Thursday, December 6

BOWLING, Rocky Point vs. East Hampton, All Star Lanes, Riverhead, 4 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Kendall Madison Tip-Off tournament, junior varsity, Greenport vs. Southampton, East Hampton Middle School, 6 p.m.

Friday, December 7

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 4 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Kendall Madison Tip-Off tournament, varsity, Bridgehampton vs. Southampton, 5:30 p.m., and Mattituck vs. East Hampton, 7, East Hampton High School.

Saturday, December 8

BOYS BASKETBALL, Kendall Madison Tip-Off tournament, junior varsity, Mattituck vs. East Hampton, 1 p.m.; varsity, Bridgehampton vs. Mattituck, 5:30, and Southampton vs. East Hampton, 7, East Hampton High School.

Tuesday, December 11

BOWLING, East Hampton vs. Riverhead, All Star Lanes, Riverhead, 4:30 p.m. 

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

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Elwood-John Glenn at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

Wednesday, December 12

WRESTLING, West Babylon at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

Madison Hoops Tourney

The boys basketball teams of East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Southampton, and Mattituck High Schools will vie in the Kendall Madison Tip-Off tournament at East Hampton’s gym tomorrow and Saturday.

Bridgehampton (which defeated Babylon 74-47 in its debut Monday) and Southampton are to get it going at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow, with Mattituck and East Hampton following at 7. On Saturday, Bridgehampton is to play Mattituck at 5:30 and Southampton and East Hampton are to play at 7. 

Junior varsity games are to be played as well, all but Saturday’s 1 p.m. game between East Hampton and Mattituck at the East Hampton Middle School. The Greenport and Southampton jayvees are to play there at 6 p.m. today. Tomorrow, Bridgehampton and Southampton’s jayvees are to play at 4:30, with Mattituck and Greenport to play at 6.

The daily admission fee will be $5. The Kendall Madison Foundation provides four-year mentoring scholarships to selected East Hampton High School seniors each year.

Volleyball Honors

Kathy McGeehan, East Hampton High School’s girls volleyball coach, has been named as League VI’s coach of the year by the Suffolk County Volleyball Coaches Association. 

In addition, Mikela Junemann was named as player of the year in League VI, was named to the all-county team, and was fifth team all-state; Nicole Cummings was named as the league’s junior varsity coach of the year; Junemann and Molly Mamay were named to the all-tournament team; Elle Johnson was named to the all-classification team and was fifth team all-state; Mamay, Ella Gurney, Nicole Realmuto, and Madyson Neff were named to the all-league team, and Connie Chan and Erin Decker were all-county academic.

Mary Anne Jules, the former athletic director who is to be inducted into the Bridgehampton School’s Hall of Fame tomorrow evening, said recently from her home in Water Mill that she felt blessed to have been able to spend virtually her entire 32-year teaching, coaching, and administrative career there.

“I was out of college and subbing in Syracuse when my parents, who used to come out to Hampton Bays, learned that Bridgehampton was looking for a phys ed teacher. My mother said I should go for it. That it was a small school attracted me — I could teach everyone, from kindergarten through 12th grade. You’re on the floor one moment, acting like an airplane, and the next you’re with high school kids. . . . You know what, retirement is nice, but I miss the kids.”

“Bridgehampton was very close-knit,” she continued. “We were there to meet the needs of the kids. We all knew what was going on with them. You always felt like you could make a difference, whether it was a kindergartner or a senior. It was wonderful, it’s what makes teaching so worthwhile.” 

“And because it was a small school, we’d have to step up. I’ve subbed for the principal, I’ve cleaned the floors . . . which is fine. That’s what made it so great.”

The honoree, who played four sports at Baldwin High School and two at the State University at Cortland, saw to it early on in her tenure that Bridgehampton students, who before her arrival in 1982 had been limited to basketball and golf, could through a shared sports program she promoted play any of the sports offered by neighboring districts.

“It was one of the smallest schools in the state, and I thought there was no reason why the kids — there were maybe 160 or so in the whole school — couldn’t have the opportunity to play every sport, whatever they wanted.”

Her shared-sports effort — she became the school’s athletic director in 1991 — was the subject of a John Valenti column in Newsday on May 8, 1992, a column that made particular mention of Sandy McFarland, who has since been inducted into East Hampton’s and Bridgehampton’s Halls of Fame. 

“Sandy would not have had what she had without shared sports,” the former A.D. said. “It enabled her to run track at East Hampton and to get a full scholarship to Syracuse. . . . She’s a big success story. Like Nick Thomas, who’s coaching at Center Moriches. They both had difficult childhoods to overcome, and they did. Sandy [whom Jules had recommended for East Hampton’s Hall of Fame] held a relay record at Syracuse for a long time. It was broken, I think, either this year or last year. Like Nick, she impressed me not just as an athlete, but as a person. She’s the principal of a brand-new elementary school in North Carolina now.”

“Kids need to feel loved and safe,” the interviewee said. “ ‘What kind of kid are you? How can I help you?’ But as an educator you’ve got to include discipline too — there has to be that combination. You don’t want to do too much enabling.”

Jules’s list of professional honors is a long one. She is a past president of Section XI, the governing body for high school sports in Suffolk County, she has twice won Bridgehampton’s teacher of the year award, and she was Section XI’s athletic director of the year in 2014, the year of her retirement, the same year that she was cited by SCOPE Education Services for having been of outstanding service to her district.

Asked if she was still running — Jules has for years been a familiar sight along the highway in her neighborhood — she said she was, “though it’s hard to run fast anymore. . . . I’ve been running since I’ve been 12. I like going out for an hour’s jog — it clears the head. I run about six miles twice a week, four miles two times a week. Once a month, I’ll do seven or eight. I ran the Marine Corps Marathon once, in 1989, in 3:54. My memory’s not been very good lately, but I can remember that! My best half-marathon was 1:43.”

As for having been named to Bridgehampton’s Hall of Fame, “I feel humbled by it. I don’t feel like I did anything extraordinary, but I was devoted to my job. I did it the best I could.”

She was pleased, she added, to know that Bridgehampton, some of whose residents campaigned to have the school closed 25 or so years ago, would finally get the addition it deserved, including a new gym — the old undersize one, home to the nine-time-state-champion Killer Bees, having been deemed illegal when it came to playoff games. 

“We’ve had these plans for so long, since before I retired, waiting for the right time. It passed by a good margin — the community always comes together; when you need them they come out. There’ll be a cafeteria, new classrooms, a tech upgrade, new locker rooms, a fitness room . . . I used to have weights on the stage with a Universal machine, a treadmill, and a stationary bike. I did the best I could. The kids deserve it. I’m glad it’s happening. Finally we’ll be able to host playoff games and basketball tournaments. They’re going to break ground soon.”

In sum, said Jules, “I feel blessed. It was the perfect school for me.”

Dan White, who coaches East Hampton High School’s boys basketball team, is cautiously optimistic, as they say, on the verge of his third season here.

How the team does this winter would hinge, he said, on whether his players stayed healthy and remained academically eligible. Jack Reese, who’s playing at Baruch College now, was the sole senior starter last year, though Malachi Miller, Max Proctor, Turner Foster, Bladimir Rodriguez Garces — seniors all — and Jeremy Vizcaino, a junior, are back. New players, all junior guards, are Christian Johnson, Liam Leach, Logan Gurney, and Frank Bellucci.

“I’m lucky to have a core group of seniors who are in their third year of varsity basketball, and I expect those five to lead the way. The program is moving in the right direction — we’re improving and winning more. We are unselfish when it comes to shooting and can play in a variety of ways — definitely not one-dimensional. I would like us to be more consistent defensively, however. There were too many games last year where, because of lack of focus, we had a bad two or four minutes. I think we’ll be competitive if we rebound effectively and play for each other.”

There were no men’s rugby games here this fall, for the first time in a very long time, though Kevin Bunce, who’s been overseeing Section XI Warriors youth sides that have on them players from East Islip, Babylon, Mount Sinai, Shoreham, and the North Fork, as well as from Sag Harbor and East Hampton, is pretty sure that men’s rugby — though probably no longer strictly under the Montauk Rugby Club’s aegis — will live again in the form of a countywide powerhouse.

A hastily gotten together Warriors side played last weekend in a highly competitive 7s tournament on Randalls Island in New York City, going 0-3 in U-19 pool play, though Bunce said during a conversation at The Star Monday morning that “it’s just a matter of time, a little more practice for them — they love it, they’ve just got to work on the fine points. Sevens is a tough game. You may be in shape, but catching and passing and positioning mean a lot. If you go in to help out on a tackle, as you might in football, for instance, the other team will take full advantage of the overlap, the ball will get out to the wing, and they’ll be gone.”

Adhering to international rules, the youth sides on Randalls Island were U-19 rather than U-18, as is the case in the United States, which meant, said Bunce, that “our very young team — we only have two seniors, mostly sophomores and freshmen — went up against teams whose players were stronger and more experienced. We were thrown into the fire. Still, we did pretty well once we got the hang of it.”

The Brindle brothers, Hudson and Cooper, who live in Sag Harbor, “had never played in a rugby game before, though their father, an expat from Britain, used to play for Old Blue. . . . All the football players, the Brindles and the two backs from Babylon, Colin Winter and Dylan Moretti, said rugby tackling, where you put your shoulder into the ball carrier’s midsection, keeping your head out — we say ‘ear to the rear’ or ‘cheek to cheek’ — is the way they should do it in football.”

“The first team we played, Northeast Academy, a select side from Boston, beat us six tries to two. They didn’t run us over, our guys tackled hard, but we were often out of position. Fourteen minutes of 7s isn’t as easy as our kids, who all were fit and fast, thought. They were laughing at the beginning, but they weren’t after three or four minutes of it.”

Rugby New Jersey was the Warriors’ second-round opponent. “We played much better in that one. I think New Jersey won four tries to two — 26 to 12. But again, we were outmatched a little physically and experience-wise. That was true throughout the day. I think the tournament’s directors put us in with three of the strongest teams so that only one of them would come out of pool play into the semifinals. We played Mount Saint Mary’s of Maryland’s high school team in our last game. Brandon [Johnson, who played that day for Stony Brook University’s side] went there. The college coach coaches the high school team too. He was all over three or four of our guys afterward. . . .”

Rugby is proving to be “a great way for these young kids to get college scholarships,” said Bunce, who can cite as examples Brandon Johnson, Johnson’s first cousin, Jordan, who’s at New England College in New Hampshire now, and Josh King, who has played at American International College in Springfield, Mass. “I know the coaches at these schools and they’ve got top-notch programs. We’re not sending them to crummy schools. . . . We’ve also been taking these kids to camps, where they’ll be seen.”

Bunce said his charges, in whose number is his son, Kevin, will practice on Sunday afternoons, weather permitting, this winter, either here at Herrick Park or in Calverton. And in the spring, “We’ll play an eight-game schedule, against high schools in the metro area. They’re moving us up a division, but that’s good. I like having the kids play up, that’s how you learn. And the scholarships will start to turn up, faster than you know.”

As for Brandon Johnson, an East Hamptoner who reportedly hopes to play professionally, Bunce said he’d like to “send him to Old Blue. They’ve got seven guys who play 15s on the Eagles, the national side, and three who play on the Eagles’ 7s side. Now’s the time. He’s 20. This is his shot. Either he picks it up or lets it go by the wayside. He can do it, but you’ve got to want it. I think he does.”

To look at him, you would not think he’d be so strong, but Richy Rangel, a quiet-spoken East Hampton High School senior who wants to become a computer engineer, is, as Lisa Farbar, the high school’s strength and conditioning coach, says, “extraordinary.”

“He came to me when he was a freshman, having never worked out before,” Farbar said during a conversation at the high school’s Kendall Madison fitness center the other day. “He said he was interested in building strength. I showed him the basic exercises — the deadlift, squat, and bench press, explaining that there was no finish line to strength. It’s a pure science based on reps, sets, and the progression of weight. . . . He’s made significant strength leaps in the last two years.”

So significant, in fact, that as the result of a national competition earlier this month in Las Vegas, at the Golden Nugget, Rangel now holds the world deadlift record for 17-to-19-year-olds in his 132-to-148-pound weight class at 551 pounds. In September, in Albany, he broke the national deadlift record in his age and weight group at 540 pounds, a feat that prompted the International Powerlifting Federation to pay for his hotel room when in Las Vegas, though not his flight out and back. 

“He was casual at first, and then, all of a sudden, he went full bore with powerlifting,” said Farbar.

And last year, he set three state records — in the deadlift (500), squat (340), and in total weightlifting.

“Your knees have to be locked,” Farbar said concerning deadlifting, described by the I.P.F. as “the king of powerlifting disciplines.”

“I missed at 573 — next time I’ll get it,” said Rangel, adding, in answer to a question, that “the more you do it the stronger you get. It’s a skill; you have to work at it.”

“As I always say, ‘Perfect practice makes perfection‚’ ” said his coach.

Rangel said he was “pretty far off‚” when it came to a world record in the squat, 70-plus pounds off. The bench press record in his age and weight group was 280. He was at 205.

He had played soccer when younger, the world record-holder said in reply to a question, but soon realized he couldn’t excel at both. 

He works out every day, basically, though with weights he can get, as it were, not too heavy. In the weeks leading up to competitions, however, he pushes himself.

“Five reps is the max, five sets of five, that’s what you need to build strength,” said Farbar. “You have to own it. Then you add a little more weight. It’s not like bodybuilding, with many reps and many sets.”

“And egg whites for dinner,” this writer chimed in.

Asked about his diet, Rangel said, with a smile, “I don’t go to McDonald’s every day.”

He’ll turn 18 on Jan. 18, and that will move him up into the 18-to-19-year-old class, “where there’s definitely more competition.”

“You have to be strong mentally,” the young powerlifter said when asked how he felt when the pressure was on. “You focus on yourself . . . you do your best.” Farbar, he said, “has been a great help.”

And he, in turn, had been a great help, she said, when it has come to working with other lifters in the fitness room. 

“He’s my go-to guy,” she said of Rangel, with admiration.

Friday, November 30

HALL OF FAME, induction dinner, Bridgehampton High School, 6 p.m.

Saturday, December 1

WRESTLING, Sprig Gardner invitational tournament, East Hampton High School, from 9 a.m.

Sunday, December 2

MEN’S SOCCER, over-30 league, Charruas 1950 vs. Hampton United, Hampton Bays High School, 2 p.m.

Monday, December 3

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at East Hampton, scrimmage, 4:30 p.m.

OMAC PARTY, honorees Dan Farnham, Angelika Cruz, Ryan Fowkes, Rebecca Kuperschmid, and Ethan McCormac, the Palm restaurant, East Hampton, 6-9 p.m.

Tuesday, December 4

BOWLING, East Hampton vs. Sachem, Coram Country Bowl, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, December 5

BOYS SWIMMING, Ward Melville vs. East Hampton, mandatory nonleague, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5:30 p.m.

November 18, 1993

Ellamae Gurney, the right wing, whose goal enabled East Hampton High’s field hockey team to upset the high-riding Miller Place Panthers in the county small schools final, came through again in Saturday’s Long Island championship game with Carle Place, netting a corner-play shot five minutes before halftime. And that proved to be all Bonac needed to keep the Frogs from turning into a Final Four team.

Tom McGlade, a 29-year-old triathlete who lives part time in Amagansett, made a notable marathon debut in New York on Sunday.

Despite an inevitably slow start amid the crush of 27,000-plus bodies coming off the Verrazano Bridge into Brooklyn, McGlade wound up finishing 347th (330th male) in 2 hours, 51 minutes, and 54 seconds.

. . . It was not the fastest New York marathon run by a South Forker — Ray Charron, who now lives in Hawaii, holds the unofficial record at 2:37:33. But McGlade’s time drew plaudits from two veterans: John Conner, a Springs developer who holds the world 55-to-59-year-old indoor mile record (4:53.02), and Cliff Clark of Shelter Island, who trains just about every serious runner out here, of whatever age.

“Spectacular,” said Conner, “considering it probably took him five minutes to get to the line, and considering the heat. When Ray did it, there were about half the people they have now. When I ran, in ’78 and ’79, there were 11,000 and that was a zoo.”

. . . Asked to compare marathoning with triathloning, McGlade said, “A marathon breaks your body down. In a triathlon run, even in the half-Ironman I did, you’re not pounding away at a six-minute pace. It’s a totally different feeling.”

It took McGlade “about 10 minutes to get through the first mile,” and after that, he knew he wouldn’t be able to meet his 2:45 goal. It wasn’t until the second mile that he got into a 6:00-to-6:15 pace.

November 25, 1993

With 29 seconds to go in the first overtime period in a New York State Class C field hockey semifinal played Friday under the lights on Hartwick College’s AstroTurf field, Akron’s Andrea Zurio’s corner-play shot caromed sharply off a defender’s stick, beating Erika Vargas to the right side of the cage, leaving Bonac’s players and faithful (over 200 East Hampton students and parents had made the trip upstate) stunned. 

Sudden victory, sudden death . . . call it what you will, East Hampton’s season was suddenly over.

Bridget Behan’s goal, which tied the score at 1-1 with little more than a minute left in regulation, was her 15th of the season, one shy of Jennifer Vish’s school record. That goal and her “terrific all-around play” that night earned her a berth on the all-state tournament team.

“We played with a lot of heart,” Ellen Cooper, East Hampton’s coach, said. “One thing we have is guts — you can’t take that away from a team. They showed me they had it when they came back. If we’d lost 1-0 in regulation, it would have been devastating, but that goal made everything okay. We dominated the [10-minute] overtime, and lost on a stupid penalty corner. What are you gonna do? In my book, we won.”

Chris Pfund, when he began Friday morning to talk about the looming end of the Montauk Bike Shop, which he is liquidating after 31 years, choked up a bit.

“But,” he said, “I have been very fortunate. I’ve been able to make a living while following my passions. I first began working on rental bikes and mopeds when I was 8 and my father had a hardware store here. So it will be one less sandbox to play in: I’ll still have my sound company and EventPower,” a triathlon promotion company that he heads, along with his wife, Christina Fatsis, and Vicki and Pete Ventura. “And I’ll continue to give corporate bike tours. But it’s the end of an era. . . . It’s sad.”

“The store’s been here since 1963, and we began renting out bikes from the very beginning,” Pfund continued. “Kevin Koltz, who was putting himself through college, had the idea. He supplied hardware stores from Westhampton to Montauk with bikes that summer people would ride, three-speed English racers, and split the profits. It was a good idea. People were a lot more active then. He’d come around and maintain them once a month.” 

“We were the first out here to have bikes and surfboards for rent, and custom T-shirts, and umbrellas and chairs and mopeds. . . . We had 30 or 40 bikes to begin with, and when the hardware store was liquidated in 1999, we spun into bikes.”

When this writer said he remembered fondly riding an American Flyer through the streets of Pittsburgh as a preteen in the early 1950s, Pfund motioned him down to the basement storeroom where, in the back, were, among many other bikes hanging from ceiling racks, two of them.

He, himself, used to ride a bike all the time as a youngster, he said, with a guitar on his back that every now and then he’d play while riding along. There were photos of him doing that, he said in answer to a question, but not immediately at hand.

Kids weren’t riding bikes anymore, he said, and that was to a great degree why he’d made the decision finally to close the Montauk Bike Shop down.

“I used to teach classes on cycling at the high school, for about seven years, and there were kids, at least one or two per class, who had no idea how to ride one! The people you see riding along the shoulders are all older — the younger generation isn’t doing it. It’s not just Montauk, it’s countrywide. The cycling industry is taking big hits. It’s the same in triathlons and golf. Ask Tom Dess at the [Montauk Downs] golf course. He says you can easily get a tee time there in July.”

He had been trying for a couple of years to turn his business around, trying to make it work, “but all the hotels have fleets of 20 of their own bikes now and give them out to their guests for free. Rentals had been our cornerstone. How do you compete? Their insurance must be expensive, I know it is for me, and they’re not even giving them helmets! I’ve tried to make up for it with sales, but it’s not been enough.”

Pfund said he had missed just one day of riding, mostly off-road, on his mountain bike, in the past nine years. He’s been a triathlete since 1984, “and,” he said with a smile, “I always finish fourth.”

“Just out of the money.”

“Just out of the money . . . usually by seconds. My wife will say, ‘Did you do your job?’ ‘Yes,’ I’ll say, ‘I got fourth place.’ I did get second once, at the Schiff [boy scout] reservation in Wading River, in an off-the-road duathlon — run, bike, run. I’d been hit by a car on my bike three days before and broke three ribs. My brother Kurt and I decided to do it anyway. I did the runs, Kurt, who was out of shape, did the bike. I was third in on the first run, and Kurt didn’t lose any time on the bike, so I had to go for it. I swallowed some aspirin and went crazy on the last leg and came in second.”

Yes, he agreed, there were still bike shops in East Hampton and Sag Harbor and Southampton, “but Montauk is different. It closes down about now. You do the summer thing, you make money and you’re feeling fat at around Thanksgiving time before you start sweating buckets again. . . . If I could figure out how to keep this place going I would, but I can’t do one more winter with this place open.”

There were, he thought, about 100 bikes, all brand-new, in the store. He had sold a bunch the day before, including one to Kai Costanzo, whom he sponsored when Costanzo, then 19, set a record in the Montauk Lighthouse triathlon that still stands. Pfund said he expected this past weekend to be busy. A liquidator is overseeing the sell-off.

The family, he said, owns the building. He would be seeking a tenant, “somebody who wants to move in on January 1.”

He wouldn’t move to Charlottesville, Va., as his mother and brother had, he said in answer to a question. “I love Montauk, especially in the winter. If it’s snowing I’ll go cross-country skiing or mountain biking . . . and you don’t have to talk to anybody. It’s the spring I hate,” he said with a smile. “March and April are nasty.”

Last Thursday, with its mix of rain and snow, seemed a good time to talk with the East Hampton School District’s athletic director, Joe Vas, about winter sports.

To begin with, bowling, after an absence of four or so years, is back, thanks in large part, Vas said, to Scott Rubenstein, who is letting the team practice at the Clubhouse at East Hampton Indoor Tennis. Mike Vitulli is coaching the coed team, along with Anthony Roza.

Because the string pinsetting system the Clubhouse uses has yet to be officially sanctioned nationwide, the team’s home matches will be played at the All Star bowling lanes in Riverhead.

Vitulli, who’s overseeing a squad of about 15 boys and girls, said of Scott and Holly Rubenstein, “They’ve been fantastic . . . great.”

“Scott is amazing,” Vas said, “and not only for what he’s done for us, by letting our tennis teams, and now our bowling team, practice at his club, but he’s a true Bonacker who really loves this place. . . . We’re thrilled that bowling is back. It’s one of those lifetime activities, like tennis and golf, that we’re happy to promote.”

Speaking of golf, the A.D. said that Turner Foster, East Hampton’s number-one player, who won the county championship as a sophomore and was the runner-up last year and this, was to sign on Tuesday a letter of intent to attend Loyola University in Maryland. The golf team shared the league championship this fall.

That feat was noted, Vas said, at a fall athletic awards ceremony on Nov. 13, as were the facts that the girls swimming and girls volleyball teams had gone through league seasons undefeated.

The following won M.V.P., most improved, and coach’s awards that night: Ryan Fowkes, Luke Tyrell, and Avery Martinsen, boys cross-country; Ava 

Engstrom, Bella Tarbet, and Sydney Salamy, girls cross-country; Catherine Wicker, Tia Weiss, and Rorey Murphy, field hockey; Turner Foster, Trevor Stachecki, and Nate Wright, golf.

Kurt Matthews, Matthew McGovern, and Anthony Quito Huanga, boys soccer; Lucy Short, Lillian Minskoff, and Valeria Marin Suarez, girls soccer; Sophia Swanson, Oona Foulser, and Emma Wiltshire, girls swimming; Rebecca Kuperschmid, Kaylee Mendelman, and Annelise Mendelman, girls tennis; Logan Gurney, Luc Campbell, and Henry Garneau, boys volleyball, and Elle Johnson, Erin Decker, and Ella Gurney, girls volleyball.

Dan White will be in his third year as the varsity boys basketball coach, and, as was the case year, he’s being assisted by Marcus Edwards. Joe McKee and Howard Wood, an S.E.C. “Legend” who played at the University of Tennessee before turning pro, are again coaching the junior varsity. 

Krista Brooks, who coached the girls basketball team some years ago, has returned as that team’s coach, replacing Kelly McKee. Nicole Fierro is her assistant.

“Thirty-two are trying out,” Vas said when asked how the girls team’s numbers were. He had heard, he added, that there were some good young players in the pipeline. 

Kaelyn Ward, inarguably one of the best female players ever to come out of East Hampton, is coaching now at St. John the Baptist.

The boys finished at 8-8 in league play and 10-10 over all last winter, and made the playoffs, losing 92-89 in triple overtime to John Glenn in a Class A outbracket game, a game in which Jack Reese, East Hampton’s senior point guard, who’s now playing at Baruch, scored a team-leading 24 points.

That team, which had on it a half-dozen juniors and sophomores, was “one step away from being a legitimate playoff contender,” White said following the riveting outbracket loss, adding that he expected Malachi Miller, Max Proctor, Turner Foster, Jeremy Vizcaino, and Bladimir Rodriguez Garces all to return for the 2018-19 season.

As for boys swimming, Craig Brierley, the coach, told Vas on the first day of practice (Nov. 13) that “the pool is full.”

“I think he’s pushing 40 kids,” the athletic director said.

Meanwhile, Brierley left here last Thursday for the Nov. 16 and 17 state girls swimming meet in Ithaca with four qualifiers — Swanson, Foulser, Julia Brierley, and Jane Brierley — as well as an alternate, Darcy McFarland.

The numbers in boys and girls winter track were good too, Vas added — “about 20 in each.” Ben Turnbull and Yani Cuesta have returned as the coaches.

Wrestling, whose numbers have been rather low lately, is to have 16 to 17 on the varsity, “about the same as last year.” Anthony Piscitello, the head coach, will have Bryan Mott and Jim Stewart, the varsity’s former longtime coach, as his assistants.

East Hampton’s Frank (Sprig) Gardner wrestling tournament is to be held here on Saturday, Dec. 1. The Kendall Madison Foundation boys basketball tournament, with varsity teams from East Hampton, Southampton, Bridgehampton, and Mattituck, is to be contested here on Dec. 7 and 8.

Bridgehampton and Southampton are to play at 5:30 on the 7th, followed by East Hampton and Mattituck. Bridgehampton is to play Mattituck at 5:30 the next night, with East Hampton and Southampton to follow.

Because Bridgehampton doesn’t have a junior varsity, that tournament, to be played on Dec. 6, 7, and 8 at the East Hampton Middle School, will include Greenport with the above-mentioned schools.