After the first five and a half innings of the East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch fall league final at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett on Nov. 13, Uihlein’s led Marcello’s Masonry 7-6, having overcome a 6-4 deficit with three runs in the top of the sixth.

But then, as so often happens with teams playing Marcello’s, the roof fell in, consigning Uihlein’s, which had lost in four to Marcello’s in the summer league’s best-of-five final, to what is becoming its customary bridesmaid role.

Things might have gone better for Uihlein’s had Jim Hansen, its regular pitcher, not been sidelined midway through the fall season because of toe surgery. Todd Smith, an outfielder, stepped in for Hansen, and did admirably, but Smith said when questioned following the finale that “I would have loved to have had Jim here tonight.”

Marcello’s, with Chris Pfund, Dustin Lightcap, and Tom Thorsen in the lineup, packs a lot of punch, but there were no home runs on the 13th, owing perhaps to a brisk wind that was slanting toward right field, and the restricted flight ball that is used in slow-pitch games here nowadays.

Ray Wojtusiak, Marcello’s player-manager, pitched, as he usually does, for the winners, and kept Uihlein’s in check more or less through its first four at-bats.

A double play got Wojtusiak out of the top of the first after Austin Bahns, Uihlein’s leadoff hitter, had drawn a walk and his brother, Steve, following a force play at second, had singled.

Marcello’s also went down without a run in its half, but, in the second, the Masons went up 1-0, Wojtusiak driving in Tyler Aposian, the catcher, from second base after Aposian, with one out, had singled and moved up on a flyout by Diego Palomo.

An opposite-field two-run triple to the base of the fence in right by Lightcap upped Marcello’s lead to 3-0 going into the top of the fourth. Uihlein’s got one back in its half thanks to a bases-loaded hit by Smith, who batted 10th in the lineup, and would have had more had not two runners been thrown out at the plate.

The Masons, with Joe Ferraro, the leadoff hitter, and Hayden Ward getting the r.b.i.s — Ward driving in two with a double — made it 6-1 in the bottom of the fourth, after which Uihlein’s came back with three runs of its own in the bottom half, Patrick Silich and Jim McMullan driving in two of them.

Smith set the Masons down in the bottom of the fifth, inducing Pfund to fly out, Lightcap to ground out, and, after Aposian had singled, Palomo to fly out.

Erica Silich, the ninth hitter, led off Uihlein’s sixth with a single, a slow roller that Wojtusiak could not make a play on. Smith then hit a grounder to Hayden Ward at third, but Sonny Sireci, Marcello’s second baseman, dropped Ward’s throw at second base, allowing Silich to alight safely. Austin Bahns drew a walk, loading the bases with no outs. 

A subsequent sacrifice fly by Anthony Daunt plated his wife, after which a hit by Steve Bahns tied it up. Trying also to score on the play, Austin Bahns was cut down at the plate, but Patrick Silich, with two outs and Steve Bahns on second, drove the latter in with the go-ahead run. Andy Silich, Pat and Erica’s father, and the Bahns brothers’ uncle (not to mention Anthony Daunt’s father-in-law), popped out to Hayden Ward, ending the inning, but Uihlein’s, as aforesaid, had grabbed the lead, at 7-6.

Then, as also aforesaid, the roof fell in. With the bases loaded and one out, Ward tied it up with a hard base hit. Thorsen returned the lead to Marcello’s with a sac fly, after which Pfund drove in another with a long double to left-center that hit off the fence. An error by Daunt at shortstop allowed Marcello’s 10th run to score. Acosian, with his third hit of the night, Palomo, as the result of another error by Daunt, and Wojtusiak, as the result of a dribbler that went unclaimed, upped the margin even further, to 13-7. 

Marcello’s wasn’t done yet, however. John Ward, the first baseman (and Hayden’s father), drove in two runs, for 15-7, and Ferraro knocked in one more, effectively putting the game out of reach at 16-7. 

The bases were loaded and two were out when Austin Bahns came to the plate in Uihlein’s last at-bat, but Thorsen, who was playing in shallow right, easily gathered in Bahns’s line drive that was hit right to him.

“We match up pretty well,” the elder Silich said afterward. “We’ll get them next year.”

Marcello’s got to the final by soundly defeating the Corner Bar (Rob Nicoletti’s team) in one of the semifinals, benefiting from “four or five home runs,” according to Silich. Uihlein’s bested McGuire’s Landscaping 10-6 in the other semifinal.

State Swim Meet Results

Craig Brierley took five swimmers with him to Ithaca College to compete in the state girls swimming meet this past weekend, and later reported that “they all continued to swim at their best times and there were even a few lifetime bests — a testament to their hard work and belief in themselves.”

The 200 medley relay team of Julia Brierley, Jane Brierley, Sophia Swanson, and Oona Foulser placed 13th. The same quartet, though with Foulser leading off and Jane Brierley, Julia Brierley, and Swanson following, placed 24th in the 200 freestyle relay; Jane Brierley, an eighth grader, placed 25th in the 100 breaststroke, and Swanson placed 33rd in the 100 butterfly, in a personal best time of 59.25 seconds. 

Darcy McFarland made the trip too, as a relay alternate. “Even though she didn’t compete, she proved to be a valuable asset by supporting her teammates in all their events,” the elder Brierley said. Only Foulser, who’s a senior, will not return next fall.

Turkey Runs Are Today

Three and six-mile Runs for Fun sponsored by East Hampton Town’s Recreation Department are to be held at the Circle in Montauk at 10 a.m. today, with check-in at the Chamber of Commerce building from 8 to 9:30.

The prediction earlier in the week was for a cold, sunny day. There were 688 finishers in last year’s three-miler, 84 in the six — a record turnout, which caused the start time to be pushed back 15 or so minutes. Dylan Fine won the three-miler, in 15:38.4, and Tim Rossi won the six-miler, for the fourth straight year, in 32:19.2.

November 4, 1993

The East Hampton High School field hockey team won its first county Class C championship Friday, shutting out Southampton 1-0, and followed up with the C-D title Tuesday by a like score over Pierson-Shelter Island. The team will face Miller Place, the county’s pre-eminent team, in the small schools final at 2:30 this afternoon at the Southampton High School field.

. . . Ellamae Gurney came up big for the Bonackers in the county C game with Southampton. Early in the second half, Heather McCormack, the right inner, passed the ball to Gurney at right wing. Beating about six defenders, Gurney moved the goalie out of position and slammed a shin-high shot into the left corner of the cage.

. . . Bridget Behan, East Hampton’s top scorer with 13 goals, was pretty well marked by Southampton, but she wasn’t to be denied in Tuesday’s C-D title game. In that one, Behan, the hard-playing left inner, pushed home the winning goal with just 19 seconds remaining to play.

Like her 26-year-old cousin Jenno before her, Gretchen Topping, of Swan Creek Farms in Bridgehampton, will ride in the National Horse Show at the Meadowlands on Sunday, her 18th birthday.

During a brief stretch this summer, Gretchen, who rode at the National show last year, managed to qualify for all but one of the four major indoor shows. She won three Maclay and four Medal equitation competitions, and placed fourth nationally in the P.H.A. class on a borrowed dark bay thoroughbred, Nyatross. She admits her mount, who she said was “more like a dog than a horse,” will be hard to give up at the end of the season.

November 11, 1993

Playing very close to perfection, the East Hampton High School field hockey team made its fans forget Saturday’s gloomy skies by smashing Sachem 5-0 in the county championship game at Southampton High School.

It was the first time an East Hampton hockey team ever won a county championship, and the first time an East Hampton team accomplished the feat since girls tennis did in 1980.

The Bonackers, who have been on a roll for the past month, got to the final by scoring a tremendous upset on the same field last Thursday, defeating the odds-on favorite, Miller Place, thanks to Ellamae Gurney’s goal in the second half.

Gurney, whose sister Francie played on the 1980 county-champion tennis team, shared most valuable player honors with Bonac’s sophomore goalie, Erika Vargas. Vargas withstood a pounding throughout the second half, and was credited with 19 saves, a number of them spectacular. The shutout earned her a share of Dawn Da Costa Faro’s 14-shutout school record, set in 1989, a year East Hampton lost the county championship game to Sachem, 3-2.

Vargas broke the record Saturday as her teammates, playing probably the best hockey ever seen here, dominated the Class A champion. Together, they virtually breezed to the county title.

Thursday, November 22

RUNNING, Town Recreation Department 3 and 6-mile Turkey Day Runs for Fun, the Circle, Montauk, 10 a.m., check-in at Montauk Chamber of Commerce, 8-9:30.

Saturday, November 24

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at multi-team scrimmage, Mattituck High School, 10 a.m.

Monday, November 26

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Hampton Bays, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Tuesday, November 27

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at multi-team scrimmage, Center Moriches High School, 5:30 p.m.

Wednesday, November 28

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 league, championship match, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 7 p.m.

Frank Ackley, who last was heard from a year ago, phoned the other day to say he and a doubles partner with whom he’d been playing for the first time had made it to the semifinals of the United States Tennis Association’s clay court championships recently in New Orleans.

“A lot of these guys, that’s all they do, travel from one tournament to another,” Ackley, who lives in Springs and will turn 70 on Feb. 12, said on his return. “They all played on the circuit when they were younger.”

Considering that he and his partner, Rollin Rhone, a Southern Californian, were unseeded in this tournament, one of four U.S.T.A. “majors,” the others being the national hard courts, national grass courts, and national indoors, they’d done exceedingly well, said Ackley, who was helped in getting ready for it at the East Hampton Tennis Club by Gary Clermont, the pro, and by Bob Kouffman and Vince Horcasitis.

The 32-draw tournament, played at “the oldest tennis club in the country,” drew what the tournament director said was a surprising number of top-notch teams, “the best of the best, the top five ranked singles players and the top five ranked doubles teams in the country. . . . If you don’t get your first serve in and you have a weak second serve, you’ll eat it every time.”

“We complement each other well,” he continued. “Rollin, I call him Double R, is laid back and I’m kind of fiery. We won our first match 6-1, 6-0, against guys from Pennsylvania and Florida. The guy from Florida won two rounds in the singles. We played guys from Louisiana and Toronto in the second round and beat them 6-2, 6-1. We beat the fourth-seeded team, a guy from Georgia, the other from Mississippi, in the quarters, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5. That three-hour match was played under the lights, we were the only ones on, and we played before a huge crowd. Judy [Soman, his partner] was there, friends from Florida. . . .”

“We finally got up 5-4 with Rollin serving. He went up 40-0, but we lost the next five points in a row. It was back and forth after that until we got a break and I held for 7-5.”

Ackley and Rhone’s semifinal opponents were the top seeds, Phil Landauer of Ohio and Tom Smith of Georgia, and they played like it, he said. “They beat us 6-3, 6-4 . . . they were a better team, they went on to win the tournament. Playing tournaments is all they do.”

Still, it had been a good showing, Ackley said, the best he’d done in one of the U.S.T.A.’s major tournaments, “with all the big boys. Doing what we did showed us that we can play with the top guys. . . . I really enjoy beating the seeded guys. They come on like peacocks and go back to the club like parakeets.”

He would have to add some speed to his kick serve, Ackley concluded. He’d been broken twice and his partner three times in the semifinal match. And he would “have to work on [his] conditioning for sure. . . . I’m not used to playing that much.”

Asked what he’d been doing recently when it came to conditioning, he replied, “I’ve been getting up from the couch and walking to the fridge.”

It’s not the first time Ackley’s said that in addition to tennis he should work out more. After reaching the quarterfinals at the national clay courts last year, with another partner, he said he would try to get himself into fighting shape over the winter, most of which he and Soman spend in Melbourne, Fla.

“If you’re not in shape,” he said at the time, “you begin sucking air after the first couple of games and your game drops — you start going for winners, hitting riskier shots, and that’s not my style.”

Nick West, a former East Hampton High School soccer star, scored his 25th and 26th goals of the season Sunday as Messiah College, for which he plays, defeated Johns Hopkins 2-0 in a second-round National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III playoff game.

These were the first goals in four games for the East Hampton striker, who earlier in the season scored in 15 straight games (smashing a Messiah record and tying a national D-III one), a span during which he was not only D-III’s high-scorer, but the high-scorer in the nation no matter the division, a category in which he continues to contend.

“Nick’s a team player,” Don McGovern, one of his coaches here, said over the weekend. “When he’s double-teamed he passes off.”

West had two assists in a 5-0 shutout of Baruch College in the first round. Messiah, whose record stands at 16-0-3, and the State University at Cortland are to play a third-round match Saturday.

The Old Montauk Athletic Club was expected to receive about $5,000 from the proceeds of Saturday’s Brewathlon relay race in Montauk, a rowing, biking, running, rowing contest that originally was to have taken place at the Montauk Brewery on Oct. 27.

“It rained that day and rained again the next Saturday,” said the race director, Caroline Cashin, who, as a result, lost 10 of the 33 teams she’d initially signed up — the same number as last year. 

“Everybody looks forward to it,” she said of the Brewathlon. “It’s fun and challenging, though you don’t have to train all that hard. The distances are sprint distances. You go out hard and maintain.”

This year, she said, “We required that all the teams have two women, which, while it may have slowed the times a little bit, made it more competitive.”

As was the case last year, Neil Falkenhan’s Cobra Command team won, though it repeated without the help of Mike Bahel, who was jettisoned in favor of a female biker, Natalia Woodward.

“I won the first row,” Neil Falkenhan said, “but by the time of the run we’d dropped to fourth. Drew [Falkenhan, his brother] made it all up on the run, and Sara [Colletti, an East End Row instructor in Southampton] held on for the win,” in one hour, seven minutes, and two seconds.

“I can’t breathe,” Colletti said after getting up from the rowing machine and walking over to the curb, where she sat down.

(It was said that Neil Falkenhan’s 5,000-meter row time was only 18 seconds shy of the world record in his age group.)

Before the Brewathlon began, Sinead FitzGibbon, when asked if she’d brought down “any ringers from Maine,” as she has in the past, said, “No, but I do have one from Massachusetts who’s won two golds and a silver in world championships.”

FitzGibbon was referring to Jill Hathaway of Amherst, who was in 2015 the United States rowing masters champion, and who, in 1989, was the National Collegiate Athletic Association champion in that sport. 

With Hathaway leading off, and with Dan Roberts biking the 15K (9.3-mile) course, FitzGibbon running the 5K, and Ed Cashin finishing up with a 2,500-meter ergometer row, the Truth Training team wound up losing by 26 seconds to Cobra Command.

Bahel’s Silver Fox team was third, in 1:08.33. Blood, Sweat and Beers was fourth, in 1:08.38, and the top 10 was rounded out by OMAC (1:09.30), Montauk Brewery 2 (1:10.06), Railway Fitness (1:11.41), Don’t Be a Baby A (1:11.52), Team Kipper (1:11.53), and Don’t Be a Baby B (1:12.23).

Jon Jamet’s 15:47 was the day’s fastest bike time. John Broich’s 16:42 was the second fastest, after which came Mike Monahan (16:53), Jacques Franey (17:03), Roberts (17:03), Bobby Reich (22:40), and Kat Weill (25:20).

Asked about the recent New York marathon, which she ran for the first time, in 3:21, FitzGibbon said, “It’s as epic as ever. There’s no more exciting race than the New York marathon. . . . My secret weapon was that I slept nine to 10 hours going into it. I felt like a 28-year-old! I thought the wheels would fall off, but they never did.”

Beth Feit, one of FitzGibbons’s half- dozen Truth Training training partners, had been, by contrast, too keyed up, and consequently had suffered from “an adrenaline crash” coming out onto First Avenue from the 59th Street Bridge.

“This [5K] was hard, but better than the marathon!” said Feit a while later, confessing that she’d been “overconfident” going into New York, and had thus let her mind lead her astray. She would run a better race the next time, she said. Meanwhile, she was proud to say she, despite “hitting the wall” early on, had finished.

Henrika Conner of OMAC, when asked who the club’s honorees would be at its holiday dinner at the Palm restaurant on Dec. 3, said the list included Dan Farnham, as its male athlete of the year, Angelika Cruz, as its female athlete of the year, Ryan Fowkes, as its male youth athlete of the year, Rebecca Kuperschmid, as its female youth athlete of the year, and Ethan McCormac, as the first recipient of the William A. O’Donnell youth swimming award. The latter three are to receive $1,000 grants.

Billy O’Donnell, who died recently, at the age of 69, is to receive the Founders Award posthumously.

The second leg of what has come to be known as Montauk’s Grand Prix, the 3.3-mile Dock race, attracted more than 220 entrants Sunday, a record. The entries included scooters, skateboards, baby strollers, bicycles of all sizes, and dogs of all sizes.

Last year’s winner, Armann Gretarsson, was there, as was Ryan Fowkes, the East Hampton High School senior who won the Dock race two years ago. (The high school’s cross-country teams were in Rochester last year at this time, at the state meet.)

Fowkes said before the race began at the Montauk Post Office that he had “underperformed” in the state Class B race at Sunken Meadow State Park the day before, an incentive presumably to do well Sunday, which he did, finishing far ahead of the runner-up, Brian Marciniak, and the rest of the field, in 19 minutes and 30 seconds. (Fowkes’s winning time in 2016 was 20:04.)

“It’s longer than a 5K, isn’t it?” Marciniak was to say later, as a large crowd was gathered outside the Dock, many with glasses of beer that George Watson and his son Chris had provided gratis to the adult finishers.

“We hit a downhill with about a mile to go, and he took off,” Marciniak said of the winner. “The wind was in our faces . . . I felt like I was running into the wind the whole time. I thought it was longer than a 5K. You could really feel it in that extra two-tenths of a mile. . . .”

Kevin Barry, Fowkes’s coach, said in discussing the state meet that “the Class B race was the fastest of the day. They went out really fast, and Ryan got caught up in it. But while he’s run better times, he had a great season, and he led his team to a great season,” second to Westhampton Beach in the county Class B meet. “He did a great job.”

Fowkes, by the way, is to be honored as the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s male youth athlete of the year at its holiday dinner on Dec. 3.

Two East Hampton High School girls cross-country runners, Ava Engstrom (who had finished in the top half of Saturday’s state Class B race, bettering her seeding by five spots) and Bella Tarbet, who are sophomores, were third and fourth on Sunday, and Dylan Cashin, a seventh grader who is expected to join Engstrom and Tarbet on the varsity soon, was seventh.

Gretarsson, a Hither Hills lifeguard who sports a red beard, had said before the race began that he hadn’t been running seriously lately (though he’d just finished an hour and a half of mountain biking). He was sixth. 

When last seen, at the Dock last year, he said he wasn’t sure whether he’d head north to Vancouver or south to Mexico once having seen Yosemite. He had gone south, to Baja, he replied when questioned Sunday, adding that he’d surfed in Donegal, Ireland, last month, and would surf in Iceland through December before heading to Puerto Rico for more surfing.

“The surf in Donegal was spectacular, though the people were the main attraction,” Gretarsson said. “The stone buildings were super old, and the bartenders were pretty ancient too. The people there know everything about their history. . . .”

Liam Fowkes, Ryan’s younger brother, a seventh grader, asserted, in reply to a question, that Bill Herzog, who first announced his retirement in 2009, had really and truly done so this year. Nick Finazzo, he said, was now the East Hampton Middle School’s cross-country coach.

“Nick’s been doing a great job,” said Barry, who had a dozen freshmen this fall on his team, which, with 25 on the roster, was his biggest squad ever.

Further concerning the state meet, Barry said Kal Lewis, a Shelter Island junior, had repeated as the state’s Class D champion, distancing himself from the top seed, “the freshman phenom from Beaver River,” Colton Kempney, on the down slope of Sunken Meadow’s dreaded Cardiac Hill.

Sunken Meadow’s second mile, leading up to the top of Cardiac, was the toughest cross-country mile he knew of, said Barry, “though the last mile, which is all on the flat, is the easiest.”

Lewis said in an interview after his Sunken Meadow win that he intends to run next in the Nike Northeast regionals in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., on Nov. 24, and, should he qualify, at the Nike nationals in Portland, Ore., on Dec. 1. To run in the Nike nationals had been a dream of his, he said, since ninth grade.

George Watson, who began overseeing a trio of October running, cycling, and rowing races in the 1970s (so he could be crowned the winner of all of them), was at the finish line, handing out slips to the adults and kids attesting to their placements, the last race director presumably to eschew computer chips. Those races faded away eventually, though Chris Watson revived the road race, which benefits Montauk’s senior citizen nutrition center, in 2010.

Friday, November 16

GIRLS SWIMMING, East Hampton qualifiers at New York State meet, Ithaca College, from 8 a.m., also Saturday.

Sunday, November 18

MEN’S SOCCER, Suffolk over-30 league, S.F.C. Newcastle vs. Hampton United, Hampton Bays High School, 2:30 p.m.

Thursday, November 22

RUNNING, Town Recreation Department 3 and 6-mile Runs for Fun, Montauk Circle, 10 a.m., check-in from 8 to 9:30.

The East Hampton High School girls volleyball team, which had cruised through league play undefeated this fall, at 12-0, and which seemed poised to win the county’s Class A championship and possibly go upstate for the first time since 2009, was dealt a cruel blow here Monday by fifth-seeded Kings Park, a well-balanced team like the Bonackers, but one that in the end that afternoon made fewer mistakes.

As result of the Kingswomen’s 25-23, 25-17, 19-25, 23-25, 25-13 win, they are to face Westhampton Beach, a team that East Hampton beat handily twice this season, for the county Class A championship at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood this afternoon. The Hurricanes on Monday defeated Eastport-South Manor in three straight. Kings Park, with a 10-2 record, its losses having come at the hands of Eastport-South Manor, had finished as the runner-up to the 12-0 Sharks in League V. Tonight’s winner is to play the Nassau County Class A champion in the Long Island championship game at Farmingdale State College on Sunday.

The visitors announced their intentions right away as their setter, Carly Estherson, began the match with an ace that Zoe Leach couldn’t handle, and went on to rack up four more points, the last another ace to Leach. Finally, a kill by Mikela Junemann, Bonac’s chief hitting threat, stopped the bleeding, but only temporarily as a double-contact call on East Hampton turned the ball over to Lauren Weir, whose subsequent ace, upping Kings Park’s lead to 7-1, prompted Kathy McGeehan, East Hampton’s veteran coach, to call for a timeout.

In short order, East Hampton found itself in a 12-2 hole, leaving its fans, unused to such a turn of events, wondering if the team could come back. Which, indeed, it did, with Molly Mamay, Erin Decker, Ella Gurney, and Elle Johnson succeeding one another at the service line. 

With the latter, East Hampton’s setter, serving, Weir hit long in going for a kill, after which came a double-contact call, bringing the Bonackers to within three, at 16-13. Moments later, thanks to a solo block at the middle of the net by Gurney, it was 19-17.

McGeehan called another timeout after Amanda Alongi served an ace that Decker couldn’t handle for 21-17. A kill by Madyson Neff when play resumed put the ball in East Hampton’s hands again. Johnson had a good chance to make it 21-19, but erred in trying to tip the ball over the net. A long kill attempt by McKenna Knott narrowed the margin to three again, but a serve by Neff landed just beyond the baseline.

East Hampton, thanks to two kills by Junemann, the first through a double block, an ace by Gurney, and an error by Alyssa Sticco, tied it at 23, raising the home team’s fans’ hopes immensely. 

But it was not to be as Gurney, who, after serving, slid flat out in an unavailing attempt to dig a soft tip over the heads of two teammates, and as Estherson capped the 25-23 win with a hard kill that Neff touched on its way out of bounds.

The second set began much more favorably as Neff notched five winning points before the visitors sided out, but Kings Park, to the chagrin of Bonac’s fans, came right back, taking the lead at 7-6 and ultimately extending it again to 10 points, at 21-11 — a span during which the visitors benefited from a number of East Hampton miscues, including service errors by Johnson, Junemann, and Neff, an ace that Mamay let sail by her, thinking it was headed out, and hitting errors by Neff, Gurney, and Junemann, a team effort, in other words.

A kill by Estherson from midcourt capped the 25-17 win, which put East Hampton at the brink. 

Happily, McGeehan’s crew rebounded, with a 25-19 win, closed out by Johnson’s tip over two blockers, and with a 25-23 victory, which Neff assured with a resounding kill. 

A netted serve by Gurney, an error at the net by Johnson, and an ace to Mamay got the Bonackers off on the wrong foot as the decisive set began, and Kings Park was largely unheaded thereafter. 

When the teams switched sides, the Kingswomen were up 13-8, and soon were leading 15-8 owing to errant kill attempts by Junemann and Nicole Realmuto, one of East Hampton’s middle hitters. Realmuto soon atoned with a tip to the floor, but East Hampton continued to make what in tennis would be called “unforced errors” on its way to a 25-13 loss that sent Kings Park home a winner.

Later, McGeehan said that Kings Park had put more pressure on her players than they had put on Kings Park. Consequently, she said, “We weren’t comfortable the whole night. We were always struggling with our passing and, when it came to our middle hitters, who usually are a big part of our offense, somewhat out of sync. In retrospect, we probably should have set Mikela more on the outside. . . . Kings Park has playoff experience; they’ve been to the states. If we’d had a first-round game, instead of a bye, and had won that, it might have given us the confidence boost that we needed. Even in those sets that we won we ground it out — we were never comfortable.”

This year’s edition, she added, was at least the seventh in her 38-year career that had gone through league play undefeated. “Ninety-six, 2002, ’03, ’04, ’09, 2010, ’18 . . . and maybe ’85 and ’92. . . .