Saturday, August 18

SWIMMING, We Swim for You two-mile, one-mile, and half-mile races benefiting Fighting Chance, Havens Beach, Sag Harbor, 6-9:30 a.m.

SAILING, Antigua & Barbuda Hamptons Challenge race, Noyac Bay, Sag Harbor, 10 a.m., tentative; awards party and celebration of Rob Roden’s life, Havens Beach, 5-8 p.m.

BASKETBALL, Hamptons Hoops Academy clinic with Rondae Hollis-Jefferson for 7 through 16-year-old boys and girls, to benefit United Way of Long Island, Sportime Arena, Amagansett, 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., with a “family fun” party at East Hampton Indoor Tennis’s Clubhouse at 4. 

TENNIS, the Hampton Cup junior tournament benefiting Project Most, Hampton Racquet, Buckskill Road, East Hampton, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

ARTISTS-WRITERS SOFTBALL GAME, benefiting the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center, Phoenix House Academy, the Retreat, and East End Hospice, throw-bat-run skills challenge for 5 through 11-year-olds, 10:30 a.m.-noon; home run challenge for hitter-pitcher combinations, 1-2 p.m.; batting practice, 2-3, and Artists-Writers game, 4-6, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

Sunday, August 19

ELLEN’S 5K RUN, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital Parrish Memorial Hall, 9 a.m.

BASKETBALL, Marcus Edwards clinics for first through eighth-grade boys and girls, Sportime Arena, Amagansett, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Monday, August 20

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 7 p.m.

Tuesday, August 21

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 7 p.m.

Wednesday, August 22

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, from 7 p.m.

Tortorella Pools and Hampton F.C.-Pool Shark were to have faced off at East Hampton’s Herrick Park last night for the Wednesday evening 7-on-7 spring championship. 

They became the finalists after winning semifinal clashes at the park on Aug. 1 — Hampton F.C. had a rather easy time of it in bageling Sag Harbor United 3-0, though the Tortorella-Maidstone game, tied at 2-2 after regulation, had to go to penalty kicks.

Maidstone, which is hard to beat when it is at full strength, won last spring’s championship, defeating Bateman Painting, and, likewise, won the fall trophy, defeating Hampton F.C. 3-1.

This time it was not to be as Tortorella’s shootout lineup of Nick Escalante, Eddy Juarez, Leonel Uchupaille, and David Rodriguez proved to be dominant, all but Uchupaille beating Maidstone’s goalie, Alex Mesa, from seven yards out. The Market’s only penalty kick scorer was Antonio Padilla. The attempts by Miguel Bautista, Angel Garces, and Mesa were foiled by Tortorella’s goalie, Craig Caiazca, who had a wonderful night.

Leslie Czeladko, Tortorella’s manager and the league’s spokesman, said in a website account afterward that Caiazca merited an M.V.P. award.

In the opening minutes, Tortorella’s Eddy Lopez caught Mesa flat-footed, booting the ball into the mostly open cage from within the penalty area.

Ernesto Valverde, who teamed with Xavi Piedramartel and Antonio Padilla on Maidstone’s front line, almost evened it up moments later, but Caiazca made a beautiful one-handed save of his blast.

With 10 minutes remaining in the 30-minute half, Lopez again came up big, banging a free kick in off the left post from about 15 yards out, which treated Tortorella to a 2-0 lead.

At the other end, Valverde continued to launch rockets, but Caiazca foiled him twice more before the half was to end. Tortorella’s keeper was high-fived by his teammates as they came off the field.

Maidstone went into the second without one of its starting defenders, Mathew Ramirez, who was red-carded after he’d remonstrated with the referee. 

The Market came right back when the second half began as Correa, who had sneaked in close at the right side, deposited a Valverde crossing pass into the left corner of the nets. Moments later, the Market struck again as Piedramartel slipped in behind Caiazca, whose attention was directed elsewhere, to boot home another crossing pass from Valverde. The score was 2-2 with 21 and a half minutes to play.

And yet neither team could score in the time remaining in regulation. Padilla came closest when, finding himself unmarked at the right side of Tortorella’s goal in the final minutes, he blew a chance to convert a Valverde pass.

With 14 seconds left on the clock, Escalante, who had been tripped, earned a free kick within good range, but, rather than let the play proceed, the referee let the clock run out before the free kick could be taken, a decision that drew protests from Tortorella players and fans.

Overtime periods were eschewed in favor of penalty kicks, which, as aforesaid, Tortorella’s kickers were to dominate, winding up with three goals to Maidstone’s one — and thus the victory.

Fittingly, Mesa and Caiazca faced off in what proved to be Maidstone’s last go, with the latter coming up with the save that advanced Tortorella to the final.

Hampton F.C. pretty much had its way in the first semifinal, blanking Sag Harbor United 3-0 thanks to goals by Juarez and Danny Bedoya (two).

Wilson Chavez played staunchly in Sag Harbor United’s goal. It would probably have been 6-0 otherwise.

Hampton F.C., as aforesaid, last appeared in a 7-on-7 final last December. It’s been a while since Tortorella has played in a 7-on-7 final.

A tent almost as big as you’d see at the Hampton Classic had been set up at Sag Harbor’s Havens Beach Saturday morning, uniting, for the first time, the Party for Pink, which was to be held there that night, with its sporting arm, the Hamptons Paddle, 3 and 6-mile races that drew about 150 participants.

In the past, the races have been at Havens Beach, while the party has been held elsewhere. The merger of the two was impressive, as is the amount of money the event, now in its seventh year, has raised for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, “the largest private funder of breast cancer research in the world,” according to the foundation’s president and chief executive officer, Myra Biblowit.

She added, “There’s been a 40-percent decline in breast cancer deaths since this organization was founded 25 years ago, and research is the reason.”

As aforesaid, about 150, a good number of whom were paddling on behalf of relatives and friends who had or have breast cancer, turned out, on a morning in which there was a strong southwest wind off the shore, and, later, some rain.

Bill Winegarden, 42, the eventual 3-mile race’s winner, the Dune Deck Beach Club’s “outdoor pursuits specialist,” was easy to spot in the rows of parked cars inasmuch as his license plate indicated he was a Montanan. He lives at the moment in Hampton Bays, though he snowboards in Montana’s Whitefish Lake State Park in the winter. Yes, he agreed, it was a good life.

“That’s our wilderness,” Ari Weller, Philosofit’s owner, said, gesturing toward the bay. “You can get out there and connect with nature.” As for paddling, he said he preferred to be by himself. “Where else can you go in this life and be out by yourself? And it’s always changing . . . you never know what it’s going to be like.”

Speaking of change, Lars Svanberg of Main Beach Surf & Sport, the race director, had been persuaded by the stiff wind to switch to out-and-back courses hugging the shoreline rather than stick with the originally planned triangular ones.

Still, competitors, after crossing the finish line, generally were in agreement that it had been a tough test, especially on the return legs from Cedar Point (in the 6-miler’s case) and Barcelona Neck (in the case of the 3-miler). There was a quarter-mile paddleboard race for kids too, won by an 8-year-old, Jameson Roeber of Port Jefferson, who must content himself at home by paddle surfing in the ferries’ wakes.

“He won by a mile, and against bigger kids too. It was pretty impressive,” The Star’s photographer, Craig Macnaughton, said later.

Winegarden used an inflatable paddleboard, though it wasn’t because it was better than a regular paddleboard. “Paddling’s actually tougher with an inflatable board, but it’s easier to pack,” he said.

Gina Bradley, the Paddle Diva, and the SUP 12-foot-6 division’s female winner, said, “Ten of us came today. I don’t race ordinarily, but I did it today for Maria Baum,” who, after having been diagnosed with the disease, had turned to paddleboarding, her husband, Larry, told the racers before setting out, “to get back her sense of self.” Bradley’s goal for Paddle Diva had been to raise $10,000 for the foundation’s work. The party has been held at the Baums’ in the past. Great advances had been made through research, he said, adding that “now it’s a matter of connecting the dots.”

Robert Kohr of East Hampton, the men’s SUP 12-6 runner-up to Winegarden, said he was participating that day on behalf of Amy Hull, his first cousin, a breast cancer survivor. He paddled, he said, at Long Beach and in Gardiner’s Bay, and paddle surfed at secret spots. “There are three parts to it,” he continued, in answer to a question. “Stand-up paddleboarding, paddle surfing, and downwind paddleboarding. Lars is a big downwinder,” he said. “We’re always trying to stay young out here.”

Alyson Follenius of East Hampton, the women’s SUP 12-6 runner-up, is to participate on a relay team captained by Evelyn O’Doherty this Saturday in the demanding 25-mile SEA Paddle around Manhattan that is to raise money for autism and environmental causes.

Josette Lata won the SUP 14-foot women’s division in the 6-miler, Kim Nalepinski was the top women's 14-footer in the 3-miler, David Baumrind, also of East Hampton, was third among the men in the 14-foot division, and Jennifer Ford, a breast cancer survivor, and Helen Gifford won the tandem division. Another East Hamptoner, Jessica Bellofatto, topped the 6-miler’s SUP 12-6 women’s division.

“I just started this summer,” said Baumrind. “I love it. I bought my board before I ever did it.”

“It’s like a meditation on water,” said Follenius. 

“It’s not about winning today, it’s about women being together and enjoying the experience,” said Ford. “I wouldn’t have gotten through breast cancer without my friends.” As for tandem stand-up paddling, “It’s about teamwork and camaraderie,” she said.

“My mom died of lung cancer two years ago,” said Carmen Rojas Kenrich of Boston, who graduated from East Hampton High School in 1983. “That spurred me on. I’m here to support cancer victims and to support the sport. It was tough today, but doing this is a piece of cake compared to cancer.”

Jamie Parrot, Debbie Wasserman, and Melissa Spohler were acknowledged as the top individual fund-raisers that day. The top fund-raising team, Team SOS, raised $50,292.

It was reported that the races and party had raised about $1.4 million in all.

In the inset photo above by Craig Macnaughton: Helen Gifford and Jennifer Ford were the tandem winners. “Teamwork and cameraderie” saw them through, Ford said.

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Correction: An earlier version of this article did not include the winner of the women's SUP 14-foot division in the six-mile race. She was Josette Lata.

Thursday, August 9

LIFEGUARDING, East Hampton at national lifeguard tournament, Virginia Beach, Va., through Saturday.

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, game two of best-of-three final series, Groundworks vs. Town Police Benevolent Association, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7 p.m.

Friday, August 10

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, games at 7 and 8:15 p.m., Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Saturday, August 11

RUNNING, Run for Rotary 5 and 10K races, Fresh Pond Park, Amagansett, 9 a.m.

BASKETBALL, five-on-five tournament to benefit LuMind Research Down Syndrome Foundation and the Ideal School of Manhattan, Sportime Arena, Amagansett, 9 a.m.

Sunday, August 12

RUNNING, Strides for Life 3-mile race, Southampton Cultural Center, 8:45 a.m.

Monday, August 13

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, games at 7 and 8:15 p.m., Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Tuesday, August 14

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, game three of final series, if necessary, Town Police Benevolent Association vs. Groundworks, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7 p.m.

“There are a lot of great events in the Hamptons,” Charlie Collins said Sunday evening as the final games of the Travis Field memorial softball tournament were being played at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett, “but this, in my humble opinion, is the biggest local event — the best weekend of the summer.”

And the populous crowd that night — the biggest this writer has ever seen watching slow-pitch softball here — drove home Collins’s point.

“It’s amazing the job Brian [Anderson], Austin [Bahns], and Mike [Graham] have done,” he added.

A teammate of Travis Field’s on East Hampton High School’s baseball team, Collins remembers being “devastated” by the news, imparted to him by his brother, Bill, one May morning a decade ago, that his 20-year-old teammate and friend had died in an auto accident. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, he said, but soon after, at Luigi’s, Mike McGuire confirmed what Bill Collins had said.

Soon after, Anderson, Bahns, Graham, Andy Tuthill, and David Samot Jr. alit upon an idea to keep Travis Field’s name alive — through a softball tournament benefiting scholarships in his name that is now in its 11th year and has grown from 10 to 18 teams. Any more and another field will probably have to be added, “at least for early-round games,” said Collins. As it was, three teams had to be turned away this year. 

Then there was the weather — namely a very rainy Saturday. But the games went on, until the lights went out shortly before midnight in the fifth inning of the Catchers in the Rye and Hideaway game, which was resumed Sunday morning.

“There wasn’t much downtime at all despite the rain,” Mike Graham said. “Chris McGuire, Mike’s son, came back with sand from Bistrian’s, and shovels, we even had blowers, and we had the field ready to go again in 20 to 30 minutes.”

Fittingly, the East Hampton High School baseball team, sponsored by the East Hampton Village Police Benevolent Association, won the tourney’s B bracket, besting Camp Anawanna 8-6 in the final, a game bracketed by two encounters between the Pink Panthers (a team made up of the tournament’s founders and others of Travis Field’s contemporaries) and the Raptors of Montauk, who, if there were a prize given out for joie de vivre, would have won running away.

Because the tournament was double-elimination, the once-defeated Panthers, who were to three-peat as the A bracket champions, had to beat the theretofore undefeated Raptors twice Sunday night. And they did, by scores of 12-10 and 12-5.

The Raptors, some of whose players are on the Gig Shack men’s slow-pitch softball team in Montauk, seemed to take the losses in stride, for when the championship game ended, at about 11 p.m., they assailed their opponents with bear hugs, well wishes, and volleys of sprayed champagne.

At first it didn’t look too promising for the Panthers, who made three errors in the top of the first inning, which resulted in the Raptors scoring three runs.

Matt Brierley wiped that lead out with a two-out, three-run clout over the left field fence in the bottom half.

Colin Davis, the Raptors’ pitcher, walked the first two batters to face him (Anderson and Austin Bahns) in the bottom of the third. One out later, Brenden Mott drove Anderson home with a sacrifice fly, and, with two outs and runners at first and second, Brierley found the parking lot again for a 7-3 Panther lead, a blow that proved to be the clincher.

After Brierley had cleared the bases, Dylan Field singled, and was heading for second when Brent Davis, the Raptors’ first baseman, made a spectacular diving, flat-out catch of Tuthill’s rocketed low line drive over the first-base line to end the inning.

Leo Daunt had a chance to pull the Raptors closer in their next at-bat, but, with runners at second and third and two out, he flied out to left.

Austin Bahns drove in two more runs for the Panthers in the bottom of the fourth, after which Mott, with two outs, added still two more with a triple, effectively putting the game out of reach, at 11-3.

But, as aforesaid, the Raptors were to remain rapturous no matter the outcome.

Four scholarships of $1,000 each were given out this year in Travis Field’s name. The recipients were Maddie Schenck, Riley Duchemin (who pitched for the B-bracket winners), Keitlyn Cabrera, and Eamon Spencer. 

Schenck, who played for the Schenck Fuels team in the tournament, and Duchemin threw out the first balls before the opener last Thursday afternoon.

The three new teams this year were Catchers in the Rye, sponsored by Hummel Construction, the Hideaway, and Female Detail, a very competitive team, Collins said, that included Annemarie Cangiolosi, Melanie Anderson, and My Lan Eckardt, all Lou Reale protégées and top-notch college players in their time.

Asked who the man was on the Female Detail team (men’s teams must have at least one female in the field at all times, and vice versa), Collins said he didn’t know, adding, “It didn’t matter.”

Sharks to Combine

Charlie Collins, a spokesman for the Montauk Rugby Club, said this week that the Sharks, who have, like the East Hampton High School football program, a numbers problem, will combine with the Suffolk Bull Moose club of Farmingville to play in the Empire Geographical Union’s Division III fall season. 

“Whenever we’ve played away games with Bull Moose in the past it’s been on a field in Center Moriches, but there will be a couple of games played here,” Collins said, at East Hampton’s Herrick Park.

The locals have some very good young players, but most are collegians, and as a result would largely be unavailable for Saturday matches. “Rugby has a strong tradition here — there were days when people feared us, when I feared us — so we don’t want to let it die,” Collins said.

Hoop Classic

A very competitive five-on-five basketball tournament to benefit the LuMind Research Down Syndrome Foundation is to be held Saturday at the Sportime Arena in Amagansett from 9 a.m.

A number of East Hampton High School graduates have starred in this tourney in the past, including Brian Marciniak, Marcus Edwards, Kyle McKee, Jenel Russell, Jerome Russell, Jarred Bowe, and Will Shapiro.

A fund-raising party at Anthony Providenti’s house is to be held that evening.

Run for Rotary

East Hampton’s Rotary Club will play host to 10 and 5K races at Fresh Pond Park in Amagansett this Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. Simon Mayeur, a Frenchman from Alsace, won the 5K, in 19 minutes and 24 seconds, and Ryan Fowkes of East Hampton won the 10K, in 38:03, last year.

When Marcus Edwards, who is overseeing intensive Sunday morning Hoop Hampton basketball workouts for kids at Amagansett’s Sportime Arena, was a young boy himself, living with his mother on the Poospatuck Reservation in Mastic, he realized, he said during a conversation the other day, that if he were ever to make something of himself he’d have to do it on his own.

And so he did, with help from others, among them Terrell Dozier, his former Amateur Athletic Union coach, Tim and Debbie Brenneman, whom he came to regard as parents, Bill McKee, the late Ed Petrie’s assistant when Edwards played a decade ago on the East Hampton High School boys basketball team, Jolie Parcher of Mandala Yoga, who, after he’d been certified as a personal trainer, put him in touch with Ari Weller of the Philosofit fitness studio here, and Weller himself.

“My father died when I was a year old, in a motorcycle accident. I was raised by my mother and grandmother,” he began.

“No,” he said with a smile when asked if he’d been spoiled. “Not at all. We were poor, we didn’t have a thing. I started working at 10, raking leaves, two hours after school. I made $50 a week. I realized that when it came to buying clothes and things, my mom couldn’t do it. She was a single parent. If I wanted anything I had to figure out a way to do it.”

He attended Center Moriches schools from first through ninth grade, becoming through hard work, he said, “the only black kid in the good classes,” but with that came the chagrin of being broadly labeled by white parents as the prime suspect whenever one of his fellow students’ iPhones or iPads went missing.

He was playing with Ed Petrie’s grandson, Mikey Russell, on Dozier’s A.A.U. East End all-star basketball team at the time. “Everyone thinks I moved to East Hampton to team up with Mikey, but that’s not so. It was because of the way I was being treated at Center Moriches. It was for personal reasons that I moved in with Terrell, who became my legal guardian.”

“I was so excited to move to East Hampton. The change of scenery was good; it was a good move.” One that was to result in a singular basketball career here (the Bonac teams on which Edwards played with the Russells, Mikey and Jerome, Hayden Ward, Liam Lee, Jarred Bowe, and others went 62-7 in a three-year span during which the team, one of East Hampton’s best ever, won numerous championships) and a college scholarship.

“I went to an all-academic camp in Jersey, in my junior year, the only camp I ever went to. Bill McKee paid for me to go. There were 200 players there, and I was one of the ones picked for the second string, the worst, but I worked hard, I had the passion, the fire, and I ended up in the top 20, playing in the all-star game, winning the Mr. Hustle award, and getting recruited by Babson College,” where he was to play on the team for two years and earn a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

Rather than the business field, Edwards, acting on the advice of his aunt and Debbie Brenneman, earned a personal trainer’s certificate in Baltimore, where his girlfriend is a medical student at Johns Hopkins. 

“Several times I wanted to give it up, but when I saw how hard my girlfriend — she wants to become a psychiatrist — was working, I thought there’s no way I can quit! I couldn’t find any well-paying jobs there, so I came back here. That was three years ago. That was when Jolie Parcher, whose kids I’d given basketball lessons to — I’ve known her since I was 15, I consider her an aunt — introduced me to Ari Weller.”

“He wasn’t sure I’d be a good fit, but he invited me to watch and observe. It was like an apprenticeship. I went to Philosofit every single day . . . I was soaking it up. One day someone quit, and, even though I didn’t feel prepared, I was hired and thrown into the 

fire. . . . It’s interesting how things happened. It worked out really, really well, and I love working there.”

Back to basketball, Edwards, who assists Dan White in coaching East Hampton High’s team now, said, in answer to a question, that he’d love it if he could inspire kids, kids who have the same passion for work and for basketball that he has, to raise the level of their play to what it was when he was growing up.

“We always played,” he said, “every day, either at the senior citizens center or at Herrick Park. We were always playing, the year round, which is what you have to do. We didn’t put the ball in the closet after the season was over.”

“I always ask my basketball students what their grades are, to get an idea of how passionate they are. I think it translates.  If you work hard in school you’ll work hard on the court. . . . So many of them are playing video games now. I just want the kids who are interested. I want to help them develop the confidence and skills they’ll need, I want to light that fire. If you’re only training once or twice a week that’s not enough. Max Proctor, one of the varsity players now — he’ll be a senior — has it. He works hard, I don’t have to tell him. Jeremy Vizcaino has it too.”

“I want to get East Hampton basketball back to the level it was at when I was playing. To do that you start with the kids. If you can instill confidence at a young age, if you light the fire, they’ll go.”

Maleek Harris, who also grew up on the Poospatuck Reservation, helps his cousin with the two-hour Sunday morning clinics, which include drills and free play. The clinics cost $40 per session ($20 an hour), and for boys and girls looking to improve their games, it’s money well spent, as this writer, the grandfather of 12 and 7-year-old boys from Perrysburg, Ohio, can attest.

Edwards said he’d recently read a book, “People Over Profit,” which maintained that “the more people you help, the more rewarding it is for the person who’s helping. . . . It’s not about the money. I want more kids to play. We can have exciting games again. We’ve got to get that standard back up. When I played with Mikey we were expected to win, but now I feel that that winning culture has depreciated, that it’s been diminishing. That’s why I started Hoop Hampton.”

The on-again, off-again East Hampton football program is on again, Joe McKee, the varsity coach, said in a conversation Friday at The Star, but only at the junior varsity level.

He had hoped to field a varsity team this year — there wasn’t one last fall — but because relatively few players have been showing up for the three-night-a-week summer workouts, he was persuaded this past week, he said, to abandon plans for a varsity again.

Last winter, about two dozen showed up at an informational meeting he held at the high school cafeteria, a number that included nine juniors, seven sophomores, and eight freshmen, but didn’t include any eighth graders, who are to be freshmen this fall. 

“We’ve got 24 at the moment, but only 10 on average have been turning out for the workouts with Lorenzo Rodriguez and my brother Kelly, and sometimes it’s not even 10. You say beach and work may be reasons. It’s not the beach because the workouts don’t begin until 6. I don’t know what it is. It’s been frustrating, I’ll tell you, very frustrating.”

It wasn’t just East Hampton, McKee said. The football programs at other East End schools have also been struggling numbers-wise, though of its opponents in Division IV — the county’s smallest-enrollment one, which Section IX allowed East Hampton to join even though its enrollment would normally place it in Division III — only East Hampton, McKee said, lacks a varsity at the moment.

“If we were to have a varsity,” he added, “we’d be making sophomores and freshmen play at that level, so, given the lack of experience, I figured that it would be in our best interest to go with a jayvee only.”

McKee is about to enter his fourth year as the head football coach here. A jettisoned program in 2014 had persuaded him to try to turn it around.

The 2015 team, whose star was Brandon Johnson, a collegiate and developmental league rugby player now, went 2-6, though McKee said at the time that “we could very well have ended the regular season at 4-4, maybe even 5-3.”

The 2016 team went 1-7, but was competitive despite injuries that reduced its numbers from 29 to 20, and it went out on a high note, upsetting playoff-bound Bayport-Blue Point 36-21. 

The plug was pulled again last summer, again because of a lack of numbers. There was talk then of combining with Southampton, but East Hampton’s historical rival reportedly nixed the idea because Bonac’s added enrollment would have kicked it up from Division IV to III, “the black-and-blue division.”

“Since I’ve taken over,” McKee said, in reviewing the situation, “we were up and going for the first two years, and then in the third year the walls came tumbling down. As I say, it’s been frustrating.”

Asked what it was he loved about football, the coach, who is in East Hampton’s Hall of Fame, said, “It’s the biggest team sport there is. As you say, you’ve got to do your job, help your teammates. . . . I loved competing and the friendships I made.”

Did he have a quarterback? “Yes, we do, a lefty from Montauk, Topher Cullen. He’ll be a sophomore this coming fall. He played in junior high and he’s been showing up at all of the practices. We’ve got a big kid too, Nick LaValle, who’s been at every single workout. Nick Wyche, who’s also a strong kid, has been coming too. Those two will be juniors. That’s about all I want to say about players for the moment.”

The first official practice session is to be on Aug. 14 at 6 p.m., with physicals to be given at the high school on Aug. 6 and 7 from 4 to 7 p.m.

The minimum to field a team, varsity or jayvee, is 16. McKee will have to wait until then for the final answer, though, as aforesaid, the plan at the moment is to have a junior varsity team. Regarding whether to fish or cut bait, “We’ll know in the first week,” he said.

Games are to be played on Monday afternoons, by and large, with Hampton Bays, Bayport-Blue Point, Wyandanch, Port Jefferson, Mount Sinai, Greenport, Center Moriches, and Southampton, the same opponents the varsity would have faced.

McKee is to be assisted by Rodriguez, who has been a volunteer in the past, and by his brother Kelly.

Ed McGintee, who had been one of his assistants, “is going to step back for a bit . . . maybe he’ll volunteer. . . . Lorenzo really deserves to be a full-time assistant. He’s put in a tremendous amount of time, gone above and beyond. He’s put in so much work in the off-season with these guys.”

Dave Fioriello will continue to coach the East Hampton Middle School’s seventh and eighth-grade team, though there has been a steep drop-off in junior high numbers too. “The middle school numbers have gone from the 60s to the 50s to the 40s to the 30s to 20, the number they had last year,” McKee said.

Flag football, by contrast, for kindergarten through sixth-grade boys and girls, apparently continues to be a strong draw.

“We had 60 to 70 kids the first year and 120 last year,” the coach said. “It begins the first week of school. Practices will be Mondays and Wednesdays with games on Friday nights under the lights at Herrick Park. With that being said, we are looking for volunteers to help out as coaches and assistant coaches. They can email me at [email protected].”

East Hampton’s 10-11-year-old Little League all-star softball team did itself proud in a state tournament this past week, finishing as the runner-up among the Final Four contenders.

It was the first time that a Little League team from Bonac had played for a state championship. Little League baseball teams from here have won regional games, but none have made it off the Island.

“These girls are athletes,” William Kuneth, one of whose daughters, Katie, pitched all five games in which the young Bonackers played. “There’s some real talent on this team, at all the positions — there are real hitters, real pitchers, real catchers, and real competitors. You’re going to see a strong high school team here in the near future.”

“You could see the pride oozing from the parents,” he said, adding that “just about all of them, about 30 in all,” had made the six-hour trip up the Thruway to Glens Falls, where the tournament was played from July 25 through Saturday. Tim Fromm, an assistant principal at East Hampton High School, who was vacationing with his family at Lake George, also was there, said Kuneth.

East Hampton lost its first two games, by scores of 3-1 and 17-9 to LaGrange and Pearl River, the eventual champion, but came back to defeat Snug Harbor of Staten Island 11-6 before topping LaGrange 8-6 in their second meeting in the semifinals. With two runners on, one out, and the potential winning run at the plate in the bottom of the sixth inning, Katie Kuneth closed it out with two groundouts.

Andy Baris, who assisted Mike Ruddy in coaching the team, said afterward that “the girls didn’t know what to expect when they first got up there, they were a little bit apprehensive, but they stepped up to the plate and finished as the second team in the state. It was a helluva ride. The girls played with a helluva lot of heart. It’s something they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.”

“We had a great experience going to the states,” Ruddy said in an email. “All 13 of our talented kids contributed to our success. Our regular-season Little League coaches deserve credit for how well prepared the girls were.” Six of the 13, he said, were Montaukers coached in the regular season by Heather Payne, one of his traveling team assistants, who is in her fifth year as a Little League coach. “Our Little League board led by Steve Minskoff and Lara Siska does a great job in organizing our league,” he added.

“They came together beautifully as a team,” said Payne, “from starting off as Reds, Giants, Blue Jays, and Diamondbacks in the beginning to ending up as fiercely competitive Bonackers cheering one another on. When Sophia Rodriguez made that great double play in the third game they all made that double play, when Katie Kuneth dug deep to get a needed strikeout, they all got that strikeout, when Susie DiSunno didn’t allow anyone to steal home in the final, they were all strong at the plate. It was a great experience for them and for the parents and coaches as well.”

Snug Harbor, which Pearl River finished off in three innings in Saturday’s other semifinal, “had some big hitters, they were huge, but we beat the pants off them,” Baris said of the win that had vaulted East Hampton into the semifinal matchup with LaGrange. 

“One of the keys,” said Baris, “was that Mike, who thought we needed more batting practice, found a batting cage. We used it Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mornings. After those batting practice sessions we were ready to go.”

“The tournament director said that our second game with LaGrange was the most competitive one he’d seen in the tournament. Sienna Salamy, our right fielder, made two great catches in that game, which if she hadn’t made them would have been game-changers.”

Pearl River downed East Hampton 6-1 in the final, Baris said. “We were a little tired going into it, an hour after our second game with LaGrange, but we did respectably, especially when you consider they’d ‘mercied’ everyone else. They were a good team.”

Kuneth added that “East Hampton was the only team in the tournament to take Pearl River the full six innings and keep them under 10 runs. . . . We’re considering it a win.”

Gabrielle Payne, who led the team at the plate, with 14 hits in 17 at-bats, was the recipient of the tourney’s sportsmanship award, Baris said. “Katie was excellent, she kept us in games. She was given a game ball. Gabby was given a game ball too. . . .”

The elder Kuneth said, “We had a number of triples and a handful of double plays . . . it was really exciting to see the girls, who came from different parts of our town — some of them didn’t even know each other before the postseason began — playing as one.”

“I don’t know who had more fun — the parents or the children,” he continued. “We all stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. In between the games was pizza, miniature golf, and ice cream. We all went out for ice cream at Lake George after the last game.”

Baris agreed. “There was a lot of downtime, so the parents and the kids did a lot of things together. That was a great part of it.”

Aside from the above-named, East Hampton’s roster comprised Kerri O’Donnell, Sophia Rodriguez, Georgia Kenny, Harper Baris, Lila Ruddy, Susie DiSunno, Julia Kuneth, Amina Guebli, Cloe Ceva, and Paige Herlihy.

Thursday, August 2

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament begins, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 5 p.m.

Friday, August 3

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 5 p.m.

Saturday, August 4

LIFEGUARDING, East Hampton Town junior lifeguard tournament, Indian Wells Beach, Amagansett, 8 a.m.-2 p.m.

PADDLING, Paddle for Pink races to benefit Breast Cancer Research Foundation, 3 and 6-mile courses, Havens Beach, Sag Harbor, 8 a.m.

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 9 a.m.

Sunday, August 5

LIFEGUARDING, East Hampton Town junior lifeguard tournament, Indian Wells Beach, Amagansett, 8 a.m.-2 p.m.

RUNNING, Walk of Hope and 5K to Defeat Depression, Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane, Southampton, 9 a.m.

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 9 a.m.

BASKETBALL, Marcus Edwards clinics for first through eighth-grade boys and girls, Sportime Arena, Amagansett, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

HOOPS 4 HOPE benefit dinner, 673 Sagaponack Road, Sagaponack, meal curated by FeedFeed, with live African music, tickets available online at hoopsafrica.org, 6-9 p.m.

Monday, August 6

LIFEGUARDING, recertification test, Indian Wells Beach, Amagansett, 9 a.m.

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, games at 7 and 8:15 p.m., Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Tuesday, August 7

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, games at 6:45 and 8 p.m., Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Wednesday, August 8

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 final, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 7 p.m.