The 31st Montauk triathlon, founded by the late Bob Aaron, is to be contested Saturday morning, beginning at 7:30, with what promises to be a brisk mile-long swim in Lake Montauk.

    Both defending champions, the 21-year-old Ryan Siebert of Patchogue and Laurel Wassner, a 37-year-old pro from New York City, who became the first female to win this race outright in 2011, won’t be here, Merle McDonald-Aaron, the race director, said Monday.

    Registration is, as usual, closed, inasmuch as the 650-competitor limit has been reached, McDonald-Aaron said.

    “Ryan is injured,” she added, “and I haven’t heard from Laurel. . . . I don’t think she’s coming, so we’ll have two new winners.”

    David Powers, 45, of New York City and Wainscott, who won Montauk in 2008, was the runner-up in 2010, and who held a several-minute lead last year when he “muffed a flying dismount coming in on the bike,” rendering him hors de combat, is expected, despite his age, to be among the front-runners.

    Another expected returnee, McDonald-Aaron said, will be Eben Jones, formerly the world’s top amateur triathlete and a nine-time winner at Montauk. Jones, who lives in New Canaan, Conn., is 52 now, though he won his age group at the nationals in 2011 and was fourth that year among the 50-54s in Hawaii’s Ironman. Jones last won Montauk in 2002, in 1 hour, 51 minutes, and 55 seconds. Siebert’s winning time last year was 1:52:46.5.

    McDonald-Aaron said the three-part race, which includes 22-mile bike and 10K run legs, would be held rain or shine, “except, if there’s a thunderstorm, we’ll just do the bike and the run.”

    Volunteers are welcome, the race director said. “Anyone interested in helping should come to the race site [the intersection of West Lake and Star Island Drives] between 6 and 6:30 a.m.”

    Check-in will be from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Harborside Motel tomorrow.

    The race’s beneficiaries will be the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, the Montauk Senior Nutrition Center, the East Hampton Town Police Benevolent Association, the Montauk ambulance squad, Phoe­nix House, and the St. Therese of Lisieux youth ministry.

Saturday, June 8

MONTAUK TRIATHLON, 1-mile swim, 22-mile bike, and 10K run, intersection of West Lake and Star Island Drives, 7:30 a.m.

SOFTBALL, state Class C semifinals, Morse Fields, Queensbury, 9 a.m.; final,  Adirondack Sports Complex, Queensbury, 2 p.m.

BASEBALL, state Class C semifinals, Broome Community College, Binghamton, 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.; championship game, 4.

SWIM ACROSS AMERICA, kick-off reception, Sag Harbor Yacht Club, 6-9 p.m.

Wednesday, June 12

MEN’S SOCCER, Hampton F.C.-Bill Miller vs. F.C. Tuxpan, 6:30 p.m., The Hideaway vs. Maidstone Market, 7:25, and Bateman Painting vs. Tortorella Pools, 8:20, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

   Shawn Roberts, who red-shirted this year at Georgia Tech so that he could have another year of eligibility, easily won the Bonac on Board to Wellness 5K from the Reutershan Parking Lot to East Hampton Village’s Main Beach on May 22 in 16 minutes and 45 seconds.

    “He was coasting,” said John Conner, when told that Roberts’s employer, Barbara Gubbins, had said he was “a 1:48 half-miler.”

    “If he had been going all out, I think he would have run it in 15-something, or less,” said Conner, who added that he had run as fast as the winner when he was 50.

    Roberts will be one of four elite college runners comprising Gubbins Running Ahead’s team this summer.

    “We’ll run in a lot of races,” said Geary Gubbins, who was himself a top competitor at Duke not long ago and is now working at his parents’ New Balance store here.

    Roberts’s performance aside, three in the top five — Doug Milano (17:41), Jason Hancock (17:50), and Chris Reich (18:29) — were teachers. And, even more noteworthy, the seventh and eighth-place finishers, Emilio Espinoza and Omar Leon Saldana, were East Hampton Middle School seventh graders.

    Their times — 19:06 in Espinoza’s case and 19:10 in Saldana’s — caught the attention of Reich, who coaches East Hampton High’s cross-country and boys track teams. “I ran in the 19s when I was a freshman,” recalled Reich, who also was impressed by the 19:30 another seventh grader, Eamon Spencer, ran. The top eighth grader that day was Andrew Wilson of the Springs School, who placed 13th over all, in 19:45, despite having been felled in the early going by a fellow runner.

    Reich said that Roberts and Milano, who has boxed in the Golden Gloves, went out at “a crazy pace. They ran the first mile in 5:05!” Roberts was said to have surged ahead of Milano, who was to finish about a minute behind him, at the two-mile mark.

    Barbara Gubbins (19:58) was the women’s winner — and 15th over all among the horde of competitors, a field that listed 658 finishers. Alyssa Bahel, who runs the 3,200 for East Hampton High’s girls track team, was the second female, in 20:45.

    Bahel’s teammate — and the team’s top distance runner — Dana Cebulski, who was said to be recovering from mononucleosis, was resting up for the state qualifier, Dana’s mother said. Another absentee was Dana’s older brother, Adam, the boys team’s top distance runner, whose energies were devoted to the divisional championships last week.

    Rounding out the top 10 were Mike Bahel, who was sixth in 18:37, Luis Morales, Reich’s assistant, who was ninth in 19:16, and Eric Perez, who was 10th in 19:19.

    The top five females comprised Gubbins, Alyssa Bahel, Devon Brown (21:10), a teammate of Bahel’s, Sharon McCobb (21:17), the president of the Old Montauk Athletic Club, a supporter of the race, and East Hampton Middle School seventh grader Liana Paradiso (21:20), who is to compete for the United States next week in the Student Youth Games in Rome. Chasen Dubs (23:52), an East Hampton Middle School sixth grader, is also on the team, as is Eddie Arnold, whose father, Ed, coaches cross-country and track at Southampton High School.

    In Rome, the American kids, all of whom can claim at least one great-grandparent who was an Italian citizen, are to go up against their peers from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, Vene­zuela, and the host country.

    “There are some really talented kids in all the schools — in Springs, Montauk, Amagansett, and East Hampton,” said Hancock, who teaches sixth grade at Amagansett. “We [he and Mike Rodgers] brought 12 sixth graders with us today who’ll be going to the middle school in the fall. This gives them a chance to meet their future schoolmates, which is good. Plus it’s fun.”

    The middle school, as it often does, won the schools’ competition, with Montauk’s seventh and eighth graders placing second, and Springs’ third.

    Lea Bryant, the middle school’s health teacher, who, with Barbara Tracey, the school’s nurse, oversees the Bonac on Board to Wellness program, said, when questioned, “It’s such a spectacular day on so many levels. It’s a wonderful time of year, all the kids get to do the same thing, and they’re all striving to do their best.”

    “We work with our students all year on nutrition and fitness, and encourage them to make healthy choices . . . to feel high naturally.”

    “They practice for this,” she added, when told that it seemed most of the participants appeared to be in good long-distance shape. “They practice in phys ed class. They all run a mile in the fall and in the spring, and set goals for the 5K. They’ve been pretty excited by their times today, as they should be.”

   Scorpion, which had stung Virgen del Milagro to win Sportime Arena’s indoor soccer (futsal) championship in early March, was, in turn, bested by the Bautista brothers’ team, now known as F.C., in the spring men’s open final, which was played at Sportime on May 18.

    In the men’s 38-plus title game, which also was hotly contested throughout, Liga Sayausi prevailed 8-7 in a penalty kick shootout that broke a 3-3 tie.

    The men’s open final also went down to penalty kicks, and it was bad news for the defending champs inasmuch as F.C.’s acrobatic goalie, Luis Bautista, proved to be unbeatable from close range, stopping successive bids by Christian Gonzales, Jimmy Baculima, and Diego Guazhambo.

    Meanwhile, F.C.’s shots, taken by Ismael Penafiel, Christian Penafiel, and Daniel Acosta, beat Scorpion’s keeper, Luis Bermeo.

    After Acosta’s goal clinched the championship, at 3-0, Luis Bautista did a series of flips as his teammates and he celebrated.

    Scorpion (from whose lineup Antonio Padilla, Mario Olaya, and Danny Bedoya were missing) and F.C. battled it out in the 50 minutes of regulation, with F.C. getting on the scoreboard first, about midway through the first half, as Juan Villavicencio put away a pass from Luis Uchupaille, who had stolen the ball at midcourt.

    With about two and a half minutes to go until the break, Scorpion’s Franklin Bermeo evened the count.

    The second half was scoreless, though each team had good chances. Then, as aforesaid, Luis Bautista took over the game.

    It was pretty much the same in the men’s 38-plus final, though the pace was not quite as frenetic. Liga Sayausi’s Walter Criollo broke the ice nine minutes into the first half, though the Cosmos’ Wilson Garcia responded with a goal of his own soon after.

    The Cosmos were to tack on two more scores — by Manuel Calle and Jose Nano — to take a 3-1 lead with 10 minutes left until the break, but Carlos Guichay got one back for Liga Sayausi in the 21st minute of play.

    Finally, in the 47th minute, Criollo tied it up as he buried a pass he’d received from Guichay.

    The subsequent penalty kick shootout was lengthy indeed as both goalies — Milton Farez of the Cosmos and Gabriel Jimbo of Liga Sayausi — parried shot after shot. The pendulum shifted in the ninth round as the Cosmos’ Fausto Pintado, who had scored earlier, shot wide right. Guichay then beat Farez, clinching the championship for Liga Sayausi.

    In other local soccer news, Maidstone Market was, with a 3-1-0 record, atop the outdoor 7-on-7 league whose games are played Wednesday evenings in East Hampton’s Herrick Park, going into last night’s action.

    The perennial-champion Market shut out a shorthanded Tortorella Pools team 5-0 at the park on May 22. Cesar Correa had two goals for Maidstone, and Diego Marles, Hector Marles, and John Romero each had one. The loss dropped Tortorella to 2-2.

    In other games that night, Hampton F.C.-Bill Miller, with Jose Almonsa scoring both goals, shut out Bateman Painting 2-0, and the Hideaway edged F.C. Tuxpan 2-1 thanks to an own goal (off a Tuxpan defender) in the second half. Cesar Galea accounted for the Hideaway’s first score, converting the rebound of a shot taken by Christian Bautista.

    Behind Maidstone Market in the standings as of yesterday were the Hideaway, at 2-1-1, Hampton F.C.-Bill Miller, at 2-2, Tortorella Pools, at 2-2, Bateman Painting, at 1-2-1, and F.C. Tuxpan, at 1-3.

   Pierson High School’s baseball coach, Jon Tortorella, was hoping to get a playoff game in Saturday, but despite having covered the batting circle and the pitching mound with tarpaulins late Friday afternoon, the second game of the county Class C championship series was put off until Tuesday.

    Tortorella, of course, was hoping that his 19-1 Whalers would win Tuesday, thus obviating the need for a third game and advancing them to the Long Island game, which is to be played Monday in Nassau County.

    Pierson won that Long Island regional game last year, edging East Rockaway 1-0 in the bottom of the seventh inning on a passed ball with two outs that enabled Jack Fitzpatrick, a pinch runner, to score from third base. A few days later, in the state semifinal, Haldane ended the Whalers’ run. That game is to be played at the Dutchess County stadium Tuesday. The Class C state championship game is to be played in Binghamton on Saturday, June 8.

    “Jake Bennett pitched against Haldane, and was awesome,” Tortorella recalled after the final spike in the tarp over the mound had been tapped down. “He didn’t give up any big hits. . . . It was a long bus ride home.”

   This year, of course, Pierson, which is pretty much strong in every category, especially pitching, wants to go all the way. Friends Academy, which went 8-9 in the regular season, defeated East Rockaway two games to one to win Nassau’s C title this season. Tortorella added, concerning the Academy’s record, that “they’ve played against B teams all year — they’re a good team.”

   Colman Vila, a savvy senior left-hander who’s going to the University of Delaware in the fall, was 8-0 in the regular season. Last year he went 10-0 in league play.

   But rather than dwell on his son, Benito Vila, who, along with Henry Meyer, is one of Tortorella’s assistants, wanted to talk about a former Whaler, Kyle McGowin, who recently led Savannah State University to its first-ever Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference championship.

   The 6-foot-3-inch junior, who as of earlier this week was one of only 22 collegians in the running for the national pitcher of the year award — a list that had been whittled down from 60 before the season began — won the MEAC championship for Savannah State with a 10-inning shutout of seven-time defending conference-champion Bethune-Cookman on three days’ rest.

   “He showed what a champion is all about,” said the Tigers’ head coach, Carlton Hardy, in an interview following the 1-0 win, a game in which McGowin scattered seven hits and struck out 11. “Kyle pitched 19 innings in four days and gave up only one earned run. He’s pitched in 15 games for us, started 13, and had only one loss. I felt good going in, knowing we had Kyle. . . . The best man won.”

    As a result, the Tigers are representing the MEAC in the National Collegiate Athletic Association regionals. Going into that tourney, McGowin’s record was 12-1, with a 1.45 earned run average and a school-record 111 strikeouts.

    The elder Vila said of the former Whaler, whose parents are Shaun and Stacy McGowin, “There are at least a half-dozen Major League teams interested in him. When he pitched here his fastball was in the low 80s, though now he’s picked up speed. It’s in the 90s now, and he’s learned to use the mound.   Sometimes, when he pitched for us, the ball went out of his hand flat and if a batter caught hold of it, it would go a long way. But now he’s pitching downhill, which makes the ball a lot harder to hit. He’s become a pitcher; he’s not just throwing. Plus, his work ethic is great. He’s played for the Whalers [an entry in the East End’s summer wood bat league] for the past two years, but I think he’s hoping to pitch A-ball this year.”

    Back to the Whalers, Tortorella said in reply to a question, “We’re very deep in pitching, with Colman, Jake, Forrest Loesch, Nick Kruel, and Tim Markow­ski, but our hitting is solid too. We can drive in runs and run the bases.”

    John Kernell, a Springs resident who can lay claim to being Montauk Downs’ most avid golfer and proselyte, reported following the United States Golf Association’s media day at the Sebonack Golf Club recently that the U.S. Women’s Open there at the end of June ought to be a big draw.

    “It’s a beautiful course, at an exclusive club that most people would never be able to go to otherwise, the tickets are very reasonable — $125 will get you in for the whole week, from Monday through Sunday — and the quality of golf will be first-class.”

    As for Sebonack’s difficulty, Kernell, who shot an 81 there on media day, double-bogeying the final two holes “because it was getting late, I had to coach a Little League game and had all the equipment in my car,” he said. “Its undulating greens are its defense. There’s no rough, no thick grass, unless you hit it really bad.”

    “The greens should be reading 11 and a half to 12 feet on the Stimpmeter when the tournament is played [from June 27 to 30], which is fast. The day we played, they were rolling to nine, I’d say. And then there’s the wind. If it blows that week, it will definitely affect the scoring. If it’s calm, the top group could finish at six to 12-under for the four rounds. If it’s windy, there might not be anyone under par. It’s much like Shinnecock in that respect.”

    “It’s a beautiful course, as I said, right next to National, and you can see Shinnecock. To get there, you drive through Shinnecock and National. It’s going to play to 6,796 yards for the tournament, par-72. It would be like playing from the men’s tees at Montauk. You’re shooting for National’s flagpole from the tee on the 18th, a beautiful par-5, right along the water [Great Peconic Bay]. It’s kind of like the 18th at Pebble Beach. Water comes into play on two of the holes, the par-3 eighth and the par-5 13th.”

    “It’s such a great value that I expect there will be a big crowd. They’re going to have parking at Southampton College and run shuttles from there, and trains will run to the old college station.”   

   Shooting rounds of 76 and 75 at the Indian Island golf course last week, Ian Lynch, who is to attend Colgate University in the fall, became, according to his coach, Claude Beudert, the first Bonacker to qualify for three state championships in the sport.

    Lynch, whose first-day score ranked him 10th among the county’s individual competitors going into the tourney’s second day, finished fifth, thus qualifying him to play in the state tournament this weekend at Cornell University.

    “He didn’t have any birdies on the second day,” Beudert said, “but he played consistently. He had a 37 on the front nine, moving up from 10th to fourth. It’s a par-72 course, not particularly difficult, but it has some length, and they can put the pins in some tough places. He had a 38 on the back nine. He bogeyed the last two holes. He was striking the ball well, but he didn’t putt well. Still, it’s the third straight year that he’s made the state tournament. Nobody’s ever done that before. Zach [Grossman, who’s now a sophomore at Skidmore] didn’t make it as a seventh grader, he did in the eighth grade, and then he made it again as a senior.”

    Another Bonacker, Matt Griffiths, a junior who shot a 79 the first day, shot a 90 on the second largely because he three-putted eight holes.

    Team-wise, East Hampton, as reported last week, won the division title — its fifth in a row — which, said Beudert, “took some of the sting out of finishing third in the fall season, behind Southampton and Pierson. Before that, we’d won 12 league championships in a row.”

    Over all, the Bonackers finished ninth among the 50 schools entered in the county tourney.

    Besides Lynch’s 76 and Griffiths’s 79, East Hampton’s other scorers in the divisional competition were Andrew Winthrop, with a 94, Stephen Kane, with a 94, and Josue Palacios, with a 95.

    “Before the tournament, Jason Jeffries at Maidstone gave them a lesson. He’s been working quite a bit with Ian,” said Beudert, who added that “we had two good weeks of practice going in.”

    “We lose Ian and Andrew to graduation,” the coach said in reply to a question. “It will be hard to replace Ian, who’s also this year’s valedictorian. He was a big winner at the senior academic awards night. He’s worked very hard. When he started playing golf for me in the seventh grade his bag weighed more than he did — he weighs as much as his golf bag now. One of the parents at the awards dinner was heard to say to his son, ‘Work as hard as Ian if you ever want to work to get something.’ ”

    “He’s a fine young man — he’s respected throughout the county.”

   Sag Harbor’s Havens Beach seemed a wonderful place for Main Beach Surf & Sport to start its paddleboard race season Saturday, for the race’s beneficiary, Kevin McAllister, the Peconic Baykeeper, had spurred that village’s board of trustees to underwrite an inventive project there that, if faithfully monitored, ought to clean Havens Beach up.

    As the 60 competitors — some intending to do one triangular three-mile lap around the very calm and inviting Shelter Island Sound, and some intent on doing the two-lap six-miler — set forth, Sharon Lopez of the Sag Harbor Hills Property Owners Association, who had invited McAllister to a meeting a couple of years ago to see if he couldn’t do something to prevent sewage and road runoff from polluting the popular beach, thanked him for his advocacy.

    “We were very concerned,” said Lopez, “and very, very pleased to see that they’re finally doing something. It’s all the same bathtub, you know. . . . It was two years ago that I invited Kevin to come talk to us. I’d read about it [the pollution] in the paper. This was a beach, after all, where our kids were running around all the time. It took a long time for the village to act, but it looks as if what they’ve done with the ditch that you see there will filter the stuff out.”

    As for paddleboarding, Lopez said, “It looks like fun — I love it. I took lessons last summer when I was on Martha’s Vineyard. It’s very Zen. It’s good exercise and it’s nice to be on the water. Today,” she said, looking out onto the placid, almost wind-free Sound, “is a perfect day for paddleboarding.”

    “The ditch will become wetlands,” McAllister explained to an inquirer, “and there will be synthetic filters at both ends to filter out pollutants,” he added before excusing himself to get his dog, a Chesapeake retriever named Bodhi, “for Bodhisattva.”

    Karen McGlade, whose New York City fireman husband, Tom, was among the competitors, said that being a 10-year breast cancer survivor, she would definitely do Main Beach’s Paddle for Pink on North Haven in August. She was a runner, she said in answer to a question, “but I love paddleboarding even though I’ve never competed.”

    “Tom used to be a town lifeguard at Ditch [Plain]. He’s been a triathlete for years. As for the firefighting, it isn’t just about fighting fires anymore. It’s so different from what it used to be. He won an award for a water rescue in the East River recently, and they’re always training for possible terrorist attacks.”

    “It’s going to be a mob scene this summer,” she said in parting.

    The news of the day was the performance of Mo Freitas, a 15-year-old Hawaiian who, having arrived a little late, dashed into the water in last place, and who one hour, seven minutes, and three seconds later, having made two laps around with a paddle whose shaft was cracked during a flight from Brazil, finished in first place.

    His father, Tony, who was looking on with the Freitases’ host, Rick Wertheim of Stony Brook, the East Coast distributor of Focus SUP, said that Mo, who has lots of sponsors, was becoming a pro.

    “We just came from SUP World Tour races in Ubatuba, Brazil, where Mo won a race. . . . I’m a Brazilian by birth, but an American by choice. We live on the north shore of Oahu. I was a surfer when I was in Brazil, but I thought Hawaii would be a nice place to raise kids. So, you can say I’m a North and South American.”

    As for paddleboarding, the elder Freitas, who goes along on an outrigger when his son is paddling in the open ocean, said, “It’s great exercise and they don’t even realize it. Mo and my 7-year-old son, who can rip it on a 9-foot-6-inch raceboard, are always practicing buoy turns on a river behind our house. The little one counts each time the board whirls and flips up. They’re training without realizing it, they’re having fun.”

    Wertheim, when questioned, said that paddleboarding had become so popular in the past few years that “we can’t keep up with the supply.”

    The six-miler’s top 10 were, besides Mo Freitas, James Rothwell, 41, of Westport, Conn., in 1:07:47; Lars Svanberg, 52, of Wainscott, the race director, in 1:10:00; Taylor Resnick, 27, of New York City, in 1:10:19; Justin Dirico, 32, of Montauk, in 1:10:34; Will Brant, 16, of Wilton, Conn., in 1:15:05; Thomas Blackwell, 53, of Fairfield, Conn., in 1:16:52; Chris Defeo, 29, of Miller Place, in 1:19:09; John Erhardt, 38, of Smithtown, in 1:22:32, and Val Florio, 50, of Sag Harbor, in 1:23:16.

    Alex Bluedorn, 26, of East Hampton, who paddled a 14-foot board, was the top finisher on the short course, in 36:28. Claudia Tarlow, 35, of Sag Harbor, on a 12-foot-6 board, finished in 41:30. Erick Goralski, 41, of Sag Harbor, who paddled a 14-footer, finished in 43:46. McGlade, 49, of Amagansett, who paddled an under-12-foot board, finished in 44:53.

    Jack Dunietz of East Hampton, the day’s eldest competitor, at 62, finished fourth among the short course’s 14-foot paddleboarders. The youngest competitor was 9.

   Chris Reich, who coaches East Hampton High School’s boys track team, reported Monday that his freshmen and sophomores had held their own in a countywide freshman-sophomore meet for all of Suffolk’s schools.

    Of chief interest was Erik Engstrom’s third-place finish in the 2,000-meter steeplechase, “in an incredible time of 6 minutes and 41 seconds, even though he fell after leaping the water jump. He’ll compete in the 3,000 steeple in the division meet this week.”

    As for his other freshmen, Reich said that “Jackson Rafferty ran a 5:04 mile — a respectable time for a freshman. He’s been overshadowed by Engstrom, but is a very solid runner. I’m anxious to see how he matures as an athlete — he’s very talented.”

    “T.J. Paradiso was 10th in the 400-meter race in 57.7 seconds, Dan Soto was 17th in the 100 and in the 200, and James Makrianes ‘p.r.’d’ in the mile with a 5:14, a great time for him. I wish he’d come out for cross-country in the fall rather than play soccer.”

    As for Bonac’s sophomores, “Liam McGovern ran a personal-best :64 in the 400 — it’s been fun to watch him grow — and Will Ellis placed 16th in the 110-meter high hurdles. . . . Both of our teams placed 17th among the 25 schools entered.”

    Regarding the division championships, Reich said he had to scratch his 4-by-100 relay team “because two guys decided to end their season early. Wanya Reid, who wants to race, will be in the open 200, and Hunter Kelsey, who’s a senior, has been moved to the 4-by-400 with T.J., Jack Link, and John Grogan. We’ll have a 4-by-8 team — Adam Cebulski, Evan Larsen, Keaton Crozier, and Christian Figueroa, a Bridgehampton student.”

    “Our individual competitors at the divisions will be Evan Larsen in the 800, Reid in the 200, Cebulski in the 3,200, Crozier in the long and triple jumps, Jack Ryan in the pole vault, and of course Erik Engstrom in the 3,000-meter steeplechase.”

   Turning to other high school sports, East Hampton’s boys tennis team won a first-round match in the county tournament by defeating Huntington 4-3 here on May 15, but was bageled 7-0 at Westhampton Beach the following day. Collin Kavanaugh’s comeback 2-6, 6-3, 7-6 (8-6) win over Max Fehrs at second singles keyed East Hampton’s win over Huntington.

   The Ross School, which won, for the fourth year in a row, a league championship, at 10-2, lost 4-3 to William Floyd in the second round. Ross’s coach, Juan Diaz, reported that Floyd’s second doubles team won the deciding point, coming back to defeat Jack Brinkley and Ramiz Farah 2-6, 7-6, 6-3. The Cosmos’ team had a good chance to win in two sets, having going up 5-2, 40-love in the second, but could not get it done.

“We had a great year,” Diaz added. “I’m proud of the boys.”

   Ross and Floyd had split during the regular season. East Hampton, which finished at 9-5 over all, and at 8-4 in league play, had lost both times to Westhampton in the regular season, by 5-2 and 6-1 scores.

    East Hampton’s softball team, which, at 8-11, finished fifth among the seven teams in League VI — the first time in his 30-year career that Lou Reale has coached a team with a losing record — nevertheless ended the season interestingly, overcoming a six-run deficit to defeat Elwood-John Glenn 11-9 here on May 14, and coming close to upsetting Miller Place, the league’s top team — and the county Class A bracket’s top seed — at Miller Place the next day.

   In the finale here, after which Reale added to his lengthening Hall of Fame roster the names of six more protégées who had gone on to play in college, Casey Waleko, East Hampton’s junior pitcher, who has had a sore back all spring — so sore, in fact, that she’s not been able to practice — told Reale, who had penciled her in at first base, that she couldn’t play.

    Courtney Dess, the team’s sole senior, started on the mound. She was replaced by Ali Harden during the top of the fifth, an inning in which the visitors plated six runs with one hit. Four walks, two two-run errors, and a tardy relay from the outfield accounted for the damage.

    But the Bonackers came back with five runs of their own in the bottom half, doubles by Shannon McCaffrey and Cecilia Fioriello being the big blows.

    Harden set the side down in order in the top of the sixth, and in the bottom half East Hampton came back to win it 11-9. An r.b.i. single by Fioriello won it, and McCaffrey’s sacrifice fly tacked on an insurance run.

    Waleko worked the top of the seventh, striking out the side.

    Having almost lost to winless John Glenn, East Hampton almost defeated 17-2 Miller Place the next day.

    “It was a good game,” said Reale. “We didn’t hit great — we only had four hits — but we played well defensively. We only made one error.”

    East Hampton went up 2-0 in the top of the second. Annie Schuppe and McCaffrey began it by drawing walks, after which Emma Norris ripped a shot into the gap in right-center. Schuppe and McCaffrey scored, but Norris, who tripped rounding first base, was thrown out at second.

    The home team used a walk and three bunts to get one back in the bottom of the third, and tied the score in the fourth as the result of a bunt single, a stolen base, and an r.b.i. double.

    Miller Place won it 3-2 in the bottom of the sixth, as the result of a bunt single, a theft of second, a sacrifice bunt that advanced the base runner to third, and a base hit.

    “As I said, we didn’t play that bad, though five of our kids struck out looking, which wasn’t great. So, yes, as you said, it’s wait until next year. . . . There’s going to be a bunch of seniors next year, but they’ve got to play this summer if they want to get better, and I don’t think any of them are.”

    “Casey’s been great. She was definitely affected by that back problem, which, as far as I know, nobody’s specifically diagnosed to this day, though the last doctor she saw, the one at the Hospital for Special Surgery, said she should just rest it this summer.”

    “When I saw her pitch in February and March she was throwing the ball better than she ever had. But then her back began to act up. A lot of kids in that situation would have quit, or their parents would have made them quit. But she was told she couldn’t do anything that would make it worse, and she and her parents, who were great too, bit the bullet, even though it got to where she couldn’t practice in between games. She did a great job. Hopefully, she’ll start working out in the fall and come back strong next year.”

    As for his error-prone crew, Reale said, “They’re great kids, super kids, their academics are very good, we had a great trip to Florida . . . but they’ve got to realize they won’t get better if they don’t play.”

Golfers Win

    The East Hampton High School golf team on Monday at the Indian Island course in Riverhead won its fifth division title in a row as Ian Lynch led the way with a 76, earning the senior a spot in the tourney’s second day, along with his teammate, Matt Griffiths, a junior, who shot a 79.

    “It kind of takes the sting out of the fall season when we finished third, behind Southampton and Pierson,” said East Hampton’s coach, Claude Beudert.

    As a team, East Hampton finished in eighth place. The top six played for the county team championship Tuesday. Lynch, who was the divisional runner-up, went into the second day ranked 10th. He was hoping to finish in the top nine, which would have qualified him for the state tourney that is to be played at Cornell University from June 1 to 3.

Century Ride

    Lisa Kristel of Montauk, who is to do the century bicycle ride from Manhattan on June 1, is asking for donations to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society on behalf of Alec Ryman, a University of Michigan sophomore who was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia at the age of 7.

    Her Web site page (pages.teamintraining.org/li/montjune13/lkristel) says “this is my 10th year with Team in Training and it’s likely to be my last. I hope you can help the Rymans and me reach our goal of raising $25,000 for this last-chance event.”

Spin Fund-Raiser

    A 45-minute spin class at Flywheel Sports in East Hampton on June 1, from 12:30 to 1:15 p.m., will raise money for the Bridgehampton and Southampton Head Start programs, Kiley Sabatino has said in an e-mailed release. “All participants will be entered in a raffle to win fun, local prizes, including a wine tasting for two at the Wolffer Estate, a one-hour massage at Naturopathica, a gift certificate to Gloria Jewel boutique, and local flowers from Groundworks at Hren’s, and more.”