Saturday’s Katy’s Courage 5K road race in Sag Harbor, which inaugurated the running season here, was hugely well-attended with some estimates running as high as 1,200.

    According to Bob Beattie’s Island-Timing crew, there were 1,087 finishers, including the late Katy Stewart’s paternal grandfather, Walt, a member of the national wrestling Hall of Fame, whose handshake remains firm at 88.

    While the field was filled with schoolchildren, teachers, coaches, and friends of the Stewarts from throughout the East End, it could be fairly said that East Hampton, whose boys and girls track teams were out in force, won the day. A 14-year-old East Hampton High School freshman, Erik Engstrom, was the winner, in 16 minutes and 32.8 seconds, just two ticks ahead of his 17-year-old teammate, Adam Cebulski, a junior, whose time was 16:34.4. The two stellar distance runners, who often finish one-two in races, have been feeding off one another this season, a friendly competition that has been a boon to both.

    Their coach, Chris Reich, who fully expects Engstrom will top his freshman record for the mile soon, and who placed fifth Saturday, in 17:33.1, said that he plans to run Cebulski in the 1,600 and Engstrom in the 3,200 in the home meet with Rocky Point Tuesday.

    It’s a meet that Reich and his assistant, Luis Morales, who also ran that day, think is winnable. “If we win, it will be the first win for us in three years,” Reich said.

    “It all comes down to how much they want it,” said Morales.

    East Hampton’s boys team had 25, about half of its roster, at Katy’s Courage on Saturday; Shani Cuesta and her assistant, Jenn Reich, persuaded 38 Bonac girls to come out, one of whom, Dana Cebulski, 15, Adam’s sister, finished third among the women (and 23rd overall), in 19:47.7, behind Sinead FitzGibbon (19:15.1) and Tara Wilson (19:27.7).

    FitzGibbon, a 42-year-old endurance athlete who lives in Sag Harbor, and who is in much demand as a physical therapist, was 19th over all, thus repeating her win of last year; Wilson, 26, was 20th, in 19:27.7.

    Because of the aforementioned goers — Dana Cebulski might have put up more of a fight had she not been under the impression as she neared the finish line that there was a mile left to go — the field was of a higher quality this year than last when Richard Temerian, a part-time Bridgehampton resident, who’s now 54, broke the tape in 17:32.16. Temerian was seventh this time (behind Engstrom, Cebulski, Rick Trojanowski, James Perry, Reich, and Jason Hancock), in 17:44.2. Afterward, he cited Engstrom’s time as “great for a 14-year-old.”

    It was clear, he added, that East Hampton had some good distance runners. Did it have any sprinters?

    Reich, when asked, said, “Actually, we do. Wanya Reid, who’s not here today, has done an 11.9 in the 100 and a 23.9 in the 200. Hunter Kelsey’s right behind him.”

    Even though East Hampton’s boys team has yet to win a meet this season, it is putting up points, as are East Hampton’s thus-far-winless girls.

    Shani Cuesta and Jenn Reich know very well they’ve got some promising talent, though their charges are young, “mostly freshmen.”

    In April 9’s meet here with a strong Amityville team (which won 92-56), Cebulski was a triple winner, in the 800, 1,500, and as the anchor of the 4-by-800 relay team; Amanda Calabrese won the 100 high hurdles and the pole vault, with a personal best height of 7 feet 6 inches; Morgan German won the 3,000, and Nina Piacentine won the 1,500-meter racewalk.

    The other members of the 4-by-8 team were Devon Brown, Alyssa Bahel, and Lilah Minetree.

    Bahel, moreover, was the runner-up to Cebulski in the 1,500. Other runners-up were Shannon Ryan, in the walk, Sadie Ward, in the 400 intermediate hurdles, Cecilia Blowe, in the 100, and Emma Modek, in the 3,000.

    Third-place finishers were Ward, in the 100 high hurdles, Brown, in the 1,500, Kate Kavanaugh, in the walk, Blowe, in the 200 and in the long jump, and Daniella Dunphy, in the high jump.

    Cuesta said there were numerous personal best performances that day — 47 of them by actual count.

    As for Katy’s Courage, “We’re just getting started,” Katy Stewart’s mother, Brigid, told sportswriters after the race. Besides a $10,000 scholarship at Pierson, the nonprofit organization helps underwrite pediatric cancer research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and hopes in the future to award annually a scholarship at East Hampton High School, where Brigid Stewart’s husband, Jim, teaches, as well as establish a children’s bereavement center on the East End modeled after the one Jim, Brigid, and their son, Robert, visited in San Antonio, Tex., soon after Katy died of a rare form of liver cancer at the age of 12.

Thursday, April 18

BOYS LACROSSE, Bellport at East Hampton, 3:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Kings Park at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, April 19

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at East Islip, nonleague, 4:15 p.m.

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

Saturday, April 20

BOYS TRACK, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach invitational, 9 a.m.

GIRLS TRACK, East Hampton at Connetquot invitational, 9 a.m.

SPORTSMEN’S EXPO, Amagansett Firehouse, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., rain or shine.

Monday, April 22

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

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

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

Tuesday, April 23

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

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

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

Wednesday, April 24

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

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

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

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

BOYS TENNIS, Westhampton Beach at East Hampton, and William Floyd at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

   Anchored by female chuggers, Team Hopper, Tira Na Og, and the Shamrocks finished first, second, and third among 25 spirited teams that contested a relay race at the Montauk Brewing Company on March 30.

    Caroline Cashin, one of the organizers, who is a personal trainer and a frequent winner in endurance races here, said that the response to the unadvertised event had been a bit overwhelming.

    The Concept 2 rowing, biking, and running legs began and ended with chuggers chugging a pint of the Brewing Company’s Celtic Red ale, which was said to be tasty.

    Despite the crowd — 20 rowing machines were set up in front of the brewery — all had gone smoothly, she reported, adding that “the teams that had females chug and the men row, bike, and run seemed to fare the best.”

    Having lapped up the ale, the chuggers inverted the cups on their heads and tapped the rowers, who set off, as it were, on the race’s 5,000-meter rowing machine leg.

    “Paul Cleary was the best rower, with a time of 18 minutes and 12 seconds,” Caroline Cashin reported. “Dan Farnham (who was on Ed Cashin’s  winning team) and Chris Robbins took turns drafting each other on the bike leg out to the Point and back, and the best runner was Luis Mancilla [of Springs], who did the 5K around Fort Pond in 17 minutes flat. Jason Hancock was the second-fastest runner, in 17:50.”

    And the winning chugger? “The best chugger was . . . what’s his name. . .? Ah, Justin Geehreng. He was on Chris Carney’s team.”

    Asked if she had participated, Cashin said, “No, I’m four months pregnant — I couldn’t even chug.”

    The winning team, Team Hopper, comprised Cashin (rower), Farnham (biker), Mike Bahel (runner), and Sue Farnham (chugger). The team’s time was one hour, 18 minutes, and 44 seconds.

    Tir Na Og, the runner-up, in 1:20.19, comprised Tom O’Donoghue (rower), Zeke Stevens (biker), Chris Reich (runner), and Carla O’Donoghue (chugger).

    The third-place team numbered Joe Clark (rower), Dennis Loebs (biker), Kevin Barry (runner), and Ketora Clark (chugger).

    Because of the surprisingly large turnout, there was a run on rowing machines. Ed Cashin’s Exceed Fitness studio supplied nine, the Sag Harbor Rowing Club five, and the Y.M.C.A.-East Hampton RECenter two. Individuals provided the rest.

    Ed Cashin, Scott Bradley, and Jim Kennedy, all certified Concept 2 rowing machine instructors, demonstrated the proper technique. The “Just Row” workout they demonstrated is designed, Caroline Cashin said, “to train the entire body. Ed gave “Just Row” classes leading up to the race. Some of his students have reached a goal of 15,000 meters. That class has been very popular — there’s a waiting list.”

    Most of the bikers were unable to draft, and thus had to pedal into a stiff headwind on the way back from the Point.

    Sue de Lara, the Proud Masochists’ biker, said she thought the bike leg was “about 15 miles.”

    She started off dead last, said Sportime’s general manager (and 5.0-rated tennis player) because “Mike [Ritsi, who oversees Sportime’s multisport arena offerings] was not in rowing shape. . . . He’s got to train if he wants to make the cut for our team next time.”

    She had passed four bikers, moving up to 20th, and Matt Charron, of The Star, had held his own on the run, she said.

    Sinead FitzGibbon, a physical therapist and a former professional mountain-biker, got together an all-female team, employing two of her patients, “one with an arm in a sling,” as chuggers. “But to say they chugged maybe overstating it — their chugging was more of the white wine and martini sipping variety.”

    FitzGibbon deferred in the biking category to “a ringer I’d brought down from Massachusetts, a former pro-biking teammate of mine, Anna Milkowski, a former New York State champion. She’s the rowing coach at Andover, but because she’s rehabbing an Achilles tear, she rowed. I ran and Lisa Lubrano, who’s on the Long Island-based women’s cycling team I co-coach with Jen Gatz, biked. . . . We finished near the bottom of the middle pack. We’re coaching our chuggers so that we’ll do better next time.”

    Chris Reich, Tir Na Og’s runner, who also coaches East Hampton High School’s boys track team, said it was nice to be in the presence of his former coach, Kevin Barry, and Erik Engstrom, the freshman phenom, whom Reich is coaching this spring. Reich’s run time was 18:10, not bad, he said, considering that he was putting more time into coaching at present than into his own training.        

    Originally, Caroline Cashin said, the event, known as “Brewery to Brewery,” was to have spanned the breweries in Montauk and Greenport, but superstorm Sandy had put the kibosh on that. “We were going to paddleboard across the open water, but the strong, dangerous currents persuaded us to use Concept 2 rowing machines instead.”

    Though not planned as a fund-raiser initially, “Brewery to Brewery,” whose entry fee was $25 per participant, benefitted Paddlers 4 Humanity, an organization that Ed Cashin and Bradley helped found which has since 2004 contributed about $800,000 to various nonprofits here and in New York City.

    “We also gave $100 to the Sag Harbor Rowing Club,” said Caroline Cashin, who added that “we’ll definitely do this again next year, though we may switch things a bit. We maxed out the parking area with those rowing machines.”

   In making a circuit of East Hampton High School’s fields Monday afternoon, this writer found Michelle Kennedy, the boys tennis coach, and the track coaches Shani Cuesta and Chris Reich in good moods, as was Will Collins, who assists Ed Bahns with the baseball team. But in Collins’s case, he was trying to keep hope alive, given the fact that the team remained winless as of Monday.

    One game was played at the high school that day, in boys lacrosse. Mike Vitulli and his assistant, Steve Redlus, had thought going in that the contest would be competitive, but it quickly became obvious that Westhampton, with its dominant face-off play and with its midfielders whipping shoulder-high shots into the nets from about 12 to 15 yards out, was the stronger team.

    The Hurricanes led 6-0 at the end of the first quarter and never looked back on the way to a 14-2 rout. Drew Harvey, one of three or four starters from Pierson High School, scored East Hampton’s goals.

     Playing at Westhampton Beach that day, Bonac’s softball team came away with a 10-8 win as Casey Waleko, the winning pitcher, who’s been bothered by what’s believed to be a pinched nerve in her back, struggled from the third inning on.

    Lou Reale, the coach, said Tuesday morning that he wasn’t sure how his ace would fare health-wise. Courtney Dess, the senior second baseman, is ready to step in if Waleko needs rest.

    At any rate, the win improved East Hampton to 2-1 league play — it led the league as of Monday — and evened its overall record at 2-2.

    “We didn’t play all that well in Florida,” Reale said when asked about the team’s recent spring training trip to Disney World in Orlando. “We’re still throwing to the wrong base and making mental mistakes. . . .”

    On the other hand, the hitting isn’t all that bad. At least it wasn’t on Monday.

    The Bonackers put up three runs in the top of the third inning. “Ali [Harned] tripled, Casey doubled, and Ellie [Cassel] hit a shot,” Reale said in recounting the action.

    “In the bottom of the fourth, Casey’s back began bothering her. She walked three in a row and hit the fourth. Then there were two doubles, a single, and . . . one, two, three, four, five runs. That put them up 5-3.”

    “In the top of the fifth, Paloma Bahi doubled, Ali reached on an error by their third baseman, and Ellie hit another shot — a three-run homer that put us up 6-5.”

    “Luckily, we scored four runs in the top of the seventh. Courtney tripled to lead off, Ali drove her in with a double, and Casey singled. . . . They intentionally walked Ellie, but Emma Norris, a ninth grader, came through with a pinch-hit double down the third baseline.”

    “They hit three doubles in a row in the bottom of the seventh to make it 10-8. Then there was a popup to Courtney at second and two groundouts to Ali, at short, and that was it.”

    The softball team was to have played Sayville, the defending Class A state champion, here yesterday, and is to play at Elwood-John Glenn today.

   Michelle Kennedy, who coaches East Hampton High School’s boys tennis team, played off a half-dozen of her charges Monday with an eye toward rearranging the lineup.

    If things worked out the way she thought they might, Collin Kavanagh and Dan Okin, who have been playing first doubles, would take over the top two singles positions, at least in some of the matches, and Reese Donaldson and Matt Silich would move up from second to first doubles.

    “At the moment, with the first half of the season almost over, we’re in the middle of the pack,” Kennedy said, “behind William Floyd, Ross, and Westhampton.”

    In recent matches, East Hampton defeated Southampton 6-1, the sole loss coming at second singles, and lost at Westhampton Beach as Julian Mac­Gurn, at third singles, and Juan Agudelo and Keith Schad, at third doubles, picked up points. The fourth singles match, which was to have been between East Hampton’s Brady Yusko and Westhampton’s Nisarg Dabhi, was not contested.

    Ross, which is now coached by Juan Diaz — Vinicius Carmo having directed his full attention to Ross’s Tennis Academy — defeated Westhampton 4-3 Friday.

    The Cosmos lost at first and second singles, but won at three and four with Jack Brinkley-Cook and Jonas Feurring.

    Louis Caiola and Mikey Petersen upset Westhampton’s Cooper Lacetera and Brian Schwartz at first doubles, prevailing 5-7, 6-3, 6-1, and Ross’s third doubles team of Will Cassou and Maddison Hummel also won.

    Turning to the track teams, Chris Reich, the boys coach, said during Monday’s practice that while his charges lost last week to Sayville, there were some good things, namely Adam Cebulski and Erik Engstrom’s one-two punch in the 1,600 and 3,200 — Cebulski winning the mile, in 4:46, and Engstrom winning the two, in 10:46; Evan Larsen’s personal best of 2:06 in winning the 800; Hunter Kelsey’s 24.4 in the 200, good for second place, and Keaton Crozier’s performances in the long and triple jumps and in the 4-by-400 relay.

    Will Ellis, a sophomore, who went up against a nationally ranked senior hurdler at Sayville, was also doing well, the coach said, adding that “we gave up 30 points to them in the shot-put, discus, and the 400 and 110 hurdles.”

    “We’ve got seven to 10 guys who can break :60 in the 400,” said Reich. “Not many coaches can say that.”

    “Sayville was strong in the sprints and field events, though our team is really well-rounded. Thomas King is clearing 5-6 just on natural ability alone, and in the pole vault Henry Whitney, Liam Kessler, and Hunter Kelsey have all cleared the minimum height of eight feet. Sayville’s 4-by-8 relay won, but it was very close. We won the 4-by-4, and in the 4-by-1 we were ahead by 15 meters until the baton got passed to their anchorman, Chris Belcher, who’s got ridiculous speed.”

    Reich, who started the season with 57 on his roster, is now down to 50, “though I thought,” he said, “that by this time I’d be down to 35.”

    The team was to have had a meet Tuesday at Amityville.

    “Our first meet,” he said, “was in the snow. I’ve told the kids to bring sunscreen tomorrow.”

    Shani Cuesta, the girls coach, whose charges were to have faced off against their Amityville counterparts here Tuesday, said during Monday’s practice that there had been some personal bests in the Sayville meet. Among them Nina Piacentine’s 9:26.8 in the 1,500-meter racewalk and Taliya Hayes’s 77-1 1/2 in the discus, which was good for second place. Hayes won the shot-put with a heave of 27 feet 6 inches.

    Others to get points for East Hampton in the Sayville meet were Amanda Calabrese, who was third in the 100-meter hurdles and in the 200; Dana Cebulski, who won the 1,500, in 5:12; Cecilia Blowe, who was second in the 200 and third in the 100, and Shannon Ryan, who was third in the walk.

    In Charlotte Wiltshire’s absence, Daniella Dunphy, a junior, has become the team’s chief jumper.

    “Sayville had some terrific jumpers, though,” said Cuesta. “They had four in the 30s in the triple jump, which they won with a 34-5 1/2. . . . Katie Tikkanen, a freshman, tried the 400 hurdles for the first time for us, and came in fifth over all. Sayville beat us 103-32. We’re hoping to do better with Amityville.”

    Ryan Borowsky, of Sag Harbor and the Montauk Rugby Club, was the big Slimpossible winner, or loser, of 50 pounds in a recent Sag Harbor Gym fitness contest.

    Of the 40 initial participants, 28 finished, what with weather-related accidents and the like, and their successes and awards were celebrated at La Superica restaurant in Sag Harbor last Thursday night. Trainers had a competition of their own, based on their team’s transformation, and Kevin Norman was the elated winner among them, according to Tahlia Miller, another trainer.

    For three months, trainers provided four one-hour sessions per week, and a dietary coach assisted team members with their diets, including the preparation of meals without dairy or sugar. Online support was also provided, and meals were logged there.

    The participants’ “body age” was determined before and after the challenge, and the winners were judged by the number of years lost, body fat percentage, and points from a before-and-after questionnaire. Borowsky, 33, was determined to have a body age of 46 before the program, and 29 afterward.

    The next program, Summer Panic, designed to help people attain a beach body by the first day of summer, will begin on April 22 and finish by June 21, according to the gym’s owner, Bruce Cotter.  

    The Sportsmen’s Expo that is coming to the Amagansett Firehouse on April 20 will pretty much cover the waterfront when it comes to outdoor pursuits.

    Terry O’Riordan, one of the organizers, said during a conversation this week that “we’ve got 30 to 40 exhibitors, about 10 more than we had at our first expo last year.”

    Among them are a “larger than life” turkey-caller, Dale Whitley; “a famous licensed fly fishing instructor and fly-tier,” Glen Mikkelson; a muzzle-loading gun expert, Mitchell Yates; antique-decoy carvers Bob Greene and David Bennett, and waterfowl retriever demonstrators Tim Payne and Paul Anderson.

    Uihlein’s Marina is expected to have some boats on hand, and, as of earlier this week, O’Riordan was looking for a kayak exhibitor as well.

    “Last year, the most popular exhibits as far as the kids went were those put on by the town’s shellfish hatchery,” said O’Riordan, who added that admission will be free. “We hope to make some money from our raffle, whose top prize will be a lifetime New York State Department of Environmental Conservation hunting and fishing license, which is worth from $700 to $800. The Amagansett hardware store has donated two shotguns. It’s been very satisfying to have their support. We’re trying to keep this as local as humanly possible.”

    Most of the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance’s members, he said, in reply to a question, were also members of the Maidstone Gun Club and of the Amagansett Fire Department.

    The expo will begin at 10 a.m. and will end at 3 — rain or shine.   

Thursday, April 11

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

Friday, April 12

GIRLS LACROSSE, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at East Islip, nonleague, 4 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, April 13

RUNNING, Katy’s Courage 5K, West Water Street, Sag Harbor, 8:30 a.m., registration from 7:15 to 8:15.

BOYS LACROSSE, Center Moriches at East Hampton, 10 a.m.

Monday, April 15

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

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

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

Tuesday, April 16

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

BOYS TENNIS, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

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

Wednesday, April 17

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

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

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Eastport-South Manor, 4:30 p.m.

   One of the warmest days yet this year brought nine sailors to a seven-race regatta on Saturday afternoon at Sag Harbor’s Breakwater Yacht Club. Postponed from HarborFrost weekend in February because of the bay’s transformation to a sea of ice in a blizzard, the weather on this day was just right, according to Marty Knab of Sag Harbor, who served on the race committee.

    The winds were 10 knots out of the west and pretty constant, he said afterward in the airy and sun-filled waterfront clubhouse, as beer and pizza arrived for the awards celebration. There was very little oscillation, he said. Each of the races lasted 10 to 15 minutes, windward and leeward and back to the midway, with the lowest score from each sailor dropped.

    Conditions were perfect for Derrick Galen of Sag Harbor, who took first place with 10 points. “It was good for me downwind because I am light,” he said, after receiving a windbreaker, a restaurant gift certificate, and the news that his name would be on a plaque upon a clubhouse wall.

    Second place went to Brett Morgan of North Haven. He had 15 points, and probably jet lag, after his morning arrival from Denver on a red-eye.

    Bud Rogers took third with 17 points. “This was excellent,” said the sailor, who also hails from North Haven. The others who finished were John Niewenhous, Sara Nightingale, Minna Scholl, Caitlin Cummings, Eric Butte, and Joan Butler.

    “This time of year, sailors have the whole harbor to ourselves,” Knab said happily. Once the village’s moorings go in, he said, they move farther down, by Havens Beach.

    “Anyone, member or not, experienced sailor or not, can show up on the dock and get on a boat,” Butte said, adding that he did just that one Wednesday night about a year and a half ago without knowing anyone. He said he “ended up on the race committee boat that first night, and while waiting for the boats to get back to the finish line . . . ate shrimp and nachos, brought by Alec Baldwin, who helps on race committee from time to time.”

    This past winter Butte began to sail on JY15s, two-person sailboats, before moving onto Lasers, the single-person boats sailed in Saturday’s race. “I didn’t come in last,” he said, although he and at least one other sailor did go for “multiple swims” in the sub-40-degree waters.

    Sailors ranged from artists to pilots at the community club, which boasts low membership fees and runs sailing schools for children and adults in addition to its popular Wednesday night races for large sailboats.

    It’s a year-round weekend sport for many, Knab said. “As long as three boats are willing, I go out . . . if it’s ice-free and not blowing too hard.”

    Mary Ann Eddy, the regatta’s chairwoman, said sailing the JY15s on Sundays is the most fun she has ever had. She said she was grateful for prize donations from sponsors including Gill North America and three Sag Harbor establishments: Page at 63 Main, Muse in the Harbor, and Espresso.

    The stakes will be a bit higher in August when a regatta’s grand prize will be a journey to Antigua and Barbuda for Antigua Sailing Week, with flights, accommodations, entry fees, and a yacht included for the winning skipper and six crew members.

    Information about the club and its programs can be found at breakwateryc.org.

   Greg Drossel, a naturalist who last fall began giving a popular archery course at the Ross School, and who is soon to give the same course to adults as part of Ross’s continuing education program, said the other day that his love for the sport grew hand in hand with his love of the outdoors.

    “I grew up in the Stony Brook-Port Jefferson area and as a kid I roamed the woods with an uncle of mine who was five years older. After a rainstorm we’d find white quartz arrowheads from an old Native American settlement. Guess what we did with them?”

    “Shoot them?”

    “Exactly!” said the enthusiastic educator (he’s Ross’s assistant dean of students, recently returned from having taken 20 students to the Galapagos Islands). “I don’t have a one left, they’re all in the woods by my grandmother’s house. . . . I found a couple of fishing arrowheads too. I tried them out on some carp at Stony Brook’s Mill Pond, without success.”

    One gathers from talking with this lifelong archer — and Holtsville Hal’s handler — that the sport could well serve as a metaphor for a successful life, assuming one’s preparation, focus, and aim were true.

    On that very subject, Jodie Foster said in her Class Day speech at Yale University in 1993: “I put all my stuff — my history, my experiences, my passions and taboos and personal weaknesses and unconscious agendas and eccentricities — delicately and precisely on the tip of a proverbial arrow. I take careful aim, keep the target in my sight and try to communicate all that is me in a straight line towards an audience.”

    “The Hunger Games,” the post-apocalyptic novel and film in which a 16-year-old, Katniss Everdeen, is the heroine, has also served to stir up interest, ventured Carey London, the school’s communications coordinator, who had stopped by during the interview. “It’s empowering!” she said by way of explanation.

    Drossel began teaching archery as a wellness elective in Ross’s gymnasium in September.

    “I tried to do it three years ago, but it never got off the ground. It did this time because the mother of a student who had been told by a camp counselor that her daughter had the makings of an Olympic archer made a generous gift so we could offer a National Archery in the Schools Program here.”

    Her gift had provided the seed money, and soon the needed $5,000 for the requisite equipment was raised to teach Ross’s high school students. A promised New York Department of Environmental Conservation donation and further sponsorships may enable Drossel to extend the course to the lower school next year.

    The high school students took to the discipline quickly. “The kids don’t even see any equipment for the first two days because I’m going over with them the 11 steps of safe shooting,” Drossel said. “This program has been in schools all over the country for the past 10 years, and there’s never been an accident in all that time. I can’t tell you how safe this sport is.  And anybody can excel in it — you don’t have to be the biggest or the toughest kid. Each kid can grow at his own pace. . . . Our best archer could be a fourth grader.”

    “We use a compound bow with cams and pulleys that enable you to adjust the tension, the draw weight,” he continued. “This one I’ve got here,” he said, holding one of the smallish bows up, “is maxed out at 20 to 25 pounds, so it’s easy to pull and hold.”

    “Developing the proper form is more important than hitting the bull’s-eye,” he continued. “There are so many variables — you want to establish consistency. So, after two days of simulating with knotted nonstretchable strings that span the distance between the students’ extended bow hands and the anchor points — where the index fingers of their draw hands are at the corners of their mouths — they get to shoot at targets [10 to 15 meters away].”

    Once the anchor point was reached and aim taken, “all your energy,” he said, “is then transferred to the arrow and its release. . . . The big thing is to be relaxed and poised, and to follow through, at which point you can reflect on your shot.”

    He controls the action with a whistle he wears around his neck, the number of blasts keyed to specific commands. A certified N.A.S.P. instructor himself, he has seen to it that eight other Ross faculty members have become certified too.

    Archery, he said, was “a very relaxing, a very reflective activity.” And while there were competitions at the high school level — not to mention the Olympics — “you don’t need to be competitive to enjoy it.”

    He hopes, though, that Ross can play host to the state high school archery tournament next year.

    Back to Holtsville Hal, Drossel said, “Punxsutawney Phil was wrong and Holtsville Hal,” with whom he can be seen posing in a photo on his office wall, “was right! We’ve had six more weeks of winter.” Drossel has in years past lectured widely on nature, whose intricacies interest him far more than the kill that may or may not attend a deer hunt.

    “It’s an old German tradition — Candlemas. On Feb. 2, the groundhog or woodchuck comes out of his hole, to seek a mate really. If he sees his shadow, it’s supposed to mean six more weeks of winter. Holtsville Hal saw his, but Phil, who drew a crowd of 40,000, didn’t.”