Six days a week, at her Epic Martial Arts studio in Sag Harbor, Sensei Michelle Del Giorno challenges and urges on numerous Rock Steady Boxing students of hers who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease — hard-charging 75-minute Parkinson’s-specific workouts that would test the stamina of most anyone.

Sarah Cohen, a physical therapist who a year and a half ago persuaded Stony Brook Southampton Hospital to oversee through a Center for Parkinson’s Disease various programs, including boxing, tai chi, dance, singing, and Parrish Art Museum projects aimed at ameliorating the motor and nonmotor symptoms of the disease, said during a recent session at Epic Martial Arts that “there’s been an explosion of research looking into the impact of exercise when it comes to Parkinson’s, and it’s been found that exercise can certainly slow the progression of the disability,” the hallmark symptoms of which include tremors, balance impairment, and rigidity.

“And the other part of this community-based wellness program,” Cohen added, “and just as important, is the sense of community, the mutual support that develops.”

The program Cohen first proposed has grown greatly. There are boxing sessions, as well, under Seth Greiner at the Ed and Phyllis Davis Wellness Institute in Hampton Bays. “There are over 30 there,” said Cohen, “and we now have over 50 in Sag Harbor alone. We also have tai chi, eight-week semesters that rotate between Hampton Bays and the Riverhead Library. Plus, we have a therapeutic course, Sing Out Loud, at the Southampton Arts Center, dance classes run by the Hampton Ballet Theatre in Bridgehampton, and monthly art projects at the Parrish Art Museum. They take private gallery tours, and, after a box lunch, reflect on what they’ve seen in multimedia projects. The center is also going to do a once-a-month seminar at the South Fork History Museum in Bridgehampton. The hospital is sponsoring all of these programs, it has shown incredible support, but we’re always looking for donors.”

Cohen said that “boxing’s the largest, with over 80 participants. We have 28 in tai chi, which is done through a grant that Stony Brook University’s department of health received. We have 23 in the singing group with Valerie DiLorenzo. . . .”

“Some are shy at first,” said Sensei Del Giorno, who’s been teaching martial arts for 30 years and has been certified as an instructor by Rock Steady Boxing, which she said has 600 affiliates worldwide. “They’ll say, ‘Boxing? I’ve never punched anybody in my life. . . .’ But the camaraderie of the group — everyone is so welcoming and supportive — helps them to come out of their shell, to take that first step. . . . We have had many who say they’ve gotten fantastic reports from their doctors, that they haven’t regressed any further. It does work.”

• RELATED: At the Y Too 

Laura Stein, who lives in Montauk and has exercised at the Body Tech fitness studios there and in Amagansett for the past 25 years, said before Friday’s Level 1-2 session that “it was like getting slugged” when she learned last February that she had Parkinson’s. 

Soon, though, she was punching, fighting back with Del Giorno, pushing herself, she said, in new ways, coordinating her mind and body through the demands exerted by footwork drills, five-step punching combinations, and body blows to the heavy bags.

Bonnie Katz, who first suspected Parkinson’s when her right hand began twitching as she was playing tennis at the East Hampton Indoor/Outdoor Club seven years ago, “continued playing for five years after I took a Parkinson’s test at the hospital, but two years ago, afraid of falling, I stopped. But I love this,” she said of the Rock Steady Boxing workouts.

“It’s inspiring,” said Stan Stokowski, who’s had Parkinson’s for six years. “Boxing is the primary thing I do, two days a week. It’s made me more confident and helped me with what I’m going through. Definitely it’s encouraged me. The camaraderie is great. Michelle, as you say, keeps us going.”

Jean Mellano, a former dancer, whose late husband, Steve Tarpinian, was a popular triathlon race director on Long Island and an internationally known swimming coach, comes to Sensei Del Giorno’s classes from Greenport two or three times a week. 

“Rock Steady Boxing has truly made a remarkable impact when it comes to improving the quality of my life,” she wrote recently on her blog, which deals with the disease. “Everyone I have met in these classes is determined to fight, none of them will let Parkinson’s disease get the best of them. In these 75-minute classes we work on our stamina, strength, speed, cognitive skills, and balance. . . . It is like a group physical therapy session with the bonus of mental therapy.”

“We all have our moments of despair, when we’re reminded of what we’ve lost to this disease,” Mellano has written, “but we celebrate each other’s triumphs, no matter how insignificant they may seem to the casual observer. . . . Seeing the beaming smiles of my fellow boxers’ faces bolsters my spirit.”

Kristin King Davey, one of a number of Del Giorno’s volunteers, including Michael Green, Panadda Tumino, Rita Gates, and Antoine Waldo (one of Del Giorno’s martial arts colleagues), said her father, Kelly King, who was diagnosed 11 years ago, had been “helped tremendously, physically and mentally, by these workouts, and the community support is wonderful.”

“They’re apprehensive when they first start,” said Gates, “but as they get stronger and more confident, they find they’re doing things they never thought they could do — they open up more. And the camaraderie is very good. They all cheer for one another and push each other.”

There was always a need for more volunteers, Gates added, especially to help people with more advanced symptoms in the Level 3-4 sessions. 

When Sensei Del Giorno called upon her dozen attendees last Thursday morning to say, one after another, what Rock Steady Boxing signified to them, she heard: “A community working together.” “Motivation — it gets me out of the house, and it works!” “It keeps me going.” “Inspiration — it keeps me fighting, and the camaraderie, I didn’t realize that it would be so powerful.” It’s changed my life — I feel stronger.” “I am feeling better — I can do more.” “Shoulders to lean on.” “It actually works! It’s amazing . . . I see that in all of you.”

“Okay,” said Del Giorno, “get the gloves on.”

Stein said during a break that when a friend of hers professed interest in joining the group, she said she’d told her, “Sorry, you have to have Parkinson’s first.”

Kai Costanzo had been planning to do the Serpent’s Back Duathlon’s relay with his cousin, but the latter was a no-show at Ed Ecker County Park in Montauk Sunday morning, so Costanzo ran, biked, and ran his way to the win in 1 hour, 25 minutes, and 36 seconds, a time that compared favorably — perhaps very favorably inasmuch as the bike leg, billed as 12 miles, was long, most everyone said — with the 1:34 Chris Daily of Farmingdale did last year.

It was a satisfying win for Costanzo, whose stores in Montauk and Key West, Fla., sell his Kai-Kai sandals along with other gear for surfers and beachgoers. He arrived at the duathlon in a truck, the driver’s side of which had been singed in a fire at the Key West building he owns following Hurricane Maria a year ago.

He had been in Moab, Utah, his favorite mountain-biking spot, when he learned of it, he said, thinking at first that the fire had consumed a building whose lease he’d been trying to get out of. No, the caller said, cutting his celebration short, it was the other building, the one he owned, that had burned down. It’s being rebuilt now, he was happy to say.

All one heard in the woods on the mountain-bike leg was labored breathing, he said, so he, partly as a psychological tactic and partly owing to the fact that he would rebuild in Key West, was impelled to sing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” as he pedaled along.

Nick Wetzel’s and James McGroarty’s relay had the day’s fastest time, a 1:18:06.

Costanzo, 36, still holds the Montauk Lighthouse Sprint record, at 1:00:11, which he set as a 21-year-old in 2001. It was his first triathletic win, one that he dedicated to his mother, who had in the year before received a liver transplant that was to add 18 years to her life.

When this writer noticed some blood on John Broich’s arm at the gathering in Rod’s Valley afterward, Broich, who was last year’s Old Montauk Athletic Club’s athlete of the year, said he’d only fallen once.

Ditto Dan Ingegno, a 74-year-old from Yaphank who has done the 15-year-old Serpent’s Back Duathlon “every year but one.”

Ingegno was the eldest of the some 36 intrepid competitors. Dylan Cashin, at 12, who formed a relay team with her mother, Caroline, was the youngest. But when Dylan arrived at the transition area following the first 2.3-mile run, her mother, who was to set forth on a mountain bike, was nowhere to be seen. 

She had been, as it turned out, chasing down the Cashins’ 5-year-old son, Connor, who, as participants were washing down bagels and bananas with beer afterward, claimed he’d been “hiking.” 

Dylan, a seventh grader who runs on Nick Finazzo’s East Hampton Middle School cross-country team, recently ran a 1.5-mile course in 10:25, which augurs well for Diane O’Donnell’s high school squad, which is being led this fall by two 10th graders, Ava Engstrom and Bella Tarbet.

The high school’s boys cross-country coach, Kevin Barry, was the first to register for the duathlon, in June, but a trip to a large regional high school cross-country race for boys and girls in Orlando, Fla., this past weekend, intervened.

The Old Montauk Athletic Club, which benefited from the duathlon, helped to underwrite the air travel and hotel costs for seven boys and seven girls as the result of its sponsorship — along with East Hampton’s Rotary Club — of the Montauk Mile this past summer.

“We had fun down there,” Barry said on the teams’ return. East Hampton’s boys, he said, led by Ryan Fowkes’s 16:53, a personal best, placed third among the 15 schools vying in a division comprising the meet’s second-smallest schools.

Fowkes had been fourth over all. The other Bonac boys to score, all of them registering personal bests, were Frank Bellucci, a junior, in 19:11, Manny Vilar, a sophomore, in 19:19, Joshua Vazquez, a freshman, in 19:22, and Aidan Kalman, also a freshman, in 19:37.

Barry has a dozen freshmen on his squad, including Evan Masi, usually the team’s number-two runner, who did not make the trip, and Luke Brunn and Hector Maldonado, who also did not go. Nor did Ethan McCormac, a senior, who was taking SAT tests.

He would enter all the freshmen, Barry said, in the freshman race at this weekend’s Manhattan College invitational at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, “the largest cross-country invitational in the country. There will be 8,000 runners there.”

“They’ve yet to lose,” he added. “They won the Peconic and Jim Smith invitationals. We’ll see how they do at Van Cortlandt.”

East Hampton’s girls had also fared well in Florida, said Barry. “Ava was third over all, in 20:13, a P.R., and Bella was 15th, in 21:34, which also was a P.R. The team finished eighth among 12 schools.” East Islip was the only other school from the Island there, he said, although the Pierson (Sag Harbor) girls team also made the trip. “Most of them were from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana. . . . It was a short trip — we left Thursday and were back here Saturday afternoon. There wasn’t any time for rides and things.”

The boys team as of Monday was 2-2 in league meets. The girls team was 1-3.

Nick West, who, had he not suffered a broken foot in a semifinal win, would have provided East Hampton High School’s boys soccer team with considerably more firepower in its 2014 state final versus Rochester’s Greece Athena, which the Bonackers lost 4-2, has been the collegiate men’s soccer scoring leader — that’s D-III, D-II, and D-I — in the nation this fall.

A senior at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pa., winner of 11 national Division III championships, West plays target, or the striker position, now, and has been averaging almost two goals a game, though as was made evident in a telephone conversation Monday, he’s not really keeping track.

Likewise, he’s not thinking too far ahead when it comes to Messiah’s possibly winning back-to-back national championships or about possibly playing professionally some day. 

Messiah’s coach, Brad McCarty, said in an email Friday that he’s most impressed by “the percentage of shots that he puts on goal. Many targets put around 25 percent of their shots on goal, but Nick, who can receive the ball with his back to the goal, is currently 44-for-63, for a shots-on-goal percentage of 69.8.”

The college’s gomessiah.com website has numerous videos in which he appears prominently, including one from earlier in the season in which he netted a hat trick.

West scored his 19th goal in Saturday’s Middle Atlantic Conference game with Albright, on a through ball in the 54th minute. His was one of four goals the Falcons scored that night on the way to a shutout win. It was McCarty’s 200th victory as Messiah’s head coach.

Rich King, West’s coach when he was a student here, who now coaches East Hampton High’s golf team, said that while it was tremendous that the former Bonacker led the nation in scoring, he, frankly, wasn’t surprised. As for his playing professionally some day — it’s an ambition that his mother, Kristen Tulp, harbors for him — “I think Nick can do anything he sets his mind on doing.”

West was the national tournament’s most valuable offensive player last year. His older brother, Brandon, who now coaches the women’s soccer team at Eastern University in Philadelphia, has two national championship rings, dating to Messiah’s 2013 and ’14 seasons. “Nick’s hoping to tie him,” Tulp said during a conversation Friday at the John M. Marshall Elementary School, where she teaches.

Tulp, who used to drive her son to frequent travel team practices and games in Nassau County, has gone to just about all of her son’s games, most of which are played throughout the state of Pennsylvania. “I’ll be bored next year,” she said, with a laugh.

As for his being the nation’s scoring leader, “It’s quite an accomplishment, and he’s not even done yet.” Five conference games remained for the Falcons as of Monday, after which come the MAC playoffs. The team was 10-0-2 as of earlier this week.

“He’s hoping to go pro,” she said, in answer to a question, “but he’s very humble and won’t say it out loud. There’ve been some people there at his games.”

His older brother was “thrilled beyond belief,” she added. 

When this writer mentioned the broken foot — obviously healed long ago — his mother said, “That wasn’t all — in his sophomore year he broke his arm in a go-kart accident that severed his radial nerve. He’s got titanium in it. Randi [Cherill, East Hampton High’s former trainer] put him back together. . . . He’s risen above a few challenges.”

“Nick has been a standard-bearer for his work ethic since he arrived here as a freshman, and continues to provide this team with leadership both on and off the field,” McCarty said in the aforementioned email. “He was integral to our N.C.A.A. Division III national championship run last year, with 14 goals and seven assists. He was named the Final Four’s offensive most valuable player. This fall we moved him from left wing to target, and he has been tremendous. With his [18th] goal last night he broke a Messiah College record by scoring in nine straight games.”

East Hampton High’s girls volleyball and swimming teams continued undefeated in league competition this past week, one in which the field hockey team won three in a row, the boys and girls soccer teams won twice, the golf team, avenging itself on Westhampton Beach at the South Fork Country Club, might have played itself into a three-way share of the League VIII title, and the boys volleyball team won for the first time this season.

Kathy McGeehan, in reporting on the girls volleyball team’s latest win, on Monday at Rocky Point, said, when this writer asked where the state championship is to be played, “Glens Falls, but we’re trying not to get ahead of ourselves.”

The team, 8-0 in league play as of Monday, celebrated the beginning of the second half of the season recently by beating Sayville for the second time this fall. This past weekend, with some regulars missing because they were taking SAT tests, East Hampton played in a high-powered tournament at Elwood-John Glenn, winning two from Harborfields, a fellow Class A school, splitting with Double-A Massapequa, losing two to AA Smithtown West, and, in the quarterfinal round, losing two to Holy Trinity.

“We fear no one, but respect everyone,” McGeehan said. “We’re trying to stay tough.”

East Hampton’s scores with Rocky Point were 25-14, 25-9, and 25-19.

The girls swimming team improved its League III record to 3-0 by virtue of a 93-68 win over West Babylon in Deer Park last Thursday, a meet in which Sophia Swanson, in the 200 freestyle, and Jane Brierley, in the 100 free, swam county-qualifying times.

The swimmers, the team’s coach, Craig Brierley, said in an emailed account, “continue to build on their racing skills, endurance, and mental toughness so they can be the best they can be when the championships roll around.”

The swimmer of the West Babylon meet was Corrina Castillo, “a wonderful addition to the team, in and out of the pool. The personal bests she had in the 50 free and in the 100 breaststroke were a testament to her hard work and dedication.”

The last regular-season meet for the girls is to be here, at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, next Thursday. As of Monday, Harborfields was also 3-0, so next Thursday’s meet could well be for the league championship.

Cara Nelson, in her second year as the girls soccer team’s coach, was happy to report Sunday that her team, which had started out at 0-4, now had a winning record, at 5-4-1 — a far cry from last fall’s 0-16 mark.

Nelson’s squad has won five of its last seven with one tie, with Southampton, in that skein. 

“We’re more organized now, playing the ball back and then up,” she said. 

Running onto a through pass from Alden Powers, the center midfielder, Asha Hokanson, beat a defender and sent a left-footed shot past the Center Moriches keeper midway through the second half of Friday’s game here, treating the Bonackers to the only goal they needed that afternoon.

It was yet another shutout for East Hampton’s goalie, Lucy Short, whom Nelson described as “the backbone of our team.”

Powers is a junior and Hokanson is a sophomore, as is Short and Paige Cordone, a wide-ranging defender. “We only have two seniors,” said the coach, who added that playoffs or no, “I’m so proud of this team.”

Two East Hampton tennis players, Rebecca Kuperschmid, the number-one, and Juliana Barahona, the number-two, are to play in the county individual tournament as the result of having advanced at least as far as the quarterfinal round in the division tourney that was played at Shoreham-Wading River High School this past week. Kuperschmid lost 4-6, 7-5, 6-0 in the division tourney’s semifinal round to Catelyn Stabile of Westhampton Beach; Barahona lost 6-2, 7-5 in the quarterfinals to Shoreham’s Catherine Erb.

In the golf team’s 6-3 win over Westhampton here last Thursday, Turner Foster and Nate Wright, the seniors who play one and two for Rich King’s team, each shot one-under 33s on the front nine at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett. It was the first loss for the Hurricanes and the seventh win for East Hampton vis-à-vis two losses.

Thursday, October 11

FIELD HOCKEY, East Hampton at Greenport-Southold, 4:30 p.m.

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

GIRLS SWIMMING, West Islip vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Westhampton Beach at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

Friday, October 12

GIRLS TENNIS, county singles tournament, rounds one and two, Shoreham-Wading River High School, noon.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 5 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Mattituck-Southold-Greenport, 6 p.m.

Saturday, October 13

CYCLING, I-Tri’s Hamptons (25 or 60-mile) Ride and Wine, Channing Daughters Winery, 1927 Scuttlehole Road, Bridgehampton, 8 a.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, county singles tournament, quarterfinal and semifinal rounds, Shoreham-Wading River High School, noon.

Monday, October 15

GIRLS TENNIS, county singles tournament, finals, Shoreham-Wading River High School, noon. 

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

FOOTBALL, East Hampton junior varsity at Greenport, scrimmage, 5 p.m.

Tuesday, October 16

GIRLS TENNIS, county team tournament, round-one matches, sites of higher seeds, 3 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, East Hampton at Harborfields, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Comsewogue, 5 p.m.

Wednesday, October 17

GIRLS TENNIS, county team tournament, second-round matches, sites of higher seeds, 3 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Amityville at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Islip, 5 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Hampton Bays, 6:30 p.m.

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 league, Hampton Construction vs. F.C. Tuxpan, 6:30 p.m.; Hamptons F.C.-Pool Shark vs. Tortorella Pools, 7:25, and Sag Harbor United vs. Maidstone Market, 8:20, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

BADMINTON, pickup games, Amagansett School, 7-9 p.m.

More than 1,500 athletes competed in long-distance road races and triathlons here this past weekend, a good one weather-wise.

Jordan Daniel of Westhampton Beach, Timothy Rossi of New York City, and Thomas Swindell of Baldwin were the winners of the Hamptons Marathon, Half-Marathon, and 5K in Southampton Saturday. 

Kira Garry of New York City and Montauk was the women’s winner (and 12th over all) in the half, Audrey Kelly of New York City was the women’s winner (and fifth over all) in the full, and Alychia Buchan of Holmdel, N.J., won among the women (and was fourth over all) in the 5K.

And in Montauk on Sunday, there were 546 finishers in the MightyMan Montauk Sprint, Olympic, and Half-Ironman races, the Half-Ironman’s winner, Matthew Raske, finishing in 4 hours, 23 minutes, and 3 seconds.

Most interesting, however, was the fact that the Sprint’s winner, Jim MacWhinnie, now in his mid-40s, was given little chance of surviving the multiple internal injuries he suffered nine years ago this December after a 330-gallon fuel oil tank he and his father were carrying down basement stairs landed on top of him.

The Water Mill physical trainer, who lives in Southampton, underwent half a  dozen major operations at the time, though you’d never know it now. He wasn’t the first over the line that day — Sean Hardick, the eventual runner-up, was — but MacWhinnie, who started in the third wave of the half-mile Fort Pond Bay swim, was declared the winner when the difference in start times was accounted for.

The swims had to be moved from Fort Pond to Fort Pond Bay this year because of the pond’s slightly high parts-per-million blue-algae counts Friday.

Absent the toxic plume, Tim Steiskal, the Olympic distance winner, said he would prefer swimming in the pond “because it’s calm and the water’s warmer.”

Chris Pfund of EventPower, which puts the end-of-the-season triathlons on, was reasonably satisfied with the way they’d played out despite the last-minute changes, which added somewhat to the bike courses.

He and some of the swimmers, including Steiskal and the Olympic race’s women’s winner, Hallie Nicoll, diverged a bit, however, when it came to describing the swim conditions.

“The water was choppy, brutal, but triathlons are supposed to be challenging,” said Steiskal, who also won the Robert J. Aaron memorial Olympic-distance triathlon in Montauk in June. Terry Bisogno, EventPower’s omniscient announcer, said it was Steiskal’s eighth win of the season. “He’s had a monster year,” Bisogno said. 

“It all comes down to how much energy you can expend while still holding it together,” the Patchogue Y’s membership director said. “Today, I found the magical combination. I was first out of the water and built up a heck of a lead on the bike. I was not about to lose this race!”

Like Steiskal, Nicoll also was a winner at the Robert J. Aaron triathlon in June. She had begun as a runner, she said in reply to a question, “but I’m a better triathlete than I ever was a runner. . . . The swim was hard for me — you couldn’t see the buoys, but the rest of it was great.”

She’d finished fourth, she said, in her age group (35 to 39) at the world half-Ironman championships in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, not long ago. “The swim there was in the Indian Ocean, but this was worse! At least the water here was warmer.”

Tommy Koehler, a former New York City policeman whose left leg ultimately had to be amputated because of a bullet wound, placed fifth in the Sprint, about a half-minute ahead of Mike Bahel, Body Tech’s owner. MacWhinnie and Koehler, who lives in Hampton Bays, train for endurance events together and also “grapple,” MacWhinnie said, “at Hamptons Jiu Jitsu in Southampton.”

With his graphite running leg, “I’m much faster,” said Koehler, who provides security on Plum Island these days.

There were a number of blind competitors that day also, including Charles Catherine, the French-born director of TriAchilles International, based in New York City. The Sprint’s eighth-place finisher, Catherine has said that arduous triathlon competitions are great confidence boosters for those who have lost their sight, or limbs, or who might be brain-injured or autistic.

The blind athletes, Rebecca Lindenbaum said, swam tethered to their guides, rode with them on tandem bikes, and ran tethered to their guides as well.

“We train twice a week in Central Park,” she said, adding that “anybody can be a guide.”

 Dick Traum, who founded the Achilles Track Club in 1983, had been, she said, the first amputee ever to finish a marathon (the New York City Marathon in 1976).

James Bradley, a seventh grader who was a welcome addition to East Hampton High School’s golf team this fall, recently advanced, through a regional qualifier on the Winged Foot course in Mamaroneck, to the national Drive, Chip, and Putt finals at the Augusta National Golf Club next April.

Similar to the National Football League’s Punt, Pass, and Kick competition, whose finals take place in January at the stadium of an N.F.L. team playing host to a playoff game, Drive, Chip, and Putt grew out of a United States Golf Association-Augusta National collaboration five years ago “to grow the game.”

Bradley, who is 12, won the regional 12-to-13 boys competition with relative ease, amassing 139 points over all vis-à-   vis two runners-up tied at 127.

Four young golfers represented the Met region, said Kevin Smith, who often plays rounds at Montauk Downs with Gina and Scott Bradley’s son. 

Asked later on the first fairway what his teacher had said he needed to work on, Bradley said, “Everything?” 

Not really. Smith had said, “Stability . . . balance.”

“I don’t talk to him about the golf swing,” the head pro said as he and James walked toward their first-hole tee shots, on what was a perfect day for golf. “Physical balance leads to mental balance — they’re intertwined.”

Smith, as has been the case with others, said that Bradley was “a hard worker and he’s a nice young man, very respectful of his elders and peers.”

The regional qualifier, contested by a dozen boys in Bradley’s group, began with three drives that in order to count had to stay within a 40-yard-wide area, and then moved on to three 20-or-so-yard chips toward a circular bull’s-eye target on a green. “I got 20 points on my first one, 15 on the second, and five on the third,” Bradley said.

Putts from 6, 15, and 20 feet closed out the competition. Bradley “drained the first, and came to within four inches on the second and third ones.”

“I’m proud of him,” said his father, who’d driven him to the Downs from their house in Springs. “He works very hard.”

James said he thought he would become better balanced when he grew more. “I’m small now, but when I’m bigger and stronger, it will be easier to hit.”

Smith said Bradley would be up against nine other regional qualifiers in the finals, on the 2019 Masters’ tournament’s first Sunday, April 7, a day in which he might well get to meet some of the contending pros.

“I know it’s his goal to win the Masters some day,” said Smith. “He’s working hard toward it.”

Asked about the high school’s team, whose coach is Rich King and whose record was 5-1 as of Monday (its sole loss having come at Westhampton Beach), Bradley said, “As long as we can beat Westhampton when they come to us, we’ll be all right.”

Turner Foster, the team’s number-one, the county champion two years ago, and Nate Wright, the number-two, both seniors, had greatly helped him and the two eighth graders, J.P. Amaden and Trevor Stachecki, when it has come to analyzing the courses on which they’ve been playing this fall.

Bradley plays number-three. J.P. Amaden, he said, was playing four, Zach Barzilay, a senior, five, and Stachecki six.

Westhampton Beach is to play here today at 4 p.m. at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett.

East Hampton High’s junior varsity football team gave pretty much as well as it got in Monday’s game here with Port Jefferson, which wound up a 28-20 winner as night was about to fall.

The Bonackers scored on their first possession, owing to a long run by Christian Johnson, to which Kevin Bunce Jr. tacked on 2 more points, but were held scoreless throughout the rest of the half.

Port Jefferson made it 14-8 six seconds before the break, thanks to a long touchdown reception, but midway through the third John Forrester, the free safety, intercepted the visitors’ quarterback and ran the ball back 30 yards to tie it at 14-14.

Following another long scoring pass play by Port Jeff, Danny Ortiz tied the count again, at 20-20, carrying the ball in from the 20 after Rene Criollo had recovered a fumble. 

A 58-yard hook-and-ladder play that ended at East Hampton’s 20 served to do the Bonackers in in the game’s final minutes as, with first-and-goal at Bonac’s three-yard line, the Royals’ quarterback dived into the end zone. He then passed for 2 more points, upping the visitors’ lead to 28-20 with 56 seconds remaining on the clock.

“It’s not over yet,” a Bonac parent was heard to call out in the gloaming. But it was.

In other high school sports action this past week, the girls swimming team improved to 2-0 in league meets by defeating Sayville 91-77; the girls volleyball team continued undefeated as the result of defeating Islip, Miller Place, and Sayville; the girls tennis team bageled Shoreham-Wading River 7-0 and edged Eastport-South Manor 4-3; the field hockey and girls soccer teams each won twice, while the boys soccer team lost twice, to Sayville and Islip, by 1-0 scores, and the boys volleyball team, which as of Monday had yet to win a match, lost 3-1 to West Islip.

The golfers, on Sept. 26, lost their first match of the season, 8-1, at the hands of Westhampton Beach, the home team that day. They’ll get a chance to avenge themselves this afternoon at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett.

Sophia Swanson was named swimmer of the Sayville meet last Thursday after having won the 200 individual medley and having swum legs on two winning relay teams. She placed third in the 100 butterfly, East Hampton’s coach, Craig Brierley, said, “even though her goggles filled with water, causing her to pull them off mid-swim.”

Julia Brierley, in the 50 freestyle, and Darcy McFarland, in the 100 backstroke, turned in county-qualifying times that day. As of Tuesday, seven of the team’s swimmers have turned in county-qualifying times.

Aside from Swanson, other Bonac individual winners at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter last Thursday were Oona Foulser, in the 50 and 100 freestyle races, and Jane Brierley, in the 100 backstroke. Two of East Hampton’s three relay teams won — Caroline Brown, Julia Brierley, Swanson, and Foulser in the 200 medley relay, and Foulser, Caroline Hoff, Swanson, and Julia Brierley in the 200 free relay. East Hampton, with Olivia Brabant, McFarland, Emma Wiltshire, and Camryn Hatch, placed second in the 400 free relay, but forwent the points.

In the girls volleyball team’s 3-1 win over Sayville Monday, Elle Johnson, the setter, had 40 assists and 18 digs. Mikela Junemann had 15 kills, Madyson Neff 12, and Ella Gurney eight. Gurney, the middle hitter, was also credited with seven blocks. Molly Mamay, the libero, had 30 digs and served three aces. 

The set scores were 25-18, 25-23, 24-26, 25-19. As of Tuesday, Kathy McGeehan’s team led League VI at 7-0. The Bonackers were 8-0 over all.

Theresa Roden’s “transformation through triathlon” empowerment program for adolescent girls took its first steps at the Springs School in 2010, and now, on the verge of its 10th anniversary, I-Tri’s stride has greatly lengthened and strengthened.

It is her vision that I-Tri’s reach should extend well beyond the East End, in this country and abroad.

Roden was recently chosen from among numerous nominees worldwide as the winner of an award of excellence from the International Triathlon Union’s women’s committee. At the union’s world championships and congress in Australia, a convocation that drew representatives from 120 countries, Roden had a chance to share her vision.

To wit, that the confidence of hitherto-unathletic middle school-age girls soars and their reluctance to tackle athletic and academic challenges fades when exposed to the I-Tri model that mixes triathletic training in swimming, biking, and running with nutrition, fitness, and self-esteem sessions. 

The goal is to help participants triumph over self-doubt by training for and finishing a triathlon (300-yard swim, 7-mile bike, and 1.5-mile run in I-Tri’s case). Having done that, and having been buoyed by friendships with I-Tri teammates — some of whom they might not otherwise have befriended — it has been said that the girls have broken two major barriers to growth and success at a young age, and thus have come to know that they can do anything.

“I was in my 30s when I began doing triathlons myself,” Roden said last week. Her daughter, Abby, “was 6 then. I had the idea for I-Tri when she was 11 and just entering middle school. That’s when I remembered how tough adolescence is, and that if I’d learned at her age what I’d learned in my 30s through triathlon training, my life would have taken a much different path. . . . I never used to think of myself as an athlete, but I still remember how I felt when Steve Tarpinian said, before one of the Mighty Man triathlons in Sag Harbor began, ‘Okay, all athletes to the beach.’ He was talking about me — I was an athlete!”  

“It’s about overcoming fear,” I-Tri’s founder continued. “Some of our girls can’t swim, some can’t ride a bike when they begin, and even for proficient swimmers, getting into the water with a hundred others and swimming in open water is a daunting task.”

“Facing fear is what sets us apart. By overcoming fear you become stronger. Even in the classroom we’re giving them the tools to overcome fear, to achieve goals that at the beginning seem absolutely impossible, and the result is that they become transformed.”

And while triathloning is an individual sport, “we are a team, we support one another. At the end of the day, that’s what they take with them, not who was first, but that we all finished. And the most celebrated girls are always the last girls to finish; they are working so much harder. They’re not only applauded, but girls who finished way ahead of them run back a half-mile so they can run with them to the finish line. That’s what I-Tri is about.”

The program already exists in seven schools. Should the Riverhead middle school, one additional middle school in the William Floyd district, and Bridgehampton be added this year, as is planned, the I-Tri population will grow to around 150, said Roden. It began with eight — Abby Roden, Hana Islami, Alexa Berti, Alana Ellis, Karla Gomez, Kirsten Clarke, Kattie Fragola, and Kimberly Grullon. 

“They are 20, 21 now and continue to stay in touch. For our 10th anniversary we are planning some great events and hope to get all of our alums to share their stories.” 

As for going national, Roden said that Evan Harrel, a Montauk consultant, is working with the board and staff to develop a strategy. Roden is stepping into more of a C.E.O. role, though she’ll continue to oversee the Springs School group, where, because it was the first, her heart and soul is. 

It is a daunting venture, but one that at the same time is “incredibly exciting,” she said. “We’re pretty unique in what we do — we were recognized for that in Australia. It was great to hear representatives from other countries, Mexico in particular, say they were anxious for us to stay connected.”

The nonprofit recently received a $40,000 grant, its biggest ever, from the Heisman Foundation “to help us create a science of triathlon curriculum that will be integrated into everything we do,” the goal being to understand the physical forces at work and to maximize perfor­mance. “What better way to feel an inclined plane than to bike uphill? Or to experience the effect of drag than by swimming in a pool?”

I-Tri, she added, will be among the nonprofits benefiting from One Island Giving Day, an online fund-raiser, on Oct. 25. “This is our biggest fund-raiser of the year, our annual appeal. Our board is energized and we will be reaching out via email and social media to provide our girls with all the training and equipment they need to be successful in 2019.” Donations can be made through itrigirls.org.

Further concerning her vision, I-Tri’s founder said, “We can’t stop. We were picturing just the other day in a brainstorming session a girl living in a faraway country who doesn’t even know this is coming her way, or that some day, through I-Tri, her life will be changed.”

I-Tri, an empowerment program for middle school girls here that recently received international recognition, is to benefit on Oct. 13 from 25 and 60-mile bike rides from and to the Channing Daughters Winery on Scuttlehole Road in Bridgehampton. 

Donations of $150 will entitle participants to the ride of their choice and a picnic lunch and wine tasting afterward at the winery, at 1927 Scuttlehole Road. The fund-raiser will be overseen by Sarah Piampiano, a professional triathlete and I-Tri board member. Registration, through itrigirls.org, has been extended through Monday.