It will be rebuilding in capital letters, Joe McKee, East Hampton High’s football coach, agreed during a conversation at The Star Monday, though, buoyed by the likelihood that Bonac once again will field a varsity team, he’ll welcome the challenge.

“At the moment, it looks good as far as our being placed in Division IV,” a league with schools having smaller enrollments than East Hampton’s, “though it’s not a done deal yet. . . . We should know for sure in early March.”

In the alternative, assuming East Hampton is not placed in Division IV by the county’s powers-that-be, McKee said he’d like to play independently, along with such schools as Southampton, McGann-Mercy, Greenport, and Port Jefferson. That alignment appeals to him most, in fact, insofar as competitiveness and travel time go.

As for competitiveness, “It’s not going to be easy,” the coach said, despite East Hampton’s enrollment advantage. 

“It will be a long process. We had four freshmen, five sophomores, and four juniors when we began practicing this past August,” numbers that dwindled even further, resulting in the plug being pulled on football here for the second time in the past four years. “And the middle school only had 20 kids on the seventh and eighth-grade team.”

The decision, made by the coaches, the school district’s athletic director, and the district’s administration, to forgo football last fall “was not an easy one to make,” he added.

Lower turnouts for the sport — not only here, but nationwide — can be traced in part to safety worries. McKee said he was “more than reasonably assured” concerning that question. “Our equipment is the best . . . we’re taking the head out of the game by teaching proper tackling techniques . . . we’re limited by Section XI to the number of days in which full contact is allowed. . . .”

Moreover, along that line, a flag football program he began here two years ago “has grown. We had 70 [kindergarten through sixth-grade] kids the first year and 125 this past fall.”

Those popular Friday night sessions at East Hampton’s Herrick Park are overseen by the varsity and junior varsity coaches — McKee and his varsity assistants Ed McGintee and Lorenzo Rodriguez among them.

All of the above urged the 24 ninth through 11th graders who attended a meeting at the high school in late January to get into the weight room posthaste, which, said McKee, the prospective players have done. “We’ve been having nice showings in the weight room, from 10 to 15,” he said.

In the coming weeks bridging the end of winter sports and the beginning of spring ones, “we’re going to be throwing the football outside, and we’ll be in the gym when we’re not able to get outside,” McKee said, adding that “in the summer we’ll be doing agility and football-related drills three days a week.”

Given the sense of urgency involved, he expects attendance at these sessions to be good.

Also at the above-mentioned January meeting, each of the attendees was asked by the coaches to recruit at least one friend — a request that apparently has met with some success. “The kids have been telling me there are others who are interested,” the coach said.

Asked to name some of the other Division IV teams, McKee said, “Southampton, Mercy, Greenport, Port Jefferson, Hampton Bays, Center Moriches, Babylon, John Glenn, Shoreham-Wading River. . . . Miller Place was in it last year, though they’ve been going back and forth between Division III and IV. . . .”

“We’d play an eight-game schedule, but we’d forgo the playoffs for the first two years. After that I’d hope we’d be able to contend for them.”

Ideally, he said, he’d like to have a junior varsity as well.

Friday, February 16

BOYS BASKETBALL, Class A playoffs, winner of East Hampton-John Glenn outbracket game at first seed; Class C playoffs, fourth-fifth seed winner at first seed, and third-sixth seed winner at second seed, times to be announced.

Saturday, February 17

BOYS SWIMMING, county meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 10 a.m.

PICKLEBALL, open play, Sportime Arena, Amagansett, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Sunday, February 18

BOYS BASKETBALL, county Class D final, 1 p.m., and county Class C final, 3:30, Suffolk Community College-Selden.

Tuesday, February 20

BOYS BASKETBALL, county C-D game, Suffolk Community College-Selden, 4 p.m.

Dan White, East Hampton High’s boys basketball coach, was hoping following Jan. 31’s win here over Hauppauge that his charges would do it again the next day at Sayville, thus putting them in a good spot regarding the playoffs.

Alas, that was not to be, as Sayville — a team the Bonackers bested earlier in the season by 22 points — jumped out to a 20-8 lead in the first quarter and held on for a 62-59 victory.

The loss dropped East Hampton to 6-7 in League V, with games remaining versus Westhampton Beach, Rocky Point, and Kings Park.

Westhampton handed East Islip its second loss of the season, by a score of 64-54, last Thursday, and Kings Park (a team East Hampton defeated 63-53 at home) was 11-3 in league play as of Friday.

Winning two of the final three, then, will be a challenge, though White said following the 76-55 win here over Hauppauge that he hoped to have Bladimir Rodriguez Garces, one of his two big men, who has been academically ineligible of late, back this week. 

It could all come down to Monday’s regular-season finale at Kings Park.

Hauppauge had won only one game thus far as of Friday, though the Eagles, paced by their senior point guard, Eric Sanfilippo, did not go quietly here on the 31st. In fact, they were leading 37-32 at the half. 

East Hampton turned it on, however, in the third, outscoring the visitors 30-10, capitalizing on a number of turnovers and shooting well from the floor and from the foul line.

“Beware of 1,” White said, referring to Sanfilippo, during the huddle between the third and fourth periods. But the Bonackers didn’t have to beware of him for too long inasmuch as Sanfilippo, who finished with a game-high 31 points, fouled out with almost five minutes left to play.

East Hampton was leading 71-51 when Sanfilippo returned to Hauppauge’s bench. Chris Stoecker, East Hampton’s 6-foot-7-inch center, and Jack Reese, its sparkplug point guard, were pulled in the fourth — Reese early on and Stoecker midway through — apparently to give some of their teammates playing time.

“Be sure you mention Noah Lappin,” White said afterward of one of those who came off the bench. “He’s the epitome of a team player. He doesn’t get to play much, but when he does he’s ready. He does everything well.”

Max Proctor also did well coming off the bench.

Jeremy Vizcaino, who started, took a charge after Lappin put back a Stoecker miss, and then knocked down a 3 (with Turner Foster assisting) for a 69-47 East Hampton lead in the opening minutes of the fourth. 

Malachi Miller hit a 3 in the final minute for 76-55, after which, following a Hauppauge miss, he dribbled about as the clock ran out.

Reese led East Hampton with 23 points, Foster and Stoecker each had 13, and Miller, 11.

In related news, the lineup of Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees has been augmented by the return from Southampton of Nae’Jon Ward, a sure-handed sophomore guard who undoubtedly will improve the Bees’ postseason chances.

The Bees began the season at 0-6 before stringing together some wins. They were tied with Pierson, each at 7-3, for second place in League VIII (behind Greenport, 10-0 going into last night’s game with Southold) after facing each other Monday night at Pierson’s gym in Sag Harbor. The Whalers won, 74-61, without the services of their leading scorer, Will Martin, who was on the bench with an injury.

The playoffs, for the Bees, Pierson, and, possibly, East Hampton, are to begin next week.

East Hampton High School took a major step Monday toward fielding a varsity football team for the 2018 season when the athletic directors and superintendents of the schools East Hampton would be competing with agreed, tentatively, to allow them to be placed in Conference IV, which is nominally designed for smaller schools. 

The issue, Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, said Tuesday, is participation, as opposed to enrollment here. Schools with higher levels of participation in football might show up for a Saturday game with 60 players, whereas at East Hampton about 30 students eligible to play this fall have expressed interest. In exchange for being allowed to play in Conference IV, East Hampton would eschew participating in the playoffs this year. 

After Vas met with his fellow athletic directors, a meeting was held Monday evening for students who might want to play in the 2018 season and their parents. Joe McKee, the Bonackers’ coach, said the meeting went well. It was designed to keep those interested “in the loop,” he said.

Bonac fielded a team in 2016 that won only once but was competitive in almost every game. Last year, there were not enough players for a varsity squad.

One proposal that might be looked at in the future, Vas said, would be to have the five East End schools looking to form an alternate league — Greenport, East Hampton, Southampton, Port Jefferson, and McGann-Mercy in Riverhead — compete among themselves. 

For East Hampton to have a team this year, however, the next step is to gain the approval of the placement committee, which is composed of two athletic directors from each of Suffolk County’s four conferences. After that, the final step would be a vote involving all the athletic directors in the county. 

“My only goal is to get the kids involved in a safe environment,” Vas said.

It is likely that men’s slow-pitch softball will come back to the Terry King ball field in Amagansett following a five-plus-year absence.

In the final game played at Terry King, on Aug.1, 2012, CfAR “mercied” Schenck Fuels 21-6, capping a three-game playoff championship series sweep. 

Ray Wojtusiak, one of those who have been pushing ever since for a return to Amagansett, oversaw that team, whose roster included Rob Nicoletti (still pitching at the age of 62), Tom Thorsen, Joe Sullivan, Bill Collins, Alex Tekulsky, Andrew Foglia, Chris Pfund, Diego Palomo, and Nick Jarboe.

At the time, Wojtusiak said the league, which once boasted 14 teams in two divisions, had shrunk to five (and, at the very end, four, given forfeits by the Briar Patch Boys) — a falloff he found hard to believe, he said, given the popularity of the Travis Field tournament, which that year had attracted 15 teams.

With the folding of Amagansett’s league (the women’s slow-pitch league has continued to play at Terry King all along), more than 20 of its players decamped for the Montauk wood bat bar league, whose games are played at the Hank Zebrowski field on Edgemere Road. 

“We had a good time playing in that league,” Wojtusiak said, “but a number of us began seriously talking at the Travis tourney this year about reviving the league in Amagansett.”

At the moment, he said, it appears that the revived league will have between six and eight teams (two, maybe three from Sag Harbor). A meeting has been held among the managers, and further meetings apparently are planned.

Rich Schneider, who lives in Manorville now, and who oversaw the league for years and umpired many of its games, has been asked to take the reins again.

“We’ll use the same equipment they use in the Travis Field tournament,” Woj­tusiak said, “a restricted-flight metal bat and a restricted-flight ball.”

Even so, there will be home runs at Terry King (a rarity in Montauk given the wood bats and the fact that there is no fence in right field for lefties to aim at), though probably far fewer than was the case in the past, when single-wall composite metal bats were allowed.

“It got so that the teams with the liveliest bats at Amagansett would win,” Nicoletti said. “With the ball coming off them at 100 miles per hour, it was potentially dangerous too. It got to where pitchers were wearing protective gear.”

“It was a different game in Montauk,” said Wojtusiak, “a game of base hits and defense.”

As for the projected frequency of play, “Three times a week is too much,” Woj­tusiak said. “It will probably be two times a week. . . . It looks like it’s going to happen.”

One of the attractions, said Nicoletti, has been the extensive work that town crews have done at Terry King.

“They’ve redone the infield, replacing the grass with sod, they’ve added clay to the infield . . . it looks like they’re also going to do some work in the outfield,” where in the past potholes made things dicey when chasing fly balls, “and I hear they’re going to replace the outfield fence.”

All the fields, the Little League fields included, have needed work, said Nicoletti. “Hopefully,” he added, “this will be the beginning, and not just for the adults.”

Claude Okin, who oversees a tennis club empire on Long Island and beyond, said during a recent conversation at the Sportime club in Amagansett that when his wife, Hana Sromova, a former longtime pro tennis tour player, and Sue De Lara first suggested he add pickleball — a paddle game confined to a court one-quarter the size of the one used for tennis — as an offering at the nearby Sportime Arena he leases, he was dubious.

As a tennis player who had also played squash and platform tennis, it seemed initially to him as if pickleball were “less of a game,” but now Okin is among a growing legion of its fans.

From a managerial standpoint he’s also impressed. “Pickleball’s been around for a pretty long time, but there’s a pickleball craze going on now, among a lot of tennis players and non-tennis players,” Okin said. “They’re playing it at S.Y.S. in Southampton and at the Playhouse in Montauk. We have two courts marked out at the Arena now, but there’s no reason we couldn’t fit in nine, maybe even 12. . . .” 

“Our goal is to have a vibrant group,” he said. “The fees are affordable,” $125 for a membership through mid-June and $15 for drop-ins. “The only time the Arena is quiet is on weekday mornings. We could play every day. This could become a pickleball mecca.”

As it is, a hard-core group of about 8 or 10 has been playing the past several Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at which point they yield the space to popular girls lacrosse clinics overseen by Elizabeth and Lina Bistrian.

In tennis, volleyed rallies at the net don’t often last long, the greater width of the court allowing for sharply angled putaways, but in pickleball battles at the net — or near it, that is, given the seven-foot no-volley zone, “the kitchen,” into which a volleyer is forbidden to step — can go on and on.

“The idea in pickleball, once the serve return bounces, is to close as quickly as you can, though my wife’s always saying I don’t move up quickly enough, which leaves me stuck in no-man’s-land,” Okin said. “It’s different from tennis in that when your team is serving you both must stay back, because the return must bounce once before you head for the net. When you’re receiving it’s the same setup as in tennis, with the non-returner up and the returner back.”

Scoring, which requires that the server call out his/her team’s and the opposing team’s scores before saying which number server he/she is, server number-one or server number-two (in pickleball, aside from the start, both players must serve before there’s a sideout), can be a bit confusing, but Sromova, De Lara, and Okin are ready and willing to guide the temporarily perplexed.

Eventually (I think I can say this from personal experience) it sinks in.

Another thing to remember: Points can only be won when serving. Sideouts, as in volleyball before rally scoring was adopted, extend the length of the games, which are usually to 10 or 11, with the winners up by at least 2.

Most important: Pickleball is fun. Sromova, a native of the Czech Republic, would undoubtedly wipe any of her fellow players off the court in tennis were she so inclined, though on the pickleball court, while still the dominant player, she’s not overwhelmingly so.

“The level evens up a bit — touch is important,” Sromova said.

When this writer said he didn’t care so much in pickleball whether he won or lost, though he did care in tennis, De Lara agreed that pickleball was “more fun in a way — there’s less at stake. Plus,” she added, with a smile, “it’s warm. It’s such a nice alternative to tennis. If it’s raining in the summer, you could play pickleball at the Arena. We’ve got air-conditioning.” 

“It’s really a game of strategy, not rocketed shots,” Judy D’Mello, a recent convert, said when questioned at the Star office later in the week.

“They say the third shot is usually a dink,” said Okin, who’s been studying videos of pickleball tournaments. (And, when it comes to dinks, or drop shots, opponents can legally step into “the kitchen” for half-volley returns, after which they must step back behind the aforementioned seven-foot line.)

As for his wife, who is just beginning to play, “She’s not ranked 87th in the world,” as she was on the pro tennis tour in 2006, “but there’s no telling how strong she’ll get,” Okin said, smiling.

Thursday, February 8

ICE HOCKEY, tentative, Southampton vs. Buckskill Sharks, Buckskill Winter Club, East Hampton, 5:45 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, McGann-Mercy vs. Pierson-Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, 6 p.m., and Rocky Point at East Hampton, 6:15.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Rocky Point, 6:45 p.m.

Friday, February 9

BOYS BASKETBALL, Bridgehampton at Greenport, 5 p.m., and Pierson at Ross School, East Hampton, 6:15.

Saturday, February 10

WRESTLING, county tournament, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 9:30 a.m.

PICKLEBALL, open play, Sportime Arena, Amagansett, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Stony Brook at East Hampton, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Monday, February 12

WINTER TRACK, county boys and girls meets, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 5 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Kings Park, 6:45 p.m.

“Get into the weight room,” two dozen would-be football players were told by Joe McKee and his fellow coaches during a meeting at East Hampton High School’s cafeteria on Jan. 24.

“If we’ve got the numbers, which appears to be the case at the moment, we’re going to play,” Joe Vas, the East Hampton School District’s athletic director, said during a conversation the next day.

The particulars, said Vas, have yet to be worked out. “There are a number of ideas floating around. We ought to know where we’ll be by the middle of the month.”

In two of the past four years, East Hampton has not fielded a varsity team. It did play a season in Conference IV in 2016 — the conference with the county’s smallest schools — finishing at 1-7. Its sole win — and an exciting one at that — came in its finale here with Bayport.

It was then decreed by Section XI that East Hampton would be bumped up to Conference III, into a league with schools its size — a prospect that McKee said he could live with. But an unexpected falloff in numbers persuaded Vas and the coaching staff and the district’s administration to pull the plug on the 2017 season last August.

As an alternative to playing in Conference III, known as “the black-and-blue league,” Vas had volunteered to forgo the playoffs if East Hampton were allowed to remain in Conference IV, but was turned down.

This time, however, he said, the section’s football committee chairman has recommended such an “alternatively based” move. 

“The debate now,” said the A.D., “is whether we’re placed in a Conference IV that would have 12 teams in it, as would each of the other three conferences, or whether the alignment would be 14 -14 -14 -11.”

The latter, he said, was the arrangement he would prefer, though all else failing, East Hampton, Southampton, McGann-Mercy, Port Jefferson, and Greenport have tentatively agreed to further discuss placement concerns with Section XI.

“It’s all in discussion now — nothing is final,” said Vas. “I’m meeting on Feb. 5 with the athletic directors and superintendents of these schools to talk about it at Section XI’s offices. After Feb. 5, I should have a good feel as to what will happen. The county placement meeting for football — and for all other sports — will be on Feb. 14.”

“The bottom line is if we have the numbers [McKee and his assistants, Ed McGintee and Lorenzo Rodriguez, urged each of the Jan. 24 attendees to recruit one or two more friends], we’ll play,” the athletic director said.

The A.D. said there will be a meeting on Monday, at 6:30 p.m., in the high school’s cafeteria “for all prospective players and their parents.” 

Asked if any of the prospects had played much football — as aforesaid, there has been no varsity here in two of the past four years — Vas said that a paucity of experience underlay his willingness to forgo playoffs. “We just want them to play,” he said.

The turnout of 24, comprising nine juniors, seven sophomores, and eight freshmen, did not include interested eighth graders who will be high school freshmen in the fall.

The minimum required to field a varsity would be 16, he said in answer to a question. 

“I almost died last year,” Coach McKee said at the meeting in the cafeteria, adding that high school football was the focus of community life in towns throughout the country. 

Bob Budd, a longtime volunteer and East Hampton Hall of Famer who has helped coach East Hampton football teams in the past, and who, by his estimate, has been associated with the sport “for 70 years,” urged the students to stick at it and to restore the Bonac tradition. 

“We may not have won every time, but the other team’s coaches and players knew that if they were playing East Hampton, they were in for a game,” he said. “Let’s bring those years back.”

East Hampton High School’s boys basketball team fell to 5-6 at Harborfields last Thursday, though the Bonackers’ 50-48 win over Islip in a hotly contested game here on Jan. 23 kept the attendees glued to their seats.

Playing without one of its big men, Bladimir Rodriguez Garces, sidelined because of academic difficulty (as was also the case at Harborfields apparently), East Hampton hung tough throughout. At halftime, the home team was up 29-28, at the end of the third quarter it was down by 5, and so let’s pick up the thread when the fourth began.

Two Bonac baskets, the second by Jack Reese, the omnipresent senior point guard, who stole the ball and laid it in, pulled East Hampton to 36-37. 

Islip, a quick, physical team, came right back with two baskets of its own, after which Turner Foster fed Reese for a 3, and Reese, again following a steal by him, went coast-to-coast to tie it at 41-41.

The gym was in an uproar as Islip’s coach called for a timeout. When play resumed, Max Proctor’s 3-point play put East Hampton up 44-41, a lead that slipped away in the succeeding moments. 

Before Foster drained a 3-pointer from the left wing with 1 minute and 16 seconds left to play, the visitors had led 48-44. Now, they were up by 1.

About a half-dozen passes had been made when Reese fouled the ball-handler, who went to the line and came up empty. Proctor came down with the rebound and fed the ball to Reese, who found Foster camped out at his spot on the left wing. Foster let it go . . . and, yes! His and Bonac’s fans’ prayers were answered. There were 44.9 seconds left and East Hampton was again in the lead, at 50-48.

Islip dashed up the court, the ball going to Sterling Fitz-Henry, one of its guards, who, in driving for the hoop, was rejected by Chris Stoecker, East Hampton’s tall center. Islip inbounded, and again went to tie it, but Foster came up big again, stripping the ball before the would-be shooter could get off a close-in baseline shot. This time, it was East Hampton’s ball to inbound, with 17.7 seconds on the clock.

With Islip players swarming, Reese corralled Foster’s inbounds pass and was fouled. He missed the front end of the one-and-one, and Islip rebounded and managed to get off one more shot, which rebounded off the rim. Amid the ensuing mad scramble for the ball, the final buzzer sounded.

Four Bonackers wound up in double figures that night — Foster, the hero, with 12, and Malachi Miller, Reese, and Stoecker, each with 10.

For Islip, Fitz-Henry had 14, Gabriel Perez, 16, and Chris Giuliani (a guard who plays very much like Reese, which is to say he seems to be everywhere), 10.

Dan White, East Hampton’s coach, happy to be at .500 again, attributed the win largely to tenacious defensive play. “Offensively, we struggled when it came to scoring in the third [0-for-6 from the field, 3-for-3 from the foul line], but got it together in the fourth.”

When told, yet again, that his team was always “fun to watch,” White said, “Especially when we win. And even more especially when we win at home.”

In another recent away game, the Bonackers lost 68-59 at East Islip, the undefeated league leader. “We played well in the first half,” the coach said. “In fact, it was the best half we’ve played so far. We were up by 7 or 9 at one point. For two and a half quarters we played great. It was good to see we can play with the best team in the league.”

League Track Meets

Ryan Fowkes placed third twice at the league track meet Friday at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, in the 1,600 and 1,000-meter races. He ran the 1,600 in 4 minutes and 37.08 seconds, and ran the 1,000 in 2:48.39. 

Ben Turnbull, the boys team’s coach, said that Matt Maya placed third in the 55-meter hurdles, in 8.82 seconds, a personal best, and that he had placed eighth in the long jump, with a leap of 18 feet 101/4 inches.

Yani Cuesta, the coach of the girls, said Ava Engstrom placed eighth in the 1,500, in 5:24.32, that Mimi Fowkes placed seventh in the 1,500-meter racewalk, in 9:34.66, and that Lily Minskoff placed 11th in the 300, in :47.11, and 12th in the long jump, at 14-4, a personal best. The fourth member of the team, Bella Espinoza, was sidelined that day because of an illness, Cuesta said.

Round-Robin Wrestling

Anthony Piscitello, East Hampton High’s wrestling coach, said he took about half his team to a round-robin meet at Port Jefferson Saturday, given the fact that “about five or six” of his charges were out with the flu.

Caleb Peralta, at 120 pounds, and Andreas Koutsogiannis, at 195, won all three matches they wrestled. The latter won two matches by technical fall and one by pin. Cole Shaw went 2-1 at 132 pounds, and Ben Baris, while 0-3, “should get a lot of credit,” said Piscitello, “for competing despite having been wiped out by the flu recently.”

“The matches went quickly — we were out of there by 12:15,” the coach said.

The league meet, he added, is to be this Saturday at Comsewogue. He’ll take “the whole team, at least 12 guys.”