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.

   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.”

    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.”   

Kids Day

    The Hampton Racquet Club at 172 Buckskill Road, whose executive director is John Graham, a popular children’s coach, is having a Kids Day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday that, besides kids tennis clinics, will include potato sack races, egg races, field events, a scavenger hunt, face painting, a bouncy castle, and a family barbecue. The event is to benefit the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center and the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons.

    Among the club’s offerings this summer will be a Hamptons Sharks tournament on June 19 to benefit Human Resources of the Hamptons, a regional pro-am on July 20 to benefit the Retreat, and a Hampton Cup tournament for 10-and-under players from all of the area’s clubs on Aug. 17 to benefit Fighting Chance.

Paddle Yoga

    Jessica Bellofatto of Kama Deva Yoga will offer instruction for would-be stand-up paddleboard yoga instructors at Gina Bradley’s Paddle Diva center at Three Mile Harbor’s Shagwong Marina this season.

    “SUP yoga has a natural home in the Hamptons,” Bellofatto said in a recent release. “Eastern Long Island’s lakes, ponds, and salt marshes are the perfect setting for learning, and there is so much interest in practicing SUP yoga that we thought we better start training up instructors who are specifically certified to teach it. . . . We’re offering instruction around water safety, paddling skills, entry and exit into the water, as well as various yoga sequences on the boards for all levels of students.”

May 5, 1988

    Going into yesterday’s game here with Greenport, the East Hampton High School baseball team continued to hold onto first place in League Eight, at 9-1, with Mercy keeping pace at 7-2.

    East Hampton won all three games it played last week, finishing a sweep of the Southold series with 13-5 and 17-3 victories, and stopping Greenport 10-3.

    Eric Pettersen, Scott Loper, and Pat Bistrian, each of whom drove in two runs, led the way in the 13-5 win at Southold on April 27. Kenny Wood was the winning pitcher.

May 12, 1988

    The East Hampton-Pierson High School girls track team, one of the best since the sport was introduced here about a decade ago, placed second in track and field relays held Saturday at Shoreham-Wading River High School, and was nipped 71-69 by Stony Brook in a dual meet on May 3.

    Two school records were set in the meet at Stony Brook, in the triple jump and the 1,500-meter race, and another record was set by the 4-by-800 relay team on Saturday.

    With a hop, skip, and leap of 30 feet 8 inches at Stony Brook, Bridget McSweeney bested the school’s triple jump record of 30-0 set last year by Mandy Brugnoni. Michelle Fleischman’s 5:42.1 in the 1,500 that day enabled Fleischman to best her own 1,500 mark set earlier this season by 1.9 seconds.

    . . . Thus far, said Mark Sucsy, records in the 1,500, 3,000, high jump, triple jump, and 4-by-8 relay have fallen, “and undoubtedly there will be more to come — either this year or next.” On his team are 17 freshmen, three sophomores, five juniors, and six seniors.

May 19, 1988

    The East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league season began with a triple-header at the Abraham’s Path ball field in Amagansett Monday.

    . . . The defending pennant winners and playoff champions are Ecker Insurance (National) and Rivera Landscaping (American). Rivera has moved up to the more competitive National Division as a result of last season’s performance. The National Division teams are, besides Ecker and Rivera, Amagansett Lumber Yard, Sallinger Plumbing, Shagwong, and Schenck Fuels. The American Division teams are Amagansett Wines & Spirits, Hren’s, Wittendale’s, the Relics, Bermuda bikes, and Riverhead Building Supply.

May 26, 1988

    Four members of the East Hampton-Pierson High School boys track team — Artie Fisher, Jim Lattanzio, Mike O’Connell, and Shawn Turner — have won top seeds in today’s Conference Four meet here as the result of recent performances.

    Fisher broke the school 1,600-meter record by seven seconds at the junior-senior meet at Patchogue-Medford Saturday, taking third place in 4:28. The winning time was 4:25. East Hampton’s coach, Mike Burns, said Tuesday he is convinced Fisher, who ordinarily runs the 800, can do even better in the 1,600.

    Lattanzio took third in the 3,200 in 9:59, the first time he has broken 10 minutes. “He can run faster too,” said Burns. O’Connell took fourth in the 400 in 52.9.

   Michael Sarlo, with a three-run home run in Friday’s game against Pierson, set a school record of 44 runs batted in, eclipsing a mark set in 1982 by Rich Cooney Jr.

    The East Hampton High School boys track team, which had not had a win in three years, got two in its last meets of the season to finish at 2-4. Meanwhile, the girls, while they went winless this spring, acquitted themselves well in an 84-64 loss at Westhampton Beach on May 7.

    The next day, Bonac’s boys defeated their Westhampton counterparts here 78-63.

    Chris Reich, who coaches the boys, said that he was immensely relieved when Keaton Crozier, who had fouled in his first two tries, hopped, skipped, and leapt 40 feet in his third attempt to win the triple jump — the last event before the relays.

    “Keaton’s been keeping me and Luis [Morales, Reich’s assistant] on our toes this season because he often fouls,” said Reich. “But every now and then he nails it, as he did the other day. We were cringing after he fouled in his first two attempts, but his 40-footer in the third try was a personal best. Luis and I knew then that it didn’t matter how we did in the relays. In track the first to 71 points wins, and by that time we were up 73-53.”

    As for the relays, East Hampton lost the first one, the 4-by-800, won the 4-by-4 “convincingly,” and was disqualified in the 4-by-1 “because the hand-off between our third runner and the anchorman was made just out of the zone. We would have crushed them had that call not been made. It was a good one, though, and I thanked God that the meet hadn’t come down to that last relay.”

    In other events that day, Crozier won the long jump with a personal best 20-foot, 1/2-inch leap; Adam Cebulski won the 1,600-meter race in 4 minutes and 42 seconds; Hunter Kelsey won the 100 dash; Pablo Carreno won the 400; Wanya Reid won the 200; Josh King won the shot-put, and Jack Ryan won the pole vault.

    Runners-up included Reid in the 100; Kelsey in the 200; Evan Larsen in the 800, in a personal best 2:05.9; Josh King in the discus; Jermain Phillips in the 110-meter high hurdles; Liam Kessler in the pole vault, and Larsen and Will Ellis in the high jump, with each clearing 5-2.

    Third-place finishers were T.J. Paradiso in the 400 and long jump; Claudio Figueroa in the 400 intermediate hurdles; Kessler in the shot-put, and John Grogan in the discus.

    “John has had minimal experience in the discus,” said Reich. “I put him in as a Hail Mary and he came through with a ‘P.R.,’ earning a valuable point for the team.”

    Reich said that entering Kessler, “one of my stronger athletes,” in the shot-put was also a last-minute decision. “I hoped something good would happen, and it did,” said Reich of Kessler’s third-place finish in that event.

    Kessler and Ryan, he added, were “doing great in the pole vault thanks to Erik Maleki’s coaching. Jack cleared 10-6 to win it and Liam was second.”

    The 400, with Carreno and Paradiso taking first and third, “was a big swing event for us,” the coach added, “because Westhampton had guys who could go under 60 seconds as well.”

    Kelsey and Reid’s one-two finish in the 100 and their one-two [this time with Reid in the van] in the 200 had been big also, the coach said.

    Larsen’s 2:05.9 in the 800 had been a personal best, “but it would be amazing to see what he could do if he trained hard.”

    “We got beat up in the 400 hurdles, but, luckily, we made up for that in other events. Claudio [Figueroa, who was third] just missed breaking 70 seconds.”

    As for the 110 hurdles, “Will Ellis, our top hurdler, fell on the last hurdle and got banged up pretty badly. Jermain [Phillips] took second with a personal best 19.5.”

    “I hope to take 12 or more guys to the division meet [Tuesday and next Thursday at Connetquot High School], but the county and state qualifier meet athletes will probably be Adam [Cebulski] in the mile, Erik [Engstrom] in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, and possibly Evan [Larsen] in the 800, Hunter [Kelsey] in the 100, and Wanya [Reid] in the 200.”

    As for the girls, Shani Cuesta, their coach, said “the meet at Westhampton was a good one. If we had been able to win all three relays [East Hampton only won the 4-by-8], we would have won by one point.”

    Dana Cebulski was a quadruple-winner, in the triple jump, 800, 1,500, and as the 4-by-8 team’s anchor.

    Amanda Calabrese won the 100-meter high hurdles in 17 seconds, breaking a school record she had set earlier in the season. She was second in the pole vault at 7 feet, and third in the 400.

    Alyssa Bahel won the 3,000 in a personal-best 11:49.8. Cecilia Blowe won the long jump in a personal-best 15-4, and Taliya Hayes won the shot-put with a throw of 27-5.

    Sadie Ward was second in the 400 intermediate hurdles in a personal-best 77.5 seconds. Other runners-up were Devon Brown in the 3,000, Kathryn Wood in the long jump, and Danni Dunphy in the high jump.

    East Hampton’s third-place finishers were Merissah Gilbert in the triple jump; Jessenia Duque in the 100 hurdles, her 19.9 being a personal best; Bahel in the 1,500; Lilah Minetree in the 400, in a personal best :70.0; Gabbie McKay in the 100 in a personal best 13.4; Wood in the 800 in a personal best 2:45.6; Blowe in the 200 in a personal best 27.9; Vicki Nardo in the discus, and Anna Hoffman in the high jump in a person best 4-4.

    Others, who while they didn’t score turned in personal best performances that day were Brown and Quincy King in the long jump; Veronica Whitney in the discus; Ward in the 100 high hurdles; Olivia Debes and Tess Talmage in the 400; Ward, King, Nicole Notel, Duque, and Mia Karlin-Cappello in the 100; Shannon Ryan in the 1,500-meter racewalk; Dunphy in the 800, and McKay, Gilbert, Allesia Williams, King, Duque, Morgan Gaugler, Jen Brito, Karlin-Cappello, and Talmage in the 200.   

   The Old Montauk Athletic Club’s new president, Sharon McCobb, said during a conversation the other day that her chief goal was “to get people to know what our organization is.”

    “I’m surprised that after more than a decade people still don’t know what OMAC does: We’re a small grassroots organization that helps through modest grants, of $500 to $1,000 or so, to promote a healthy athletic way of life here, especially among young people.”

    “We’ve given money to the Y’s youth swim team for bathing suits, to the high school cross-country teams for trips to invitational meets at Brown University, to the Bonac on Board to Wellness program, to the high school softball team for its spring training trips to Florida, to the youth football organization, to the Springs Booster Club when it needed to restore funds for combined teams at the East Hampton Middle School last year, and to the I-Tri program. . . . And, while we’ll probably remain small — all of us are busy — we’d like to continue with that work, and perhaps start a scholarship at the high school too. I’ve yet to talk to Joe Vas [the East Hampton School District’s athletic director] about that. We haven’t decided what the criteria should be.”

    Speaking of I-Tri, for which she is one of the coaches, McCobb, a lifelong athlete who nevertheless sat out her sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade years upon her family’s return to this country from Japan, where she had competed in swimming, said, “It’s a great, great program — you see the kids blossom, kids who before joining didn’t know how to swim, how to ride a bike . . . it’s life-changing.”

    “I tried out for the swim team when we moved from Japan to Summit, N.J. — my father was an accountant for Exxon and we lived all over the world, moving every four or so years — but they said my time wasn’t good enough. I didn’t return to swimming until later in my life. I did run track, though.”

    “In Dubai?”

    “No, in Rome, where I went to high school. I did the hurdles, the long jump, the triple jump, and I sprinted. I was there four years. And I played volleyball.”

    She continued to play volleyball, at the varsity level, at Skidmore College, where she majored in psychology and business, “but it became too much. It was only Division III, but you missed all your classes because of the traveling and practicing. Finally, I said, ‘What am I doing?’ I did start swimming again, though, with a masters club there.”

    It was McCobb who set up I-Tri’s youth triathlon course at Maidstone Park in Springs, choosing, she said, “the middle distances [300-yard swim, 7-mile bike leg, and 1.5-mile run] that are deemed appropriate for 13-to-15-year-olds. At other youth triathlons, there are three distances in each event, geared to the age groups, but my head can’t handle all that,” she said with a smile. “That’s why I picked the middle ones.”

    The same youth course is used by I-Tri now for its Turbo Tri in June for adults, the popular program’s chief fund-raiser.

    The chief fund-raiser for OMAC is the Great Bonac 10K and 5K at the Springs Firehouse on Labor Day. It was, in fact, the first race McCobb, who was named OMAC’s athlete of the year in 2011 — and whose daughter, Lena Vergnes, set a school record in the racewalk last spring — did on moving here 18 years ago.

    “I took a year off,” she said, “and then I started running again, first on a treadmill at the Fitness Factory in Sag Harbor, where they provided day care for $3! The Day Care Learning Center here was super-affordable too. I owned the Springs General Store, you know. The runners came there, and pretty soon I was running with the group. It’s a running community here. I used to do my biking with Jimmy Minardi. Then, one day, somebody said, ‘Let’s do a triathlon,’ and so we did. That’s how it went — it becomes a way of life.”

    And with that she was off to coach a group of I-Tri girls, as she, Annette MacNiven, Amanda Husslein, and Diane O’Donnell do every Saturday afternoon at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, from March until June, “when we go to the course.”

   It was made official Monday: The East Hampton High School softball team, by virtue of its 11-9 loss at Sayville, was knocked out of playoff contention.

    Thus, it’s the first time in his 20-year tenure here that East Hampton’s mentor, Lou Reale — one of the winningest coaches in the state — will not be at Bonac’s helm in the postseason.

    “We really don’t deserve to be in the playoffs,” he said during a conversation Tuesday morning. “It’s been the same the whole season — we’re not catching fly balls, we’re not fielding ground balls cleanly, and when we do we’re not throwing the ball where we should. . . . It means I’ve done a lousy job coaching.”

    East Hampton jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the first inning of Monday’s game at Sayville, the second-place team in the league, but a dropped fly ball in right field with two outs and a runner on second opened the floodgates. By the end of the first, the home team had tied it up.

    After Casey Waleko, East Hampton’s pitcher, who has been hampered all season by a back ailment that has yet to yield a definitive diagnosis, tired later in the game — at which point Sayville led 11-6 — Reale replaced her with Courtney Dess, the team’s sole senior.

    “It wasn’t good,” Reale said of the game. “We must have made six errors. It was typical of the way we’ve been playing since April. We haven’t improved that much. . . . Will it get better? I don’t know.”

    As for off-season play, he said, “It’s up to them whether they play in the off-season.”

    Going into Tuesday’s penultimate game here with Elwood-John Glenn (Saturday’s rainout was to have been played at Miller Place yesterday), East Hampton was in fifth place among League VI’s seven teams with a 7-10 mark.

    Asked if he’d ever been through a season like this, Reale said, “Not really, in my 30 years of coaching. I’ve seen things this year that I’ve never seen before! It’s been tough to go through a year like this.”

    Asked if he would continue coaching, he said, “I don’t know.”

    Last year, two players, two key players — Kathryn Hess, the catcher, and Deryn Hahn, the third baseman — were lost to graduation, “but then kids quit — they didn’t want to make the commitment — and we didn’t have a jayvee. . . . I guess everything runs its course.”

    His young assistant and former high school all-American protégée, Jessie Stavola, was Reale’s assistant this season. “She did a great job,” he said.

    Stavola, who pitched at UConn and Dowling, where she became a collegiate all-American, was to have been among a half-dozen former players Reale was to have honored after Tuesday’s game. Besides Stavola, Tuesday’s honorees were Caity and Devin O’Brien (Dowling), Willa Johann (Dartmouth), Kaylie Titus (Ohio Wesleyan), Nicole Fierro (C.W. Post), and Kristen Carroza (the State University at Geneseo). Their names and accomplishments are on brass Hall of Fame plaques in East Hampton’s dugout along with Annemarie Cangiolosi (SUNY Cortland), Melanie Anderson (Bloomsburg), Mylan Le (Bloomsburg), Erin Bock (Elon and SUNY Cortland), Emily Janis (Fairfield), and Kelsey Bodziner (Florida).

    “Nicole, Jessie, the two O’Briens, and Willa were all-state when they played for me. Bloomsburg, where Melanie and Mylan went, played for the national title twice when they were there. Kelsey’s club team at Florida won the national championship.”

    This year’s team could have had no better example than Stavola when it came to commitment, Reale said. “Jessie didn’t have natural talent — she made herself better. She’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. She made herself a high school and college all-American through nothing but hard work and determination. . . . This year has been a little frustrating for her too.”

   The East Hampton High School girls and boys lacrosse teams ended their seasons with wins Saturday, the girls defeating Center Moriches 14-6 and the boys crushing McGann-Mercy 14-1.

    Neither team made the playoffs, though the girls, who won five of their last six games, came close.

    “This year only seven teams make the playoffs,” said the girls coach, Matt Maloney, “and we finished eighth among the Class B teams. We lost three games by one goal [to Eastport-South Manor, Huntington, and Comsewogue] and that made the difference. If we had won those games, we’d be looking real good.”

    The Yale-bound Maggie Pizzo, who seems likely to again be named to the all-county team, scored four goals and had six assists in a 19-7 win over Bellport here on May 7, and had five goals and two assists in Saturday’s 14-6 win at Center Moriches. Voting on all-county players was to be held Tuesday.

    In the boys game at Mercy, Drew Harvey and John Pizzo led the way with three goals each. Harvey also had four assists. Mike Vitulli, East Hampton’s coach, used three goalies that day.

    Baseball too wound up out of playoff contention — way out, finishing at 2-18, joining Amityville in the league’s basement.

    “This season certainly had its rocky moments,” Will Collins, who is Ed Bahns’s assistant, said in an e-mailed report. “We lost three players to season-ending injuries and had a handful of kids quit, but I guess that’s to be expected when you meet with serious adversity. The kids who remained thus deserve even more credit.”

    The Bonackers were swept in their final series, with Mount Sinai, losing 9-2, 5-0, and 5-0.

    “There isn’t all that much to give you stat-wise,” said Collins, “but Kyle McKee struck out nine in our 5-0 loss on May 8. He’s only a freshman and Eddie and Kevin and I are excited about his future. All he needs is to focus a bit more on his command.”

    “Peter Shilowich, who’s a junior, pitched for us on Friday. He pitched well, but he got no support. He fought through some discomfort early on and seemed to get tougher as the game went on. Two of their runs were unearned. Peter deserved more run support than he got this year, and we hope next year our offense makes it up to him. We only scored two runs all week — both of them by our sophomore catcher Patrick Silich. He had some growing pains behind the plate and still needs some work, but he has the attitude and work ethic that every coach desires. He’s the type of kid who makes coaching fun. He’ll be an outstanding catcher by the time his high school career is over.”

    “Peter Vaziri [the center fielder] is our only senior,” Collins continued. “He played solidly in the outfield and will be missed. He’s a great young man, and we’re looking forward to seeing him at some of our games in the future.”

    Bahns’s assistant added that he’s going to enter a team in the Brookhaven Town summer league.

    “I’ve received interest not just from East Hampton players, but also from players who live in Southampton and Sag Harbor. Prospective players can get in touch with me at 786-2466. After the year we’ve had we realize we have little chance to improve unless more of our guys play summer ball.”

   Don Reese of East Hampton Youth Football has embarked on a campaign to breathe new life into a program that in recent years has experienced a decline in numbers.

    “It’s two things,” he said during a conversation Friday. “Parents’ fear of concussions is part of it, as is the fact we now have a very large Latino population in the early grades who grow up playing soccer and know very little about football.”

    He was well aware of the concern having to do with concussions, said Reese, who emphasized that he puts “safety above all. . . . In the five years I’ve been doing this, we’ve only had one kid suffer a concussion in a game, which isn’t bad when you consider we have had as many as 130 kids go through the P.A.L. program each year. . . . It happened as he was tackled, it was helmet-to-helmet. I told his parents that it was best to skip it the following year. He hasn’t gone back to football.”

    Asked if any parents had actually talked to him about their concerns, he said, “No, they haven’t, I’ve not gotten any feedback, but I know they are concerned. . . . As I’ve said, we’re very safety-conscious. That’s number-one with us. We pride ourselves on our equipment. Our helmets, for instance, cost $220 apiece. They’re Riddell helmets, the best on the market, the same kind D-1 colleges use.”

    While the risk of receiving a concussion in football, whatever the age, never could be utterly eliminated — doctors have said they’re more likely to result from a jarring blow to the neck than to a helmet — “you can get hurt doing anything, in so many sports or activities other than football. A player on one of our championship youth basketball teams has been out six weeks since being concussed by a flying elbow.”

    “Frankly, the flag football program at the Ross School last fall was far more dangerous than youth football. They had 80 to 100 kids there. No equipment, just a flag. Can you imagine what could happen if two or three of them knocked heads going up for a pass?”

    Further on the safety front, Reese said that he had recently signed an agreement with U.S.A. Football, an organization that has the backing of the N.F.L., to run East Hampton Youth Football’s volunteer coaches, parents, and players through its Heads Up tackling clinics designed to teach proper tackling techniques, and he added that his organization is thinking seriously of having its young players undergo preseason baseline cognitive assessment testing as is done at the high school.

    “I understand the concern about concussions,” said Reese. “I’m concerned about my own son, who’s the seventh-grade team’s quarterback. I want John Krupp to have good kids blocking for him. I’m happy to talk to anyone about it. You don’t see concussions so much in youth football. One kid in five years. But, by the same token, I can’t make guarantees.”

    He was pleased, Reese said, that the new East Hampton High School varsity coach, Steve Redlus, “has been very receptive to what we’re doing. He knows that in order for the high school football program to improve it’s got to be from the bottom up.”

    “It’s so different from the way it was before. John Krupp, the new coach at the middle school, has been doing an excellent job. He comes to our games, he’ll ask about the kids, I go over our rosters with him. . . . The best group is the seventh grade. There’s a lot of talent there, 20 really good players. I hope they stay with it.”

    “Steve Redlus,” he added, “will do a clinic for our coaches in July and he and his staff will open our camp in the first week of August at the high school.”

    “We’re going to bring everybody who’s signed up for P.A.L., kids from 5 through 11 years old. There won’t be pads. They’ll do drills, work on conditioning, they’ll be shown the proper way to tackle, how to throw properly, how to catch. . . . And, on the third day, Aug. 3, Steve Redlus’s staff and our players will have a barbecue that the Lions Club is going to do.”

    As for youth football’s numbers, “We’re probably down about 35 percent compared to two years ago, when we had 130-plus players. I’d like to get it back up to that, or higher. If I could have at least 25 to 36 per team that would be ideal. . . . We’ve been signing kids up since mid-April. You can still sign up at ehyfootball.com. We tried to do sign-ups at the schools this year. Sag Harbor won’t allow us, nor Amagansett, but we did do them at John Marshall, the middle school, Montauk, and Bridgehampton. We handed out fliers, and we had 24-by-36-inch posters. We didn’t get a great turnout, but a lot of have come back in the mail and are still coming in. I know there’s so much other stuff going on now, Little League, lacrosse . . . we’ll keep our registration going until May 31.”

    “We’ll combine the fourth and fifth graders — we’ve only got eight fourth graders and 13 fifth graders. Twenty-one makes a team. We’ll drop into a lower P.A.L. division competition-wise because of our fourth graders.”

    “We were behind when it came to the sixth graders, but they’re starting to come in. We’re about six or seven players away. . . .”

    As for the young Latino students, Reese said he would definitely make a play for them. “I’ve sent the high school liaison an e-mail saying that I’d be happy to talk with the Latino kids, to do whatever I have to do. If I can get them to get involved at a young age, then there’s a good chance you can keep them. Soccer’s become a great program here, thanks to all the hard work Rich King and Donny McGovern have put into it, but there are not as many on a soccer team as on a football team. There are only so many soccer spots.”

    Essentially, Reese said, he’d like to see youth football here become as strong, numbers-wise and talent-wise, as East Hampton’s youth basketball teams, all three of which, he said, had won championships this past season at the Southampton Recreation Center.

    And then he’d like to see the community get behind the football program. “We don’t get the support for football here that we should. You see 50 in the stands at a home game, hardly any of them students. The only good turnout we get is at homecoming when the game is played under the lights. . . . If you want to get serious, you’ve got to have lights. They have them in Southampton and Westhampton. We have a million-dollar field and no lights!”

    “And you need to play on Friday nights. The kids will come, they’ll have something to do, and the players will be energized because it’s a lot more exciting to play in front of 2,500 people than 50.”