There are ways to beat a 2-3 zone, though the Bridgehampton High School boys basketball team wasn’t very good at employing them in the state Class D regional final played at Center Moriches High School Friday evening.

As a result, the Bees — a young team, it should be said — absorbed a 61-44 beating at the hands of Newfield Central, the fourth-ranked Class D team in the New York State Sportwriters Association poll.

The Trojans were up 61-30 when their subs came in to play the final two and a half minutes.

It wasn’t that Ron White’s players didn’t know what to do — they were quite familiar, he said afterward, with four different offensive sets designed to attack a 2-3 — but they began to lose confidence in the early going, he said, when their shots failed to fall.

The good news is that presumably everyone — J.P. Harding, Elijah White, Nae’ Jon Ward, Jonny De Groot, Nate DePasquale, Jahqur Carr, Miguel Maradiaga, and William Walker — will be back next year. Harding, De Groot, and Carr will be seniors; White, Ward, DePasquale, and Maradiaga, juniors, and Walker will be a sophomore.

White said they will continue to play in the off-season, in a Hampton Bays league, and in Amateur Athletic Union tournaments.

He could probably have done a better job as a coach — he certainly could have run them more — added White, who, with one of his assistants, Maurice Manning, played on Killer Bee state-championship teams in the mid-’90s, and who later, again with Manning, played on two national junior college championship teams at Suffolk Community College-Selden. Those teams are in Suffolk County’s Hall of Fame.

All in all, however, it had been a pretty good season, the first-year coach concluded. The Bees began slowly, but came on in league play, and had won a round in the state tournament. 

Harding, after a recent loss to Greenport in the county’s C-D game, put his finger on it when he said the offense had to “flow more.” 

Then, of course, there’s defense — the ball-hawking, in-your-face kind, a hallmark of Killer Bee basketball for the past 40 years, a swarming defense that can lead to easy fast-break layups. There wasn’t much of that in evidence on Friday night, though.

Bridgehampton came up empty on its first five tries from the floor — and on two free throw attempts — before White converted a pass from Ward for 8-2. That was to be the Bees’ sole basket in the first quarter, by the end of which Newfield, which wasn’t playing all that great either, led 9-2.

“Nothing’s happening,” an observer said during the interim. “They’ve got to penetrate.”

By halftime, it was 25-12 Newfield, and, with the game still within reach, the Bees’ fans were hoping for a breakthrough in the third. In the initial moments of that quarter it seemed as if Ward, the only Bee to attempt a 3-point shot in the first half (a miss off to the left of the rim), might provide the yearned-for spark. Following a Newfield turnover, White inbounded to Bridgehampton’s diminutive point guard, who, after taking a step forward, let it go from beyond the top of the key. Swish. Everybody cheered. A minute or so later, after a shot by White had gone in and out, Ward went deep again, bringing the Bees to within 7 points, at 25-18.

But that was to be as close as the Bees were to get that night. 

Two made free throws and a basket by Gregory Moravec (who had followed his own miss) sandwiched around a drive to the hoop from the foul line by Harding made it 29-20, at which point the visitors went on a 12-2 run during which Joshua Wood canned two 3s and Jacob Humble one, effectively putting the game away.

White was applauded as he exited the game, having been assessed his fifth foul, with 4 minutes and 13 seconds left to play. At that point, the Trojans were sailing along at 55-30. A minute later, Newfield’s coach emptied his bench.

Wood had a game-high 22 points for Newfield Central. Harding led the Bees’ scoring with 18, Ward had 14, and White, 12. It was the lowest total for Bridgehampton since its lopsided nonleague losses to Babylon, Mattituck, and Center Moriches in December.

“This is a young team — we’ll be back,” White vowed. “We’ve learned from every game we’ve played this year. We’re back to square one. But we’ll come back — bigger and stronger. We were getting looks, but couldn’t put it down. You’ve got to put it down. . . . I think we panicked a bit in the beginning. But we’ll be back. I believe in the black and gold. We’re going to grow.”

Spring sprang this past week sportswise, and for the most part the teams — namely baseball, softball, boys tennis, boys and girls lacrosse, and boys and girls track — have been practicing outside, though a foot of wet snow was predicted for Tuesday.

The good news is that the turnouts for all the sports have been good — a dozen are being bused each day to Southampton for boys lacrosse, which remains combined with that school and Pierson, Bridgehampton, and Ross — and that East Hampton’s athletic director, Joe Vas, can give himself a pat on the back for assembling a stellar coaching staff.

Vinny Alversa and Henry Meyer, former teammates on the East End Tigers, a team that topped the amateur metro division not long ago, have once again been reunited, auguring well for that sport. 

Alversa is in his second year as the varsity’s head coach. It’s a young team, but a year older than last season, during which it went 0-20. Hunter Fromm, a lights-out pitcher with a minuscule earned run average, who’s now a senior, had been expected to lead the pitching staff, but he’s been done in by arm trouble that would reportedly have required Tommy John surgery, which, again reportedly, he declined to undergo. That presumably means that Curt Matthews, a junior, will lead the staff. 

A flight to Tampa, Fla., has been booked, Alversa said at Friday’s practice, on Southwest Airlines so that the team, which has been practicing in East Hampton’s gym all winter, can get in a week’s work at the Tampa Bay Spring Training Center.

Katie Helfand, who has two young children, has stepped down as the boys tennis team’s coach, and has been replaced by Kevin McConville, the Hampton Racquet Club’s head pro and the former tennis director (for four years) at the Buckskill Tennis Club nearby. 

A few years ago, McConville, who played number-one singles in his junior and senior years at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala. — one of whose alums is Nick Bollettieri — coached most of his present charges when they played for a strong combined junior high team whose home matches were played on Buckskill’s Har-Tru courts.

“It was a Sag Harbor-Bridgehampton team for two years, and a Sag Harbor-Bridgehampton-East Hampton team for one year,” he said at Friday’s windy practice session.

McConville, who became a teaching professional soon after graduating from college, has been overseeing eight-game, no-ad ladder matches since he began last week. When he blows the whistle, the players who are winning move up a court and those who are losing move down one. Ravi MacGurn, a junior, Jonny De Groot, a junior, and Luke Louchheim, an eighth grader, seem to be leading the way, he said, though Jaedon Glasstein and Hunter Medler are also vying for singles spots.

As for doubles, McConville assured this writer, who has been waiting for years to see teams move up and back together on the court, that he’d make sure they would stay in sync rather than become split, with one man affixed to the baseline and one statue-like at the net.

Diane O’Donnell, the veteran girls cross-country coach (and a top-flight age-group distance runner), has joined Yani Cuesta in coaching girls spring track. Ben Turnbull and Mike Buquicchio, who coached boys indoor track, are to do the same this spring.

A new staff, headed by Robyn Bramoff Mott, will oversee girls lacrosse, Jessica Stanna, last year’s varsity coach, having departed for a teaching job in Riverhead.

Mott’s assistant is Lisa Farbar, the school’s strength and conditioning coach. Jenn Reich and Katla Thorsen, a recent Stony Brook University graduate, are coaching the junior varsity.

“The turnouts in all the sports have been good,” Vas said during a conversation last week. “Girls lacrosse is a middle-to-low-ranked team in a power-rated league, and thus should be in some competitive games. I think we’ve got a stable staff now. . . . We’ve had some good players come out of the program in recent years. Maggie Pizzo’s playing at Yale, Carly Seekamp at Navy, and Jenna Budd and Amanda Seekamp at Hofstra. . . .”

Kathy Amicucci is back for her second year coaching softball, and will be helped in that regard by Kim Hren, one of the best ballplayers to come out of East Hampton. Rob Rivera is to coach the jayvee.

“It’s a nice staff,” said Vas. “All the programs are in good hands.”

Softball was to have scrimmaged Southampton at home Tuesday, though snow, as aforesaid, was forecast. 

The baseball team is to scrimmage at Westhampton Beach, and the Bayport-Blue Point softball team is to play a nonleaguer here tomorrow. Tomorrow will also feature a mandatory nonleague match here between Half Hollow Hills East, a perennial Suffolk County power, and the Bonackers, who look as if they’ll be a strong team as well this spring.

Baseball is to scrimmage at Hampton Bays on Saturday at 10 a.m., the same day the girls lacrosse team is to play a nonleaguer at Longwood. 

Baseball will scrimmage Pierson at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Monday, the same day that Westhampton Beach, a longtime rival of East Hampton’s, is to play a league-opening tennis match here. Softball is to open its league season at Hampton Bays on Tuesday, the same day that the baseball team is to scrimmage at Hampton Bays and the South Fork boys lacrosse team is to scrimmage at Brentwood. On Wednesday, the tennis team will play at Shoreham-Wading River.

In other words, the sports calendar says spring has sprung.

Thursday, March 22

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Port Jefferson, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, March 23

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

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Half Hollow Hills West, mandatory nonleague, 4 p.m.

Saturday, March 24

BOYS LACROSSE, East End team at Sachem North, nonleague, 10 a.m.

BASEBALL, Mount Sinai at East Hampton, league opener, 11 a.m.

Sunday, March 25

MEN’S SOCCER, spring opener, Hampton United vs. SFC Newcastle, Brentwood State Park, 5 p.m.

Monday, March 26

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

BOYS TENNIS, Half Hollow Hills East, at East Hampton, mandatory nonleague, 4.30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 27

BOYS LACROSSE, East End team vs. Mattituck-Greenport-Southold, Mattituck High School, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 28

GIRLS LACROSSE, Elwood-John Glenn at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

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

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4:30 p.m.

Still Dangling

Whether football will make a return here remained a question mark as of Monday. Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, said a group of possible independents will appeal today a ruling by Section XI’s athletic council upholding a 3-1 conference vote prohibiting East Hampton from playing in Conference IV — a conference with smaller-enrollment schools — in the fall. Darren Phillips, Southampton’s athletic director, is to make the case on East Hampton’s behalf.

Conference IV had voted in favor of East Hampton playing in that division, though Conferences I, II, and III did not.

Vas said recently that ultimately he would prefer that East Hampton, Southampton, Port Jefferson, Greenport, and Mercy form an independent league of their own, “but now we’ve learned that Mercy’s closing, which hurts,” he said during Monday’s conversation.

It would be “up to the communities,” he said, regarding a four-team independent league. Asked if another school might agree to replace Mercy, the A.D. said, “Maybe.”

Slow-Pitch

Mike Ritsi has asked that teams and individuals (men and women) interested in playing in a summer softball league at the Hank Zebrowski field in Montauk contact him either at Michael [email protected], or by calling 631-384-2727. He’s also seeking sponsors and umpires. The registration deadline is April 19. The season is to run from mid-May through August.

“It’s going to be so good this year,” Kathy Amicucci, coach of East Hampton High’s softball team, said at Friday’s indoor practice session when asked if the playoffs were in the offing.

Last year, her team came within one game of making them, finishing at 8-10, though the team, she said at the time, had been a joy to coach.

Among East Hampton’s returnees are its pitcher, Sam Merritt, its catcher, Maddie Schenck, its shortstop, Isabella Swanson, its center fielder, Rebecca Kuperschmid, and its first baseman, Ella Gurney. 

Merritt and Schenck have been battery mates the past four years. “She’s got all the pitches now, including a riser,” a frequent strikeout pitch in softball, Schenck said of Merritt, during Friday’s practice. 

Merritt, as a review of last year’s stories show, is also a heavy hitter at the plate. Her walk-off blast to the fence, which chased three runners home, enabled the Bonackers to beat Southampton 6-5 and put them within one game of the 2017 playoffs. 

Unfortunately, the ultimate regular-season opponent was league-leading Shoreham-Wading River, which dashed Bonac’s dreams by a score of 10-4.

With better pitching, and, presumably, even better hitting — Kuperschmid, Schenck, Gurney, and Merritt were the heart of last year’s lineup, in the third through sixth spots — Amicucci’s charges bid fair to avenge themselves on teams they lost to last year.

A scrimmage that was to have been held here with Southampton on March 13 was snowed out. A nonleague game with Bayport-Blue Point that was to have been played here Friday was scratched too. “We would have played there — they’ve got  a turf field — tomorrow,” Amicucci said, “but it’s going to be my son’s birthday.”

Assuming its field was playable — Amicucci and Schenck shoveled snow off the infield last Thursday — the Bonackers were to have had their initial outing in a scrimmage at Hampton Bays Tuesday. The league opener, at Port Jefferson, is to be played today. A game at Miller Place is scheduled for tomorrow. The team is to play at Mount Sinai Wednesday. Its first appearance at home is to be on Tuesday, April 3, with John Glenn, a game that is to begin at 10 a.m. Sayville is to play here on April 6, the day before the spring break ends.

Isabella Swanson, a senior — as are Merritt, Schenck, and Sophia Ledda — is also in her fifth year on the varsity. Gurney, Kuperschmid, Raven Biondo, Erin Decker, who’s up from the junior varsity, and Mary McDonald, also up from the jayvee, are juniors. A freshman from Springs, Katherine Osterberg, a catcher there, has been slotted in as a third baseman on the varsity.

Randi Cherill, East Hampton’s trainer, suggested that Amicucci ask Kim Hren, one of the best female ballplayers to come out of East Hampton, if she’d be her assistant. “I asked her and she said yes,” said the coach, who also may avail herself of the assistance of a slow-pitch softball teammate, Virginia McGovern, who coached for a time last year in Southampton.

Amicucci said she was hoping to get outside soon. “There’s only so much you can do inside,” she said.

The first Bonac team to see action this “spring” was boys tennis, which lost its league opener to Westhampton Beach here Monday by a score of 4-3 — in the absence of its third singles player, Luke Louchheim, who was sick, it should be noted.

Jonny De Groot, at one (as the result of besting Ravi MacGurn in an eight-game pro set ladder match), took a tough left-handed opponent, Danny Tucco, an all-state doubles player, to three sets, using a booming serve and some deft shot-making to his advantage. MacGurn, Jaedon Glasstein, and (by a hair) Brad Drubych won at second, third, and fourth singles, but all three doubles teams lost, making it clear where Kevin McConville, East Hampton’s new coach, should concentrate his effort.

At first doubles, Alex Wesley and Josh Kaplan lost 7-5, 6-2; James Fairchild and Mathew McGovern lost 6-3, 6-1 at two, and Hunter Medler and John Jimenez lost 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 at three.

With Louchheim in the lineup, the match could well have gone the other way. 

“We’ll get ’em next time,” McConville said.

The tennis team was to have played at Shoreham-Wading River yesterday, but yet another storm was predicted.

Howard Wood, known as the Dancing Bear in his University of Tennessee playing days, is to be named as an SEC Legend Wednesday during halftime of his alma mater’s first-round conference tournament game at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis.

A second-team all-American and first-team all-SEC selection in 1981, his senior year, Wood, who went on to a successful decade-long career in Spain after playing briefly in the N.B.A. with the Utah Jazz, will join three of his teammates from the early Don DeVoe years — Reggie Johnson, Dale Ellis, and Johnny Darden — on the elite Legends list.

The honoree had piqued Tennessee’s interest at a closed-to-the-public scrimmage between East Hampton High School and Long Island Lutheran in his senior year here, but said this week that he’d heard later in life that a University of Connecticut scout had predicted that he’d never play at Tennessee. “Not because of sour grapes,” he added.

“I wasn’t on Tennessee’s list initially. They were there to see Wayne McCoy, the best high school player in the nation at the time. He was big, 6-9 — I was 6-6 at the time — but I had a good scrimmage. He ended up going to St. John’s and I went to Tennessee.”

His parents had wanted him to stay closer to home — UConn, Iona, and Hofstra were other suitors — so they could see him play, but Wood, with his high school coach Ed Petrie’s blessing, went for it. “I never regretted that I went that far away from home — you go where your heart takes you.” 

“Don DeVoe had just taken over as the coach there. He’d coached with Bobby Knight, so you can imagine. I was overweight, and so he had me run up and down the football stadium’s steps 20 times a day, beginning at 6 a.m.”

“I cursed him every step of the way,” he said with a broad smile. “But, oh man, did it make such a difference. I had never been in shape like that. I was so much quicker and stronger, and a lot lighter. I had explosive moves.”

Scott Rubenstein, now the managing partner at East Hampton Indoor/Outdoor Tennis, and a teammate of Wood’s on East Hampton’s 1977 state-championship team, had also contributed greatly to the furtherance of his playing career, Wood said.

“Scott was a terrific defender. When he scored his 100th point, they gave him the ball, which said, ‘100  points scored, 900 points saved.’ He was so good that he’d piss people off. I kept asking myself when we played one-on-one why I couldn’t score on him. Then I realized — he was making me go left! I wanted to spin back, but he knew what was coming. Learning to go left was the best thing ever. Then he had me play tennis with him, and made me move, hitting balls to the baseline and then dropping them over the net.”

“My right hand was wrecked in the first week of practice in my freshman year. It’s still misshapen. For a while, I had to wear something that looked like a boxing glove on it. That’s how I learned to shoot with my left hand. That saved me. I was like Michael Beasley with the Knicks. My left-hand shot got to be as good as my right.”

“I came off the bench as a freshman and made the all-SEC freshman team. I started sometimes as a sophomore. Kevin Nash was playing then — you know, the W.W.E. [World Wrestling Entertainment] guy. He was a 6-11 power forward. I started, I was the center, in my junior and senior years.”

“I had decent stats,” he said. “I don’t remember them. I think I scored 14, 15, or 16 points on average.” He’s 35th on the Volunteers’ all-time scoring list with 1,201. “Seven rebounds, a good free throw shooter, only a few assists. . . . I did not pass,” he said with a smile.

One of Wood’s great games was the N.C.A.A. Sweet 16 matchup between Tennessee and the University of Virginia in ’81. The Vols were to lose 62-48, but Wood defended the 7-4 three-time national player of the year, and future pro, Ralph Sampson, very well. The Hall of Fame plaque’s photo in East Hampton High School shows Wood boxing Sampson out. 

“When you’re smaller, you can use that to your advantage by getting low,” he said. “There’s no trick to it, really — you put your butt in his gut and box him out. Yes, that was Ralph in the picture. The idea is to block the other guy out and get the rebound, or not to let him get the rebound. I got that rebound!” 

He hadn’t exactly shut Sampson down in the Sweet 16 game, he said. “But he only had 7 or 8 points. We did a good job on him as a group. He swatted my first shot into the second row! His first shot was a pull-up jumper from the top of the key, coming off a pick. Oh my God, I didn’t expect it! Our team was small — I was one of the tallest at 6-7 — but we were close-knit, which helped us win. We were always together, which makes it easier when you play . . . nothing negative. . . . I had a good college career. We made it to the N.C.A.A.’s in three of my four years. We made it to the Sweet 16, we won the [1979] SEC tournament, beating Kentucky in the finals, in overtime. . . .” 

That conference championship was Tennessee’s first since 1943.

Wood’s daughter, Luz, who will turn 17 on Monday and is going to Temple University in the fall, is flying over from Spain to attend the ceremony with her father, who became fluent in Spanish while playing professional basketball in that country and became a familiar voice on the radio, broadcasting sporting events, including the Super Bowl. He and his wife, Maria, who lives in Monzon, “a small town two and a half hours outside of Barcelona, my second-favorite city,” are also the parents of a 24-year-old son, Dennis. Wood is an assistant J.V. basketball coach at East Hampton High School and travels to Spain on most school breaks. 

“The tournament is from March 6th to the 11th. Every team in the SEC sends one player.”

Yes, he was in good company, Wood agreed. Reggie Johnson was the first of Tennessee’s SEC Legends, in 1999. Wood, the 20th, joins a list that includes Bernard King, Ernie Grunfeld, Allan Houston, and the aforementioned Dale Ellis, Johnny Darden, and Don DeVoe.

“It’s humbling,” he said, “considering all the players who have played there.”

Friday, March 9

BOYS BASKETBALL, state Class D regional final, Martin Luther King Jr. (I)-Newfield Central (IV) winner vs. Bridgehampton, Center Moriches High School, 7 p.m.

Monday, March 12

WRESTLING, junior high multiteam dual meet, East Hampton High School, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 13

SOFTBALL, Southampton at East Hampton, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Boys Swimming

Ethan McCormac, despite having been floored by the flu in the week leading up to this past weekend’s state boys swimming meet at the Nassau County Aquatics Center, matched his season-best of 48.46 seconds in the finals of the 100 freestyle, placing 21st over all, though in the 200 free, his best race, he failed to qualify for the final.

“It was a very fast meet,” said Craig Brierley, East Hampton’s coach, adding that Suffolk’s team won it, for the second year in a row. “Long Island swimming and East Hampton swimming are going strong, with a bright future beckoning our boys and girls teams.”

McCormac has been named to the all-county team, in the 200 free. All-league selections include the 200 medley relay team of Joey Badilla, Jack Duryea, Ethan McCormac, and Owen McCormac; the 200 free relay team of Colin Harrison, Ryan Duryea, Owen McCormac, and Fernando Menjura, and the 400 free relay team of Menjura, Aidan Forst, Badilla, and Ethan McCormac.

All-leaguers in individual events are Forst in the 200 free, Ethan McCormac in the 200 individual medley, Harrison and Owen McCormac in the 50 free, Owen McCormac in the 100 free, Ethan McCormac in the 500 free, Badilla in the 100 backstroke, and Ryan Duryea in the 100 breaststroke.

Winter Awards

The following won awards handed out by East Hampton High School’s winter team coaches this past week: 

Jack Reese, most valuable, Malachi Miller, most improved, and Noah Lappin, coach’s award, boys basketball; Maddie Schenck, most valuable, Tallulah Marino, most improved, and Sophia Ledda, coach’s award, girls basketball.

Alondra Tirado, most valuable, Karen Sanchez, most improved, and Jacarra Stephens, coach’s award, cheerleading; Maverick Rodriguez, most improved, and Rafaela Barreto, coach’s award, dance; Ethan McCormac, most valuable, Noah Gualtieri, most improved, and Alex Pintado, coach’s award, boys swimming.

Matthew Maya, most valuable, Robert Weiss, most improved, and Ryan Fowkes, coach’s award, boys indoor track; Lillie Minskoff, most improved, girls indoor track, and Andreas Koutsogiannis, most valuable, Brahian Usma, most improved, and Martin Soto, coach’s award, wrestling.

Golden Gloves

Richie Daunt of Montauk is paired with Diego Iglesias in a 152-pound novice Golden Gloves fight tonight, though the site had yet to be determined as of earlier this week. Last Thursday, Daunt won a first-round bout, defeating Salvatore Pemilla at the Yonkers Police Athletic League.

In an email, Daunt said he can be followed online at usaboxingmetro.com and on Instagram at @montauk.boxing.

Noah Avallone of Montauk was to have been among 16 junior pipe riders from around the world competing Tuesday in the Burton U.S. Open Junior (14-and-under) Jam in Vail, Colo.

Though only 10, Noah, who recently won the Next Gen division at the Mt. Baker Legendary Banked Slalom in the State of Washington — a gated natural halfpipe race that has been contested since 1985 — was one of the youngest snowboarders at Vail, and thus presumably had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Following last year’s snowboarding season — Noah can be found most winter weekends at southern Vermont series events — his father, Mike, said during an interview at their house on Navy Road that it would be “a long shot” whether his then-9-year-old son would receive a Junior Jam invitation this year. 

“But winning the national halfpipe last year put him on the radar,” he said during a recent telephone conversation as the Olympics were being contested. “It’s pretty special. He’ll be with the best of the best.”

There were nine riders from the U.S. at the Junior Jam, as well as invitees from Japan, Korea, Australia, and Great Britain.

“Shaun White won the Baker Slalom’s Next Gen division in 1998,” the elder Avallone said. “It’s a long way until 2026, though Noah’s on the Olympic path.”

Noah began snowboarding “at the age of 18 or 20 months, at Third House,” his father said. “We strapped him in and pushed him down the hill. He stayed on, and he had a big smile on his face.”

He has made great strides since, winning his first national championship at the age of 8, a feat he has repeated in each of the past two years.

At some point, Noah’s father said in last year’s interview, “he’ll have to practice and compete the year round.” In that regard, he’s getting there. “From early to mid-November,” Mike said, “he trained in Switzerland, at Saas-Fee, in the Swiss Alps, near the Italian border. He won his age group in the Audi series’ [slopestyle] Glacier 3000.”

Asked if Noah would be spending the summer in Australia, Mike said, “No, he’ll be here, surfing.”

Noah’s been surfing since a young age too, and Mike said that sport dovetailed very nicely with snowboarding.

“Snowboarding’s different from skiing — it comes from surfing and skateboarding, where you’re standing sideways. There are no poles in snowboarding, it’s more flowing, like surfing — like surfing in the snow, and the metal edges enable you to go on all the regular trails. . . . When he’s not snowboarding he’s improving his snowboarding by skating and surfing. And vice versa.”

Surfing and skateboarding will be contested in the 2020 summer Olympics, though, while he’s good at surfing, whether it be longboard or short — he was a winner at the Rell Sunn contest in Montauk last summer — Noah is primarily focused on snowboarding.

“He was fourth at the Rip Curl championships near Cape Hatteras in North Carolina last summer, going up against 13-year-olds from Hawaii,” Noah’s father said. “He’ll try again this summer.” 

Speaking of the Olympics, the elder Avallone said he and his son had, of course, been watching all the snowboarding events, including White’s “unbelievable” run to garner the gold in the men’s halfpipe, the 17-year-old Red Gerard’s similarly impressive slopestyle win, and the gold-medal halfpipe run of Chloe Kim, who’s also 17.

Noah’s birthday is in May. He’ll be 18 when the 2026 Olympics are contested. It’s unknown at the moment in what corner of the world they’ll be, but, meanwhile, he’s on the right path.

Chris Pfund, a 2009 graduate of East Hampton High School who lettered in football and baseball there, was on his way Monday to Raleigh, N.C., where he will play arena football for the Triangle Torch.

Pfund, 27, is in his third year with the Torch organization, though he hopes the 2018 campaign will mark a breakthrough.

“It was a little rough at first,” the 6-foot-4-inch, 220-pound wide receiver from Montauk said during a conversation at The Star this week. “I bounced around initially, but now I’ve found a home. I was cut by two teams before being taken onto the Torch’s practice squad. I spent last year pretty much fighting to get off it and onto the starting roster, which I did right before the playoffs, but on the Tuesday before our championship game [with the Cape Fear Heroes] I pulled a hamstring, and my hip too. It went down to a game time decision, and I didn’t get to play.”

If a practice session he went through on the high school’s turf field Sunday afternoon, with Jacen Tuthill and Robert Weiss, is any indication, Pfund, who has been training with Mike DeLalio and Gordon Trotter at the MuvStrong fitness studio in the One-Stop complex this winter, looks to be in fine shape, armed as he is with explosive moves and quickness and soft hands.

“It’s eight-on-eight football in an N.H.L.-sized arena, with running, tackling, passing, blocking, kickoffs, field goals, extra points, and four downs to go 10 yards, though there’s no punting on fourth down. . . .”

“There are three linemen, a quarterback, a running back, and three receivers on offense,” he continued, “and three linemen, two linebackers, and three backs on defense.”

It was, said Pfund, a fast-paced, frequently high-scoring game, a passing one fundamentally, though there were running plays too.

The playing area is about one-fourth that of a National Football League field — 66 yards long by 28 yards wide — and, of course, it is bounded by waist-high walls over which receivers sometimes tumble. “The fans like that,” Pfund said with a smile. “There are maybe 5 yards of walking space between the walls and the seats, though there is a V.I.P. area, which I’ve fallen into at times.” 

“I’m what they call a Z receiver, a wall receiver. . . .” Whereupon he showed this writer a YouTube clip of him snagging a pass thrown over the middle and dragging three or four defensive backs down the field with him, Gronkowski-style. “Normally it takes more than one guy to bring me down.”

“A lot of people don’t like going in the middle, but I prefer it. You’re really focused when you run in the middle, maybe even more so than when you’re all alone, wide open. But please say that wherever the ball is thrown I catch it!”

If he made a catch at the wall and flipped over it, it was still a catch, none of this stuff about having both feet touch the floor first. And breaking the plane governed receiving touchdowns, he said. There were no agonizing official reviews.

“Technically, I’m a starter this time, though it’s not set in stone. I have a contract, though I’ll have to fight for my spot. . . .” The head coach, Chris McKinney, who shares the N.C.A.A. record for touchdown punt returns in a single season, and he had “a brother bond,” he said. “He signed me to the [Atlanta-based] Georgia Rampage in 2013, when I was at Suffolk Community College.”

It is, as aforesaid, his third season with the Torch. “The first year, I tore my abdomen, which put me out for the season. Last year, as I said, I was re-signed to the practice squad, where I was for most of the season before getting hurt right before the championship game. The Heroes won it 30-24. We had the ball on the 4-yard line with 30 seconds to go and threw an interception in the end zone.”

Aside from the Torch and Heroes, other franchises in the 12-team American Arena League are the Richmond Roughriders, the High Country Grizzlies of Boone, N.C., the Atlanta Havoc, the (Lakeland) Florida Tarpons, the Carolina Energy of Charlotte, and the Peach State Cats of Dalton, Ga.

As for hooking on with the N.F.L., “if it happens, then great, but I’m happy where I am. I hope to keep playing; I’ve got some 30-something teammates. Hopefully, I’ll have a good year. I actually feel as if I’m getting younger physically, thanks to the training I’ve been doing at MuvStrong, and with Jacen and Andrew Foglia and Dustin Lightcap.” 

“I’ve been working out with them, depending on which one has the time, every other day at the high school or at Lions Field or the Playhouse gym in Montauk. I’ve been going to MuvStrong on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Mike’s been writing up workouts for me every four weeks. But really it’s come down to me making myself work.”

Concerning the coming season, which begins soon and goes through June, Pfund said he thinks he might make a good Jack linebacker too. “There are two linebackers, a Jack and a Mack. The Mack blitzes. The Jack’s job is to protect the width of the field. . . .”

“Some of the games are on TV,” he said in reply to a question. “I know you can see them on YouTube TV. A lot of people from here have seen me play. I love it.”

Come the summer, Pfund will be back here, working with his father, Chris Sr., and playing slow-pitch at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett. Though slow-pitch, he readily agreed, didn’t get you in shape for football.

Arena football, he said, with a smile, in reply to a question as he got ready to go, “is popular everywhere that’s not here.”