioned are Luc Campbell, George Karras, Miguel Mizhquri, Drew Salamy, and Tom Desmond. Andrew Rodriguez is overseeing 16 on the junior varsity.

Alversa said he thought the team would be competitive in its new league, which includes such teams as Rocky Point, Sayville, Harborfields, and Islip. 

Schedule-wise, East Hampton was to have scrimmaged Southold here Monday and at Hampton Bays Tuesday. Pierson was to have scrimmaged here yesterday, and Southampton is to play a nonleaguer here this coming Tuesday, followed the next day by a nonleague game at Shoreham-Wading River. The Bonackers are to play a nonleaguer at Bayport-Blue Point on April 2. A home game with Westhampton Beach is to open the league season on April 9.

Perhaps another reason for the upbeat mood in East Hampton’s dugout is the fact that the Bonackers are playing on a new turf infield. 

“No more bad bounces — thank goodness,” said Alversa. “Those days are over.”

East Hampton High’s senior-heavy boys tennis team is expected to have another standout season.

The Bonackers reached the semifinal round of the county team tournament last spring after sharing the league title with their archrival, Westhampton Beach — but only after Alex Weseley and Hunter Medler soundly defeated Brennan Tomlinson and Santo Benenati 6-1, 6-2 in a showdown that followed Section XI’s dismissal of a claimed 4-3 forfeit by Westhampton’s coach, who, in the second East Hampton-Westhampton meeting, called a halt late in the first set of the first doubles match on the grounds that Weseley was not wearing a team jersey. 

“Appropriate attire,” not necessarily a team jersey, was required, argued Kevin McConville, East Hampton’s coach, who in his successful protest said that while Weseley was not wearing a team jersey he was wearing one with the school colors, maroon and gray.

Westhampton was to have played a league-opening match here Tuesday, a match the Bonackers, who defeated Half Hollow Hills West 4-3 in a season-opening mandatory nonleaguer Friday, were expected to win.

East Hampton’s top three are familiar, with Jonny De Groot of Bridgehampton at one, Ravi MacGurn of East Hampton at two, and Luke Louchheim, a Pierson freshman, at three. The latter went undefeated in league play last season, and lost only a few matches, grudgingly — in nonleaguers and in the postseason — all told.

Max Astilean, an eighth grader who has transferred to East Hampton from the Ross School’s high-powered Tennis Academy, is playing at four, having replaced Brad Drubych and Jaedon Glasstein there. Astilean’s 6-4, 6-4 win at fourth singles was the clinching one Friday, said McConville.  

Drubych, with Matthew McGovern, won 6-2, 6-4 at third doubles, East Hampton’s sole doubles win. Weseley, who’s expected to play first doubles with Glasstein this season, was absent (as was Hills West’s number-two singles player) Friday. 

In Weseley’s absence, Glasstein played with Jamie Fairchild. Those two lost to their Hills West opponents, Keshov Khanna and Aman Khanna, 6-4, 6-4. Miles Clark and John Jimenez lost 6-3, 6-2 at second doubles. MacGurn and Louchheim each won in straight sets in singles. 

De Groot, after dropping the first set 7-6, won the second 6-4, “by keeping the ball low to the other kid’s backhand and coming in for putaways at the net,” McConville said, but lost 10-7 in a third-set super tiebreaker, trailing throughout. “The other kid had an unbelievable forehand, but Jonny played well, he played smart. He’s fun to coach because he has all the tools, a lot of weapons.” 

The head pro at Hampton Racquet, McConville is in his second year of coaching at the high school. He said he expected that Commack and Hills

East would again be the county’s 

top teams. “They split last year . . . Commack wound up as the Long Island champion.”

Hills East is to play a mandatory nonleaguer here tomorrow. McConville said that in the meantime he would be working hard with his doubles teams, “because it comes down to doubles. Teams like Hills East serve hard and poach — even at three.”

On to boys lacrosse: Having been moved up to Division 1 because of the combined enrollments of the high schools — Southampton, East Hampton, Pierson, Ross, and Bridgehampton — from which the South Fork’s team can recruit, the Southampton-based Islanders, whose roster of 23 players includes 10 from East Hampton, is nevertheless expected to be competitive, according to the coach, Matt Babb.

The Islanders lost 15-10 to Port Jefferson on Southampton High’s turf field Friday, but that was without the services of the team’s first-string goalie, Hudson Brindle of Pierson, who is expected to be sidelined for a couple more weeks with a broken hand. 

Cody Bezubek, an East Hamptoner, spelled him in the goal that day, and on making his first save, in the opening minutes, after the Islanders had taken a 2-0 lead, was loudly applauded by his teammates standing on the sidelines.

By halftime Bezubek had made six saves, but Port Jeff, a Division II team, had put seven shots by him for a 7-6 lead at the break. 

The visitors scored a short-handed goal to wrest a 3-2 lead with 4 minutes and 50 seconds left in the first quarter, and built the margin up to 7-2 before the Islanders, in the second period, scored four unanswered goals — one by Luke Morro, two by Zac Mobius, one of them following an interception in the defensive end, and one, a 28-yarder, by Brian Damm, a Bonac senior middie who was the Islanders’ high-scorer last year. 

With the Royals outscoring the Islanders 8-4, there was, however, less to write home about in the second half.

All of Babb’s defensemen are new, though, with Damm, Cole Shaw, and Logan Gurney, all of East Hampton, and with Morro and Mobius, and Connor Rozzi, he’s got some punch on the offense.

The combined team has games scheduled this spring with Sachem North, which finished fourth in the power-rated division last year, Walt Whitman, which finished fifth, William Floyd, which finished sixth, and with Patchogue-Medford, which finished seventh, among its 13 opponents. 

The Islanders, with a preseason ranking of 21 among 23 teams, will have to score some upsets of higher-rated teams to earn a playoff berth. Babb reportedly thinks it’s possible.

Each year the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter Hurricanes’ performance at the state Y swimming meet is a hard act to follow, inasmuch as the 8-through-19-year-old team keeps raising the bar across the board.

Last year, in Buffalo, Tom Cohill’s charges placed third among 39 entries, breaking eight state records along the way. This past weekend, at the Nassau County Aquatics Center, the Hurricanes finished fourth among 36 teams, behind Flushing, which has won this meet 33 straight times, the Cross Island Y, and the Rye Y, all of which had many more entries than did East Hampton, whose roster comprised 55 swimmers.

“So you could say that pound for pound we’re the strongest team in the state,” an elated Cohill said during a conversation at the Y’s pool Monday afternoon.

Cohill had a lapful of plaques to show — one for the 13-14-year-old girls, who were tops in their age group, one for the 15-19 girls, who placed second in theirs, one for the 9-10 girls, who were third in their age group, and one for the 15-19 boys, who also placed third.

Moreover, the Hurricanes’ head coach and Craig Brierley, one of his assistants, are to take 10 competitors — the most ever, there were eight last year — to the Y national meet in Greensboro, N.C., next month.

Angelika Cruz, one of the Hurricanes’ coaches, said in an emailed account that “there were personal bests by every swimmer in at least one event, the most noteworthy performance coming in the girls 13-14 medley relay. East Hampton’s team of Cami Hatch (backstroke), Jane Brierley (breaststroke), Summer Jones (butterfly), and Emily Dyner (freestyle) won the event and set a team record of 1 minute and 53.39 seconds in doing so.” “Ethan McCormac,” Cruz said, “broke a state record [that had stood for 30 years] by winning the 200 free in 1:41.49; Jane Brierley won the open 200 breaststroke, and was second in the 100 breast, and Julia Brierley swam a team-record 58.87 in the 100 backstroke, breaking Cecilia De Havenon’s 59.32.” Julia Brierley placed second in the 100 backstroke and was second, as well, in the 100 breaststroke.

McCormac was the Hurricanes’ top male point scorer, with 60. Cruz’s daughter, Daisy Pitches, a 9-10 competitor who won the 50 breaststroke, topped East Hampton’s girls with 54 points.

But perhaps most impressive, according to Cohill and Cruz, were the facts that numerous Hurricanes who had not done so before enjoyed top-16 finishes and that most of the club’s relay teams finished among the top five.

The 10 swimmers Cohill and Brierley are taking to the Y nationals will be Ethan McCormac, Jane Brierley, Julia Brierley, Sophia Swanson (who was second in the state 200 individual medley and third in the 100 fly), Joey Badilla, Jack Duryea, Ryan Duryea, Aidan Forst, Owen McCormac, and Oona Foulser.

Ethan McCormac, Forst, Owen McCormac, and Ryan Duryea placed second in the 200 free relay at the state meet; Badilla (backstroke), Jack Duryea (breaststroke), Ethan McCormac(butterfly), and Ryan Duryea (freestyle) placed fourth in the 15-19 boys 200 medley relay, and Julia Brierley, Jane Brierley, Swanson, and Foulser placed second in the 15-19 girls 200 medley relay.

The list of those with personal bests comprised Wes Bull, Allison Farez, Lucy Knight, Mia Luna, Zoe McDonald, Aidan Menu, Erika Chunchi, Elizabeth Daniels, Jasiu Gredysa, Liam Knight, Ben Kriegsman, Miles Menu, Lylah Metz, Ben O’Sullivan, Pitches, Dylan Cashin, Ava Castillo, Lily Griffin, Ashley Leon, Margot McAuliffe, Patrick O’Donnell, Daniel Piver, Chloe Resnick, Nicky Badilla, Margaret Breen, Jane Brierley, Dyner, Hatch, Jones, Aidan McCormac, Curran O’Donnell, Tenzin Tamang, Daniel Aliakseyeu, Joey Badilla, Ryan Bahel, Kiara Bailey-Williams, Julia Brierley, Joan Delgado, Jack Duryea, Ryan Duryea, Forst, Foulser, Colin Harrison, Ethan McCormac, Owen McCormac, Fernando Menjura, Linda Pomiranceva, Swanson, and Bella Tarbet.

Assisting Cohill at the meet were Cruz, Craig Brierley, Andrey Trigubovich, Sean Knight, Sean Crowley, and Eugene DePasquale. “We’ve got a tremendous coaching staff,” said Cohill. “They’re either a teacher or a coach — they’re great educators.”

The captains, Ryan Duryea, Foulser, and Forst, were also to be thanked, Cohill said, as well as the Hampton Lifeguard Association and Norma Bushman, the Y’s aquatics director, “for the great support they’ve given us.”

Horcasitas Wins on Clay

Playing in his first International Tennis Federation 55s tournament recently, Vince Horcasitas, a real estate broker with Saunders and Associates, though unseeded, swept through five clay court matches to win the Miami Beach Tennis Cup. 

“It was a 32-draw with players from all over the world,” Horcasitas said in an email. “It was my first tournament in this age group.”

On the way to the championship, Horcasitas defeated the eighth seed, Ludek Kleibl of the Czech Republic, 6-2, 6-0 in the second round; Achim Gass, the top seed, a German who is ranked seventh in the 55s worldwide, 6-2, 6-2 in the quarterfinals; James Tracy of Doral, Fla., 6-3, 6-1 in the semifinals, and Denis Dumas of Montreal, the second seed, 6-2, 6-1 in the final.

Laps for Lessons

Norma Bushman, the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s aquatics director, is overseeing until March 30 a “laps for lessons” scholarship fund-raiser at the Y’s pool, with pledges keyed to laps swum by registrants. The top fund-raiser is to receive a three-pack private lesson, the second place fund-raiser is to receive one free nine-week session in any of the Y’s swim classes, and the third-place fund-raiser is to be given a Y.M.C.A. swag bag, according to a flier.

Lifeguard Training 

Sunday junior lifeguard training sessions culminating in 9-through-12-year-old and 13-through-15-year-old swim tests are being held from 2 to 2:45 p.m. and from 2:45 to 3:30 p.m. on Sundays (except April 14 and 21) at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter through June 16. 

A flier announcing the sessions, which began March 3, says that “returning junior lifeguards must take a swim test to qualify for our summer program,” and that, as a prerequisite, “trainees will be asked to swim 50 yards freestyle, to tread water in the deep end of the pool for at least five minutes, and to swim 10 to 15 yards underwater in the deep end of the pool.”