With the exception of boys tennis, not many Ws have bloomed thus far this spring on the fields of East Hampton High School.

    In the week past, softball, which is having a down year, owing in part to a back problem that continues to nag the team’s all-state pitcher, Casey Waleko, lost three games, two of them by wide margins, and baseball, boys lacrosse, girls lacrosse, and tennis all lost contests.

    Mike Vitulli, the boys lacrosse coach, said following last Thursday’s 9-5 loss here to Bellport that “we took too many penalties and we couldn’t clear the ball, which gave them second chances. We played good defense, but, again, as I said, we weren’t clearing the ball. . . . Bellport is like us, they’ve had their ups and downs. We had our opportunities today, but we didn’t score enough in man-up situations. We’ve got a young team, and at times it looks like they’re getting it, but it’s hard to put it all together.”

    Cortland Heneveld scored two of East Hampton’s goals that day, and had an assist. Drew Harvey had one goal and one assist; John Pizzo had one goal, and Jack Schleicher had one and one. East Hampton was shut out in the fourth quarter.

    The girls, playing against Harborfields here the next day, followed suit, losing 15-9. The visitors, who on several occasions converted stolen passes into fast-break goals, pretty much had the game put away by halftime, at which point East Hampton trailed 10-3. Maggie Pizzo, a midfielder, seemed to be the only one who could do anything offensively in that first 25-minute frame. She was to finish with 5 goals and 2 assists.

   Later, Matt Maloney, Bonac’s coach, said via e-mail, “Harborfields is no better than we are — they just stepped up and executed their game plan and we didn’t. We allowed them to build up a lead in the beginning, which forced us to fight back, which is always difficult to do in this division. Some of our players did well, but we needed more than two or three to step up and perform. . . . As for the playoffs, they’re not out of the question. I really hope to be there at the end of the season.”

As of Monday, the girls were 1-6 in divisional play and 1-8 over all. The boys were faring somewhat better, at 3-5 (3-7).

   Softball, which, as aforesaid, lost three games last week, was 3-5 (3-6), and the track teams were winless, each at 0-3 (though the boys were hoping to get their first dual meet win in three years here Tuesday versus Rocky Point). Only boys tennis had a winning league record (4-3) as of Monday.

    Shani Cuesta, the girls track coach, reported that at the Joe Brandi relay invitational meet at Connetquot Saturday Dana Cebulski, who, after running in the in the 4-by-800 and running the 1,600-meter leg in the distance medley relay, debuted in the triple jump with a 28-foot-10-inch showing, “which was impressive, considering it was the first time she’d done it.”

    There were, said Cuesta, two personal bests that day, Kati Tikkanen’s 87.83 in the 2-by-400 intermediate hurdles, and Julia de Sousa’s 10:11.88 in the 2-by-1,500 racewalk.

    Getting back to softball, Lou Reale, the veteran head coach, said that while the team had been thumped 12-1 by Eastport-South Manor and 14-2 by Miller Place earlier in the week, a 2-1 loss here last Thursday to Kings Park (which was 6-1 going in) had him feeling a little better, especially given the fact that Waleko (who’s had to rest in between starts) walked nine (one intentionally) and her teammates committed five errors.

    “We still don’t know what’s really wrong with Casey — she’s had a lot of tests, a CAT scan, an M.R.I. . . . It’s something with her back, a pinched nerve maybe, nobody knows. She’s trying her best, she’s not begging off. Part of it’s physical and maybe mental now.”

    Courtney Dess, the senior second baseman, had been pitching well in relief, Reale added. “She’s not walking anybody and she’s getting ground balls, though we’re not fielding well behind her. The same kids made those plays last year.”

    When it comes to errors and base-running mistakes, “They’ve been doing some things that I’ve never seen before, and I’ve been around a long time!”

    Asked about the playoffs, Reale said, “We’ve still got 10 to 12 games to go. We can make them. I gotta do a better job coaching.”

   The Montauk Rugby Club is entering the playoffs with barely the number it needs, having lost — until further notice — about a dozen players, some of them veterans, in recent months.

    The Sharks, who are to play in a regional final at Princeton, N.J., over the weekend of May 4 and 5, are down to 18 players given the fact that the side no longer has the services of, among others, Scott Abran, Zach Brenneman, Mark Scioscia, Nick Finazzo (fractured orbital), Christopher Bunce, Robby Grau (knee), Matt Brierley (shoulder), Danny Ramirez, and Mike Bunce Jr., a national-caliber forward who has retired because of concussion problems dating to his high school football days, at the age of 27.

    Asked if he might play at Princeton, Rich Brierley, the Sharks’ 54-year-old coach, said, “I might.”

    “And then there’s always Bert [Wiegand],” this writer said. “He’d probably come flying if you asked him.”

    “Yes,” said Brierley, “he’s a year older than me.”

    At any rate, Montauk, whose remaining stalwarts look fit, had no trouble in handling Newport, R.I., here in a friendly game Saturday, by a score of 46-17. It was the first home game of the spring for the Sharks, who, said Brierley, had lost two recent friendlies to White Plains and the Long Island Rugby Club, having begun the spring season with a tournament appearance on Randalls Island in March.

    “We were competitive in those games we lost,” Brierley added. “Often, a loss helps you improve more than a win.”

    Bryan Anderson, Montauk’s scrum half, who is relatively new to the game, having replaced the Irish-born Andy Reilly at that position a few years ago, led the way Saturday. “He played a great game,” Brierley said later. Anderson scored two of the side’s eight tries. Connor Miller, the inside center, scored two, and John Glennon, the hooker, Jim Abran, the number-eight man, Gordon Trotter, the New Zealand-born fly half, and Pat Gant, a wing, whose third start it was, each scored one. Gant’s, moreover, was his first try ever, Brierley said.

    When told the side, which also included Danny Fagan, Ryan Borowsky, Nick Lawler, Jarrel Walker, Shane O’Keeffe, and Erik Brierley, the coach’s nephew, among others, looked fit, the elder Brierley said, “Our fitness level is improving. It’s especially important because we’re trying to get everyone, forwards included, involved in our offense.”

    “Without giving away any secrets, it’s a different plan of attack than we’ve used in the past — we don’t want to get stuck in a monotonous pattern of play, so we’ve been changing things up. . . . We’re asking our forwards to handle the ball as well as the backs. In certain situations, everyone is an attacker.”

    Four teams from the Empire Geographical Union region, one that comprises sides in upstate New York, Connecticut, Long Island, and New Jersey, are to vie at Princeton, on a field in nearby Monmouth, “about three hours from here.”

    Montauk and Princeton are to vie at 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 4, while Danbury, which finished undefeated atop Montauk’s division in the fall, with Montauk the runner-up, at 6-1, is to play the Rockaway-Montclair winner that day. “It’s one-and-done,” said Brierley, “though if we lose Saturday, we’ll play in the consolation game Sunday.” The regional championship game is to be played that day at noon. Montauk and Danbury did not play each other last fall.

    Only the top team from Princeton will advance. Division II’s national Sweet 16 tourney (in which Montauk vied last year in Pittsburgh) is to be played in Virginia Beach, Va., over the weekend of May 18 and 19. Again, only the top side will advance to the Final Four in Glendale, Colo., which is to be contested the first weekend in June.

    It’s a long row to hoe, though Montauk has gone all the way to Final Fours before.

    The side is to benefit from a “casino night” at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett on Saturday from 7 to 10 p.m. “We had it at the American Legion last year, and did well,” said Brierley. “We’ll have gambling games — roulette, black jack, craps, and poker — with fun money, and there will be lots of prizes.”

   For five hours Saturday anyone with even the slightest interest in outdoor pursuits could avail him or herself of a virtual cornucopia of experts ready and willing to share their knowledge of nature at the Sportsmen’s Expo on the Amagansett Fire Department’s grounds.

    “You gotta pay attention,” Glen Mikkleson, a maker of saltwater flies, said to one inquirer. And while Mikkleson, some of whose shrimp, worm, and spearing lures were only a half-inch long at most, was speaking to the question of the feeding habits of striped bass, and to the relative advantage or disadvantage of fly rod fishing, or “glorified handlining,” his adjuration could well serve as an outdoors mantra.

    Mikkleson’s display of flies included larger ones, as well, to be used when the bass were farther out in the surf. “You gotta pay attention, you gotta know what they’re eating — they’ll eat anything but spider crabs or jellyfish.”

    “Oh yeah, the blues and bass are here,” Sebastian Gorgone of Sam’s Auto and Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle Shop, said when queried. “The season just opened. There are really big blues at Gerard Drive, following squid. That’s the first sign of spring.”

    “Also chain pickerel — that’s a freshwater fish that’s very aggressive and fun to catch — at Scoy Pond. They pop at you, they attack you!”

    Given the chain pickerel and his new heavy metal band, Volken Destructo, which is to play at the East Hampton Bowl and at the Stephen Talkhouse in the near future, he had every reason to be excited, he said.

    “I’m living the dream!” said Gorgone, who was offering a full panoply of fishing gear at bargain-basement prices, essentially “to the local guys who stop your bleeding and put out your house fires.”

    Asked how Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle Shop had come to be, Gorgone said, referring to his late father, “Sam had some extra space and said to my mother,” Denise, that it was hers to oversee, assuring her (correctly as it turned out) that “with this, we’ll be able to put the kids through college. We’ll be celebrating our 30th anniversary next year.”

    “I enjoy the car stuff,” he added, “but fishing is my passion.”

    “This is going to be a busy summer,” predicted Ed Michels, chief of the town’s marine police. “For both the beaches and the waterways. There are a lot less beaches on Long Island now after Sandy. We suffered erosion here too, though the beaches are coming back, in Amagansett and Montauk. As for boating, everyone who has a powerboat in Suffolk is going to have to pass a safety test this year. This came about because of those bad accidents up the Island. . . . The town supervisor’s office is handling registration for an all-day boating safety course that we’ll give at Town Hall on May 18.”

    The Montauk Coast Guard station was on hand too, with its 25-foot patrol boat. Inside, Marine Enforcement Officer Second Class Victor Davalos answered questions as to the Coast Guard’s purview, and handed out thick federal and state guides for recreational boaters.

    Carl Forsberg, of Montauk’s Viking Fleet, who later was to learn he had won a lifetime New York Department of Environmental Conservation hunting and fishing license donated by the expo’s sponsor, the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance, used the occasion to announce the imminent arrival of a top-of-the-line 65-foot charter boat, the Viking Five Star, which, he said, would make over­night offshore excursions with a dozen or so onboard for tile fish and tuna. Questioned further, Forsberg, who is married to the former Stephanie Talmage, the assistant clerk of the East Hampton Town Trustees, described it as “a sportfishing yacht . . . it’s fishing its way up the coast from Tarpon Springs, Fla. It’ll be here May 9.”

    Stephanie, who had come across the hall from the town trustees’ table in the hunting exhibits room with lunch for her husband — chili she’d gotten from Terry O’Riordan, one of the expo’s progenitors — said, in reply to some questioning, that scallops, clams, and oysters had served as the basis for her doctoral thesis at Stony Brook University, and that she hoped in time to teach marine science here to middle school or high school students.

    “I’ve always had a passion for marine science, and I would love to teach the subject to the next generation . . . it’ll happen one of these days,” said Forsberg, who was wearing an eye-catching scallop shell pendant. Looking over at her husband, she said, “He loves what he does and I love what I do. Loving what you do makes all the difference.”

    John (Barley) Dunne, who oversees the town’s shellfish hatchery, said the seed clams, oysters, and scallops — especially the scallops — had been flourishing at the Montauk hatchery, at the nursery at Three Mile Harbor, and at the field site at Napeague Harbor.

    Mike Andreanni of the Star Island Yacht Club and Marina said, in answer to a question, that the yacht club’s shark tournament, which is to take place June 14 and 15, was “not as bad as people make it out to be . . . there’s a minimum weight on all the fish, and most of the sharks caught are makos and threshers — nothing is wasted, it’s all edible. We [he and Scott Leonard] are usually sitting at the end of the table, hoping for a couple of steaks to bring home.”

    Dale Whitley, a turkey caller from Rocky Point whom O’Riordan has described as “larger than life,” said during a brief conversation that “Dave DiSunno’s grandson [Raymond, 15] got a turkey this morning. There’s a special youth season on — today and tomorrow. Shotguns only.”

    In the hunting room, which included several local decoy carvers, David Bennett and Robbie Greene among them, a goose and duck hunting guide, Duane Arnister, a Water Mill farmer who grows privet now instead of potatoes, and who leases land for his goose and duck-hunting guide service on the South and North Forks, and a Cornell Cooperative Extension exhibit of a marine meadows program designed to encourage an eelgrass comeback, J. Mitchell Yates, a Hampton Bays gun maker whose late father, Bob, taught for many years at the Amagansett School, and who grew up here, said that he’s making early American (1760s to the 1820s) long-rifles full-time now.

    The stocks, he said, were mostly of curly maple, though some were of walnut and cherry. “I don’t make the barrels — I buy them — but everything else I do myself. I try to do everything as it would have been done in the period. . . . They take about 200 to 400 hours to make, and I sell them for $3,000 to $7,000.”

    “I grew up hunting and fishing here — I still do it,” said Yates, who said muzzle-loaders, which take three to four minutes to load, make hunting “a little bit more of a challenge. You get one shot.”

    “The follow through is so important,” said Arnister, who was listening in. “First there’s a click, then a phhhht, then a boom.”

    “You gotta stay with ’em,” he said, siting along his hands as his arms swept from right to left. “It took [NBC’s Sports Outdoors’] Tred Barta two shows to get a goose with a muzzle-loader — I got two in two minutes.”

    The venison liver paté on the kitchen’s counter was tasty. While this writer was eating some, O’Riordan said, concerning the turnout, “so far we’re happy — the traffic seems to be steady. The word ‘free,’ ” he said, referring to the sign outdoors, “draws a lot of people.”

    Later, Steve Tekulsky reported that “this year was our second year doing this, and it was bigger and better — there were at least 200 who turned out. We’re very pleased.”

    He added that, besides Carl Forsberg, the other raffle winners were David Gamble, who won an H&R 20-gauge rifled slug gun donated by Herb Kiembock of Amagansett Hardware; Bill Cardone, who won a Remington model 887 12-gauge shotgun, also donated by Herb Kiembock, and Fred Verity, who won a 7-foot Shakespeare rod with a Penn 310GT reel loaded with 30-pound line and a striped bass jig that was donated by Tight Lines Tackle of Sag Harbor.

Thursday, May 2

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 6 p.m.

Friday, May 3

BOYS TENNIS, division tournament, first rounds, William Floyd High School, noon.

SOFTBALL, Rocky Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Babylon, 7 p.m.

Saturday, May 4

BOYS TENNIS, division tournament, quarterfinal and semifinal matches, William Floyd High School, 9 a.m.

Sunday, May 5

OFF-ROAD HALF-MARATHON, Ed Ecker County Park, Navy Road, Montauk, 9 a.m., registration from 8.

SYNCHRONIZED SWIM EVENT, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, from noon, with Syncho Swans performance, 5:30.

Monday, May 6

BOYS TENNIS, divisional tournament final and consolation matches, William Floyd High School, 3:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, Southampton at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

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

Tuesday, May 7

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

GIRLS TRACK, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 4:30 p.m.

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

Wednesday, May 8

BOYS TRACK, Westhampton at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

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

Fund-Raiser

    The Greater East Hampton Education Foundation will benefit from a fund-raiser at East Hampton Point restaurant tomorrow night from 6:30 to 10:30. There will be a buffet dinner, dancing, a silent auction, and raffles. Tickets cost $35 per person.

Off-Road Half

    An off-road half-marathon will be held at Ed Ecker County Park in Montauk Sunday as a benefit for Paddlers 4 Humanity. The start-finish line of the race, which is to begin at 9 a.m., will be at the park, which is off Navy Road. Check-in will be from 8 a.m., and the field will be limited to 75 participants.

    “The first seven miles are challenging, but the final six are reasonably gentle and rolling,” Tara Berkoski of WordHampton said in an e-mail. “Two-person teams are welcome, and will hand off 6.2 miles into the race at the West Hither Hills Overlook. . . . Monies raised will be donated to Long Island Communities of Practice, which offers educational, social, and recreational programs to children with disabilities, and to the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society.”

Girls Track

    Shani Cuesta, who coaches East Hampton High School’s girls track team, said in an e-mail this week that “the girls did incredibly well at the Westhampton Beach invitational. Many got personal records and a few got medals, which went to the top six in each event.”

    East Hampton’s medal winners included Dana Cebulski, who was fourth in the 800-meter race in a school-record 2 minutes and 24.52 seconds (thus bettering Ashley West’s time in that event) and sixth in the 1,500 in a personal-best time of 5:00.95; Cecilia Blowe, who was second, and Gabbie McKay, who was third, in the 100-meter race for freshmen; Shannon Ryan, who won the novice 1,500-meter walk in a personal-best 8:55.25; Sadie Ward, who was third in the novice 100-meter high hurdles; Amanda Calabrese, who was fourth in the open 100 high hurdles, and McKay, who was fourth in the novice 200.

Boys Track

    Last week, East Hampton’s boys team, coached by Chris Reich and Luis Morales, lost 93-53 here to Rocky Point, giving up 35 points in the two hurdle events and in the throws.

    The Bonackers, however, had numerous first-place finishes, among them Adam Cebulski’s personal-best 4:44 in the 1,600; Hunter Kelsey’s personal-best 11.4 in the 100; Wanya Reid’s personal-best 23.4 in the 200; Evan Larsen’s 2:12 in the 800; Erik Engstrom’s personal-best 10:39 in the 3,200; Keaton Crozier’s 38-4 3/4 in the triple jump, and the 4-by-800 relay team of Thomas Brierley, Engstrom, Jackson Rafferty, and Cebulski.

    Reich said afterward that he was confident his charges would go out winners in meets with John Glenn and Westhampton Beach.

Synchro Swimming

    The Synchro Swans, a synchronized swimming team coached by Meg Preiss, are to perform at 5:30 p.m. at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter Sunday, though the event celebrating National Synchronized Swimming Month is to start at noon.

    A funny coincidence brought Marcus Mumford and Kirsty McGaul and the tandem bike they had ridden from Boston to the Ladies Village Improvement Society’s headquarters in East Hampton on April 23.

    The couple, who hail from Hensbury, Bristol, in the United Kingdom, flew to Boston with their bike a week and a half earlier to run in the April 15 Boston Marathon, which they completed before the bombings. They were back in their hotel room when they heard the noise and commotion, but thought nothing of it, they said, until a friend from the U.K. called to see if they were okay. Only then did they turn on their television and see what had happened.

    They traveled from Boston by way of Cape Cod to Providence, R.I., boarded the Cross Sound Ferry with their bike on April 22, then biked to Montauk. On April 23, they were headed from Montauk to Port Jefferson on their way to New York and then home to the U.K. when they spotted the L.V.I.S. sign on Main Street. The athletes’ biking club at home is the Las Vegas Institute of Sport, and both were wearing their L.V.I.S. bike shirts that very day.

   For the fourth year in a row, the Ross School has won a league boys tennis championship, though, as Richard Wingfield, Southampton’s coach, said before a match in the private school’s “bubble” Monday, referring to Ross’s Tennis Academy, whose students are prohibited from high school competition, “We’re really facing Ross’s jayvee.”

    The Cosmos, whose sole league loss as of Monday had come at the hands of William Floyd in its league opener, went into the match with the Mariners at 10-1 in league play and 10-2 over all.

    Juan Diaz, who began coaching the team this year given the fact that its former coach, Vinicius Carmo, is now occupied full time with the academy’s students, said it had been “sweet revenge” to have defeated Floyd 6-1 in their second meeting of the spring — a win, he said, that showed how much his players had improved.

    The League VII championship was clinched, he said, with Ross’s 4-3 win over archrival Westhampton Beach this past week, a match that Ross pulled out with comeback wins at first doubles and third singles.

    Louis Caiola, whose former partner, Mikey Peterson, was recently sidelined by a broken ankle, played that day at first doubles with Harrison Rowen. After losing the first set 6-3 to Westhampton’s Brian Schwartz and Zach Ellenhorn, they went on to win 6-3, 6-4. Ditto Jack Brinkley at third singles, who defeated the Hurricanes’ Beecher Halsey 2-6, 6-4, 6-0.

    The other winners for Ross — which defeated Westhampton 4-3 the first time around as well — were Jonas Feurring at fourth singles, by a score of 6-0, 6-0, and the third doubles team of Maddison Hummel and Will Cassou, who defeated Riley Smith and Raj Ghayaiod 6-4, 7-6.

    Diaz said he was hoping for a top-four seed in the coming county team tournament, and predicted that in the county individual tournament his doubles teams might fare better than his singles players. The divisional tournament is to be played tomorrow, Saturday, and Monday at William Floyd High School.

    While Ross won the league, East Hampton, whose record was 6-4 as of Tuesday with two regular-season matches left to play, had a chance for third, behind Ross and Westhampton, its coach, Michelle Kennedy, said in an e-mail.

    “As of now,” she said, “we could be tied with William Floyd given the fact we beat them the last time out and have the same record. With two matches left, nothing’s set in stone.”

    Ross was to have played here yesterday, and Kennedy, whose team lost 4-3 over there recently — a match that led to her filing a protest that Section XI, the governing body of Suffolk high school sports, did not uphold — was looking for another close encounter.

    Kennedy, as is also the case with Diaz, is “hoping to get as many kids as possible into the divisional tournament. The seeding meeting is Thursday night.” That tourney’s top four in singles and in doubles are to advance to the county tournament, which is to begin at Smithtown East High School on May 11. First-round matches in the county team tournament are to be played May 15.

    In recent matches, East Hampton lost 5-2 to Westhampton and defeated winless Southampton 6-1. Bonac’s winners in the match with the Hurricanes were Andrew Davis, at third singles, and Nicki Neubert, at fourth singles. Brady Yusko and Juan Agudelo played a three-setter at third doubles, losing in a deciding tiebreaker after splitting the first two sets.

    “We’re chugging along,” Wingfield said, with equanimity, of Southampton before Monday’s match at Ross began. Asked about his former two-time all-state player, Jeremy Dubin, Wingfield brightened. “Jeremy graduated early and spent this past year in Spain, in Barcelona. He’s going to Johns Hopkins [a Division 1 program], where he’ll play tennis and learn how to be a doctor. . . . It wasn’t all natural ability with him — he was smart and worked hard, and then growing to 6-feet-5 helped.”

   Four East Hampton High School coaches could be described as happy as of Tuesday morning, a group that included Ed Bahns, of baseball, Mike Vitulli, of boys lacrosse, Matt Maloney, of girls lacrosse, and Michelle Kennedy, of boys tennis, though the latter was as of Monday awaiting the outcome of a protest she’d filed with Section XI following Friday’s match at the Ross School.

    Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, who filed a complaint on Ken­nedy’s behalf with Section XI, said Tuesday that the 4-3 result in Ross’s favor would stand, although he said he agreed that Kennedy’s allegation of unsportsmanlike conduct made after a Ross player had shouted “Hammer time!” before putting away an overhead that decided the closely contested third doubles match, had been correct.

    Though presumably not happy with the dismissal of her protest, Kennedy was happy to report that her team defeated Shoreham-Wading River 5-2 here Monday afternoon, the only losses coming at first and second doubles. She recently moved her former top doubles pair, Dan Okin and Collin Kavanaugh, up to first and third singles, and dropped Nicki Neubert and Brady Yusko, who’d been at third and fourth singles, to third doubles — moves that seem to have strengthened the lineup.

    The baseball team finally got some Ws last week, taking two of three from Amityville. Will Collins, Bahns’s assistant, said, “We were relieved and happy that the kids got their first win on Wednesday [April 10]. For most of them, it was their first varsity win ever. After losing six straight to start the season, they must have wondered if a win would ever come!”

    “The star of that 4-0 shutout was Maykell Guzman, who went the whole way, striking out 13. He gave up four hits and walked three. . . . Brendan Hughes, Bryan Gamble, and Kyle McKee each had two hits.”

    The teams went at it again last Thursday with East Hampton, behind Peter Shilowich’s three-hit pitching, prevailing 6-2. McKee, who’s a freshman, drove in three of the runs, including two with a key base hit in the sixth inning. Hughes, the junior shortstop, went 3-for-4 on the day with two runs scored, and Max Lerner, a sophomore, went 2-for-2 with two runs scored, as well.

    Turning to boys lacrosse, Mike Vitulli, asked following Saturday’s 10-6 win here over Center Moriches if it were “a great day for Bonac,” replied, with a smile, “Well, it was a good day. . . . We got pretty much everyone in and played well in all three phases — defense, offense, and in transition. On offense we spun the ball and attacked their weak side. We shot pretty well — much better today than we have in recent games.”

    “You know, we’ve got a young team — three or four freshmen and four or five sophomores — but they’re improving in every game, understanding more and more what you need to do to win.”

    Drew Harvey, a Pierson student, had 3 goals and 2 assists; John Pizzo had 3 and 1; Cort Heneveld had 2 and 2, and Jamie Wolf and Jack Schleicher, another player from Pierson, each had 1 goal and 1 assist. Regis O’Neil also had an assist. Mikey Jara, the goalie, had 6 saves; his backup, Sean Toole, who was smothered by defenders after having run with the ball to midfield in the waning seconds of the game, stopped two shots.

    The win improved East Hampton to 2-4 in league play and to 2-6 over all. Center Moriches dropped to 2-4.

    The Bonackers were to have played Deer Park here Tuesday, and are to play at Bellport today. “Deer Park is a lot like we are,” Vitulli said. “There’s not a lot of difference between the 10th and 22nd-ranked teams in our division.”

    Vitulli has been alternating three of his charges — Kelly Kalbacher, Wolf, and Jack Lesser — on the face-offs. “Each brings a little something different.”

    “Yes, it would be nice to still have Ryan Shaw, who won 80 percent of his face-offs,” Vitulli said in reply to a question. “We’re around 50 percent now, which is an improvement over the past couple of years.”

    In answer to another question, the coach said, “I like the way we’ve been growing. With all the freshmen and sophomores it was a little slow at first, but the seniors and juniors have stepped up and helped us become productive.”

    Matt Maloney, the girls lacrosse coach, also had something to cheer about earlier this week given his team’s 14-13 win at Miller Place on Monday. It was the first win of the season for his team, which has been a bit unlucky thus far.

    “We lost a heartbreaker to Huntington last week,” Maloney said at the start of an e-mail report. “We led 9-6 at the half, but couldn’t hold on, and eventually lost 15-14, failing to make good on two opportunities in the final minute.”

    On Monday, however, things went East Hampton’s way as the Bonackers prevailed 14-13 at Miller Place. Carley Seekamp, Maggie Pizzo, a junior midfielder who’s already been tapped by Yale, Jenna Budd, and Cassidy Walsh all had hat tricks.

    Maloney’s charges were to have played at Shoreham-Wading River yesterday, and are to play “a big game at home with Harborfields” tomorrow.

Friday, April 26

GIRLS LACROSSE, Hampton Bays at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Bellport, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Southampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, April 27

TRACK,  East Hampton boys and girls at Westhampton Beach invitational, 9 a.m.

SOFTBALL, Harborfields at East Hampton, 11 a.m.

RUGBY,  Casino Night, benefit Montauk Rugby Club, Stephen Talkhouse, Amagansett, 7-10 p.m.

Monday, April 29

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Islip, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 30

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

BOYS TENNIS,  East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, May 1

BASEBALL, Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Ross at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

   Mike Ritsi, who oversees the East Hampton Town Little League’s baseball and softball umpires, said Tuesday that while he has 10 or so umpires on hand at the moment, he is, nevertheless, short-handed.

    “I’ll be happy to take anyone who volunteers, though I’d prefer it not be a parent-coach,” he said during a brief conversation Tuesday.

   Ritsi has been doing some of the umpiring himself, “though not much because I’m also the high school’s jayvee baseball coach, and we’ve had three games a week lately.”

    There are, he said, “as many as six Little League games per day,” on fields in Montauk, Springs, and East Hampton.

   Those interested in umpiring have been asked to call Ritsi at 384-2727.