March 3, 1988

    There’ll be no trip to the state playoffs for Bridgehampton High School’s Killer Bees this year. The Bees, who last lost a county Class D championship game in 1983, were defeated in the D contest Saturday by Eastport, 60-46.

    . . . “We’re young,” said the Bees’ coach, John Niles. “We’ll be a very good team in two years — that is, if we keep the school,” he added, referring to the petition for a referendum to transport Bridgehampton’s upper grades either to Southampton or East Hampton.

    The East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league will hold an organizational meeting at the East Hampton Village Annex at 7 p.m. March 21.

    Dan Mazzeo, a league spokesman, said the 12-team, two-division league will remain the same size, although Rivera Landscaping is moving up and Sam’s is moving down.

    A trophy that’s to be awarded each year to the winner of the Mecox Ice Yacht Club’s DN series has been named in memory of the late Ed (Rock) Hildreth, “the father of DN racing on Mecox Bay — a designer, craftsman, builder, innovator, and friend of every iceboater. His competitive spirit and championship racing record brought recognition to our club.”

March 10, 1988

    Eric Kaufman, the 1987 East Hampton High School graduate who wrestled at 118 pounds for Cornell University this season as a freshman, learned following the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association tournament at Syracuse last weekend that he had been selected as the Ivy League’s wrestling rookie of the year.

    What was said to be the first scratch 600 series ever bowled by a junior at East Hampton Bowl was recorded last week by Peter Maxey, a Springs School seventh grader, in winning the B division of a Coca-Cola-sponsored handicap tournament.

March 24, 1988

    John Conner, Springs’ rapid 53-year-old realtor, won his age group’s national indoor mile and two-mile titles last weekend at the Athletic Congress’s masters championships at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

    Conner, who competes in the 50-to-54-year-old division, won the mile in 4:53.62, and the two-mile in 10:37.63.

    The last time Conner won a national indoor title (in the mile) was in 1977, although in 1985 he won the national outdoor 1,500-meter race for 50-to-54-year-olds in 4:27.6. . . . The mile record for 53-year-olds is 4:49.3.

March 31, 1988

    Kenny Wood, East Hampton’s 6 foot, 5 inch junior center, who led the county in scoring, averaging 30.6 points per game, was named as the county’s most valuable player at the Suffolk County Basketball Coaches Association’s dinner in Riverhead last Thursday.

    “We’re thrilled,” said East Hampton’s athletic director, Richard Cooney. “It’s fantastic. I don’t remember a junior ever winning it. Also, I don’t believe an East Hampton player has ever won it.”

    While he won an Athletics Congress Eastern States regional masters indoor mile at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y., Sunday, John Conner, the veteran Springs runner, failed in his bid to break a world record for 53-year-olds.

    In winning the senior mile in 4:52.9, Conner bested a dozen over-45 entrants, but missed the 53-year-old mark he was aiming for by 3.6 seconds.

    “The reason I didn’t get it was because there was no fear in me,” he said. “I didn’t have a pacer, no person who was a known quantity, so I didn’t attack. I ran the first half in 2:27; I should have run it in 2:20. I wasted that first half. . . . World records are world records because they’re hard to break.”

Thursday, March 21

BASEBALL, Southampton at East Hampton, scrimmage, 4 p.m.        

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

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

Friday, March 22

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

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Hampton Bays, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Mattituck, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at North Babylon, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Comsewogue, nonleague, 6:30 p.m.

Monday, March 25

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Bayport-Blue Point, 10 a.m.

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Rocky Point, 10:30 a.m.

BASEBALL, Amityville at East Hampton, 11 a.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, Babylon at East Hampton, 2 p.m.

Wednesday, March 27

GIRLS LACROSSE, St. John the Baptist and Westhampton at East Hampton, scrimmage, 3:30 p.m.

   Rich Schneider, who’s been the spokesman of the East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league for quite a while, phoned the other day to say that the league, which has been in existence since the late 1960s, might have to fold if some more teams — there are only four at the moment — did not come forward.

    In past years the town league, which replaced a fast-pitch one whose last champion was Schenck Fuels, has had as many as 14 teams in two divisions, but that was a while ago.

    John Ward, who helps oversee Montauk’s popular 10-team league, and its 6-team snowflake league, which goes until mid-November, said during a conversation earlier this week that he thought there were a number of reasons behind the Amagansett league’s woes.

    Not in any particular order, he said, “some teams, like the Independent, got older, a lot of the guys had scheduling problems because of work, it was expensive, at least for a while — each team had to come up with $1,700 — and the better players tended to band together, while weaker teams, who were overmatched, became discouraged.”

    The Montauk teams, by contrast, played only one game a week, he said — two or three games a week are played by teams at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett — which allowed night workers to schedule nights off, and wood bats are used, limiting the number of home runs.

    He had suggested similar measures to the town league’s team representatives last fall, he said, but his wood bat suggestion, or, in the alternative, a three-home run limit, after which homers would be recorded as outs, were turned down. “I saw the writing on the wall . . . I tried,” said Ward, who plays, along with his son, Hayden, on Uihlein’s team in the town’s slow-pitch league.

    If the town league would not adopt wood bats, he suggested it use steel ones instead rather than the composite metal bats that it had been using. “That was the one recommendation of mine that they approved,” he said. Balls coming off the steel bats didn’t carry quite as far as those hit by the composite ones, he said. Balls off aluminum bats are said to travel about 40 feet farther than those hit by wood ones.

    The wood bats have made the games in Montauk more competitive, Ward said. “The scores are like 10-8, 12-9. . . . Teams are still in the games in the seventh inning. It’s more like baseball, very competitive.”

    Asked then if he thought the town league were doomed, he demurred. “When you look at that Travis Field tournament they have at Abraham’s Path every summer and the 16 teams that play in it, you’d have to wonder about that. There are obviously people out there who want to play.”

   March is when winter concludes and spring begins; the month when baseball is back and football is gone. Pro basketball and hockey are moving toward the playoffs, but are not quite there yet. So, in essence, March is the waiting period for sports — with the exception of one oh-so-important thing: March Madness.

    It’s the culmination of every college basketball season, when 68 teams are chosen by a committee because of their impressive records or because they’ve won their conference tournaments, which gives them an automatic bid into the “Big Dance.”

    Unlike baseball, basketball, and hockey’s long playoff systems, the N.F.L.’s playoff system, and the pathetic college football bowl system, the college basketball playoff system, for men and women, is the best, and always will be the best, playoff system in sports. The National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament represents a chance for upsets, a chance for Cinderella teams to knock off the powerhouses!

    In last year’s tournament alone, some of the biggest upsets in N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament history occurred when a second-seeded regional team, Duke, lost to 15th-seeded Lehigh in the first round, and, hours before that game, another regional 15th seed, Norfolk State, defeated second-seeded Missouri. It was the first time ever that two 15th seeds had won in the same year and the first time that two second seeds had lost in the round of 64. That was sheer madness from the start. But why is this tournament so special and odd?

    To begin with, March Madness is the most likely time period in which men decide to get a vasectomy, mainly because they must “rest and ice” after the surgery, which basically means they’ll be watching the tournament while getting sick pay.

    It’s the only tournament that includes 68 teams, which is way more than any other major tournament, including soccer’s World Cup, which has 32 teams. Moreover, it’s a single-elimination tournament, which adds pressure to the higher seeds and makes the lower seeds’ wins amazing.

    Now, about that madness part. The brackets are what make it even more special. Once the tournament field is selected, millions of people across America wage bets with their friends to see who can predict the most games correctly. According to an article in The Washington Times earlier this month, the odds of filling out a perfect bracket are less than one in 9.2 quintillion! Yes, you read that correctly: quintillion. You have a better chance of winning the lottery (one in 135,145,920) than you do of filling out a perfect bracket. If you’re a high school football player you have a .08 chance of getting drafted by the N.F.L., a much better chance than filling out a perfect bracket.

    In reality, it has never happened — ever. One day maybe it will, but I promise you it won’t be this year because it’s already been a crazy college basketball season.

    Although I do not know the selections as I write this, I have some bold predictions. Many top-10 teams have fallen this season, over and over again, so no one will be safe. First, there have been only three tournaments in which all four top regional seeds did not make the Final Four, including 2011. This year will be one of them.

    My second prediction is that a fifth seed or lower will win the tournament for the first time since Kansas — which was ranked sixth in its region that year — did in 1988.

    My third prediction is something many people have been saying for years, and something that has never been accomplished: A 16th seed will defeat a number-one seed for the first time ever.

    All in all, I’m hoping for the craziest March Madness in my lifetime and maybe the craziest ever.

    Every tournament brings its upsets and its winners, but this time I think something extremely special will happen. My prediction, one you can surely take to the bank, is that this March is going to be magical!

    Matt Lownes is an East Hampton High School sophomore who is an avid sports fan, a certified pool lifeguard, a member of the varsity boys volleyball team, and of the junior varsity boys basketball and boys tennis teams.

   On his return from selling pretzels in Montauk Sunday as part of a fund-raiser to help underwrite the East Hampton High School softball team’s trip next week to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Lou Reale said this season will be a challenge.

    He’s got a pitcher — a very good one — in Casey Waleko, a junior who was named to the all-state team as an eighth grader — and he’s got a shortstop, Ali Harden, and a hard-hitting first baseman, Ilsa Brzezinski (who had three of the team’s four hits in a recent scrimmage at Center Moriches), but then things become somewhat problematic, owing in large part to the graduation last June of Kathryn Hess, a five-year starter who wound up behind the plate and is now playing at the University of Dayton, a Division 1 program, and of Deryn Hahn, a four-year starter at the hot corner.

    As with baseball, there’s only one senior on the team, Courtney Dess, whom Reale has brought in from center field to play second base. Cecelia Fioriello, Hess’s backup last year, is catching, and Annie Schuppe, who sat out last season following knee surgery, is at third.

    The outfielders include Shannon McCaffrey and Ellie Cassel, each of whom played last year, Lia Makrianes, who came off the bench, and Avery Balnis, one of two eighth graders on the squad, the other being Francesca Denaro.

    “We’ve got four ninth graders too,” Reale said. “Emma Norris, who’s a catcher, Paloma Bahi, Veronica Whitney, and Ashley Lynch. Catherine Fleming’s also a ninth grader, but she won’t be playing because she hurt her shoulder playing basketball. And there’s a transfer from Alabama, Rebecca LeGrady, a junior outfielder. That should make 16 active players in all.”

    There will be no junior varsity this year, an odd turn of events given the fact that in Reale’s tenure softball has been one of the school’s most successful programs.

    Waleko had been throwing “better than she ever has” a few weeks ago, Reale said, when she hurt her back. Happily, following a battery of tests, which included an M.R.I. and a C.A.T. scan, she has been cleared to play, and — even more good news — Jessie Stavola, Reale’s all-state protégée, who has replaced Erin Abran as his assistant for this season, will coach her.

    Waleko’s return — Randi Cherill, the school’s trainer, is rehabbing her — must have been greeted with a sigh of relief on Reale’s part, for Harden was about to step in, which would have filled that gap but would have at the same time raised the question as to who would play short.

    A lights-out pitcher can carry a team in high school softball. “Rocky Point’s pitcher carried them last year,” said Reale. “But this year every team has a terrific pitcher. . . . It’s definitely going to be interesting, especially with all these young kids. They’re working hard though. They’re getting better defensively. They’re definitely improving. Avery hit a couple of homers off me in batting practice yesterday, which was a pleasant surprise.”

    Southampton was to have scrimmaged here yesterday. The Bonackers are to scrimmage at Hampton Bays tomorrow. The regular season is to begin Monday at Rocky Point.

    The team is to leave for Florida Wednesday. “Usually, we stay down there for 10 to 11 days, but, because of the hurricane and the school time that was missed, we’ll be staying five days. We’ll have five scrimmages, with teams from Ohio, New Jersey, and one of the Carolinas . . . South Carolina, I think.”

    Next Thursday, because it is the 10th time an East Hampton softball team has trained at Disney World during spring break, “we’ve been given tickets to the Atlanta Braves-Washington Nationals game. The Braves train right there. The girls walk by their batting cages on their way to our field. I think, because it’s our 10th year, they’ll be called out onto the field.”

   The rain predicted for Saturday — snow, as it turned out — didn’t arrive until the afternoon, which allowed East Hampton High School’s baseball team to scrimmage Mattituck here.

    The initial outing gave Ed Bahns and Will Collins — and their volunteer assistant, Kevin Brophy — a chance to give their 17-player roster a look in a game situation, and afterward there was agreement that while there was much to work on, if the young team continued to work hard and made steady improvement, that would be fine.

    Eleven players were lost to graduation last June. The sole senior on this spring’s squad is Peter Vaziri, the center fielder. Perhaps Maykell Guzman, who spent the past year in the Dominican Republic, is too, though, for the moment, the coaches are thinking of him as a junior.

    Guzman was one of four pitchers used in the scrimmage. “He looked good in the first inning, but had some control problems in the second,” Collins, who managed the team in the early going, said during a conversation Sunday. “He works fast, which isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes it’s too fast. He needs to take a breath.”

    Collins thinks Guzman’s fastball is in the 80s, but doesn’t know for sure given the fact that East Hampton has no radar gun.

    Others who pitched for the Bonackers Saturday morning were Peter Shilowich, Max Lerner (who also was not here last year), and R.J. Anderson, a lefty. Jack Link was expected to start Monday’s scrimmage at Pierson.

    Collins demurred when asked for the rotation. “We’ve got five or six candidates, though it’s likely Maykell will be number-one and Peter [who also had control problems Saturday] number-two. We’re definitely looking for a three. We should know more about that by the end of this coming week.”

    East Hampton’s in League VII, along with Amityville (which is to start the regular season here Monday), John Glenn, Shoreham-Wading River, Bayport-Blue Point, and Mount Sinai.

    The Bonackers are to play four games with each of their opponents, beginning with single games with each of them, after which they’ll play three-game series.

    Asked about hitting, Collins said that “we’ll have to know how to bunt and run the bases well in order to score. We’ll have to take advantage of every chance.”

    Guzman, for one, can hit, so well in fact that Bahns, during a conversation following the scrimmage, said that it was scary to toss him balls in close from behind a screen.

    “We’re not going to overpower anybody,” the head coach said, “but the main thing is that the kids listen and work, which they have been doing, and improve every day. . . . We don’t have the same talent we’ve had in the past. We’ve got a young team and a long way to go, but we’ll be patient.”

    Asked who the captains were, Bahns said, “We don’t have any yet, but Brendan Hughes [who played third base Saturday] will be one. He’s been stepping up.”

    The roster comprises Vaziri, 12 juniors, four sophomores, and one freshman, Kyle McKee.

    Aside from Hughes, Guzman, Shilo­wich, Anderson, and Link, the juniors are Tyler Restrepo, Danny Page, Ben Newberry, Cristian Mizhquiri, Bryan Gambino, Michael Abrams-Dyer, and Bryan Gamble. The sophomores are Jack Abrams-Dyer, Lerner, Adrian Mora, and Patrick Silich.

    Asked to assess the scrimmage, Collins said, “I’m glad it was our first day. If it were two weeks from now, I’d be disappointed. The great thing, though, is that all of these kids are very coachable. You tell them something, and they listen, and remember.”

    Southampton is to scrimmage here this afternoon at 4. Tomorrow, the Bonackers are to scrimmage at Mattituck.

   There was no paddle in Brazil, Fabio Minozi, who directs East Hampton Indoor Tennis’s platform tennis program, said during a conversation Sunday morning in the warm-up hut that lies between E.H.I.T.’s two raised wire-enclosed courts.

    “It’s too hot,” the Sao Paulo native and former A.T.P. tour player said by way of explanation. “Paddle’s a winter game, even though they’re trying to come up with a less bouncy ball to play with in hot weather.”

    The lean 36-year-old tennis and platform tennis professional — he recently earned a Level 1 certificate from the American Platform Tennis Association — has become captivated by the quick, social game to which he was introduced about four years ago by Jamie Young at the Maidstone Club.

    One could go back and forth between the two sports, as he does, with no problem, Minozi said. When told some doubters had said paddle, which is played on painted, shard-flecked decking, wasn’t good for the knees, he replied, “I don’t have any knee problems. . . . None of the women I teach have ever complained of sore knees. Racket sports are hard on you, but I would recommend it to anyone.”

    He said, by the way, that he could teach a beginner how to play the game in an hour. “It’s an easy sport to learn.”

    In its initial year, platform tennis at E.H.I.T. has attracted more women than men — there are 40 members at the moment — perhaps, Minozi said, “because women are more attracted to the social aspect of it,” but in time he expects more men will play as well.

    Having said that, it is fair to say that the half-dozen top players here are men, a small but impressive group that, besides Minozi and Young, comprises Erik Peterson, Craig Lee, and George Muhlfeld. They generally can be seen engaged in endless rallies under the lights on Thursday evenings, from 5:30 to 7.

    During a break in last week’s match, they laughed a bit when this writer asked if they (Peterson, Young, Lee, and Minozi in this case) were nationally ranked, but if anyone is curious about the game (a small version of tennis with squash-like wire play mixed in) they would do well to look on when this group goes at it.

    You’ll see then that it’s largely a game of finesse and quickness rather than power — overheads angled for the corners can be interminably countered by skilled opponents with high, tantalizing lobs — though hard, flat drives — often on serve returns — at about belly button height are not for the fainthearted. Often, the coup de grace will be an acutely angled drop shot.

    Besides the shots angled off the wires, which require practice to get the hang of, there’s one major difference between the two racket sports: In paddle you get only one serve.

    “The lobs in paddle are offensive, whereas in tennis they’re defensive,” said Minozi, who added that “the screens give you time, but because your arm is in close to you, not stretched out as it is in tennis, you’ve got to be quick to get into the correct position to make your lobs. Eighty-five percent of the volleys are backhand volleys. You often don’t have time to go to the forehand at the net. You place the overheads toward the corners rather than smash them. The idea is to get people out of position so you can finish the point off.”

    He said he liked paddle also for the fact that it got him out into the fresh air. “And when there’s snow on the ground it’s beautiful.”

    Minozi’s tenure at E.H.I.T. has spanned a decade. He was the number-three player at the College of the Desert (C.O.D.), a junior college in Palm Desert, Calif., when Scott Rubenstein, the club’s managing partner, who had accompanied his eldest son, Matt, to a national junior tennis tournament in Palm Springs, first saw him.

    His father, “a club player like you guys,” had introduced him to tennis when he was 8 years old, Minozi said in reply to a question. He played a couple of years on the world professional circuit, and didn’t do badly, “but it’s tough. You need a weapon, a big serve for sure. Five-11, which I am, is not tall enough. You’ve got to be 6-2.”

    When his sponsorship waned, he moved to the United States, first living with a friend who went to the University of California at Santa Barbara and played for its team so that he could master the English language, after which he played at the aforementioned C.O.D. (with Alfredo Barreto, a native of Mexico who has also been at E.H.I.T. for 10 years, and with Rodrigo Grilli, a fellow Brazilian who taught at E.H.I.T. for a couple of years before giving the pro doubles circuit a try). The three E.H.I.T. pros-to-be then transferred — Grilli to U.C.L.A., Barreto to Texas A&M, and Minozi to Northwood University in West Palm Beach, Fla.

    “We had a very good team at C.O.D. — we scrimmaged with U.C.L.A., Pepperdine, Stanford. . . . Our head coach knew Scott, and that’s how I came to audition, I guess you’d say, for him. I brought Alfredo out here. He’s been here longer than me because I used to spend the winters teaching in Florida or California. . . . Once Scott got the idea to put the paddle courts in here, I decided I’d get certified and be the program’s director and give lessons.”

    Minozi said he’d found that paddle was a more relaxed, friendly game than tennis, though the object, of course, he said, was to win. Perhaps the close confines of the court contributed to the more relaxed atmosphere, he said; that and the fact that afterward you could repair to the warming hut for more socializing, for a cup of coffee, a glass of wine.

    “I do the same with the paddle players as Scott does in tennis — we arrange matches, we have events. . . . Yesterday, five guys from Pound Ridge played some of our guys — Barry and Greg Emanuel, Mathias Thoerner, Rob Likoff, Richard Myers, and George Muhlfeld. Usually, you have six on a team, so we mixed a bit. Our guys did okay. This month we’ve been having a tournament,” he said, looking at the draw posted on the outside of the warming hut, “and we’re going to have an exhibition on April 27, a Saturday, with food and drinks. . . .”

    Soon, he said, he and his Brazilian-born wife, Livia, would go to Brazil to see their families, a trip they make once a year.

    “I love Brazil,” he said in answer to a question. “It’s a beautiful country, the people are great, and it’s doing much better economically than when I left.”

    “But this is my home now,” he said with a smile. “I’m comfortable here. My life is good, I like it a lot.”

    Whitney Reidlinger, a special education teacher at the Springs School, reported that the following East Hampton youngsters were gold medalists at a Special Olympics bowling tournament at the East Hampton Bowl Sunday:

    Paula Retana, of East Hampton, and Kerri Schleider, of Montauk, in the female ramp divisions; Isaiah Brodie, of East Hampton, in a male ramp division; Jennifer Brito, of East Hampton, in a female division, and Joshua Guaman, Oswald Duarte, Paul Anderson, and Bryan Chacon, all of East Hampton, in male divisions.

    “We had 58 bowlers compete from five teams, the farthest flung being the S.C.O. Owls from Great Neck. There were two female ramp bowler divisions, three male ramp bowler divisions, three female divisions, and nine male divisions. . . . Forty-two Springs School staffers and Girl Scout Troop 1650 of Springs helped with the event, along with teachers from East Hampton and Montauk schools. East Hampton Bowl donated the lanes for the day, All In Entertainment provided entertainment, and Sysco Foods provided snacks.”

   Coaches of youth sports programs at a special meeting of East Hampton’s school board Monday night convened to consider various fees attending the use of the district’s fields and gyms here on weekends claimed that added costs would effectively lessen participation, and would in time erode the competitiveness of Bonac’s teams.

    Security, the Little League baseball, youth lacrosse, Biddy basketball, and Police Athletic League football coaches said, could continue to be adequately handled by coaches and volunteer parents — an assertion with which the board, which had charged P.A.L. football $20.75 an hour for security on weekends last fall, seemed to agree.

    When Jackie Lowey, a board member, alluded to what she thought was a high-priced $18,000 district security analysis about to be undertaken, Robert Aspenleiter said Protective Countermeasures, “a global security consulting firm” with which he is associated, would have done the work for half that provided the remainder was used to bolster youth sports programs.

    There was talk as well of off-season sports camp arrangements — whether, for instance, East Hampton coaches associated with them ought to be paid, a question the board is expected to mull further — and of adult user groups, limited for the present to rugby and running at the high school, and to men’s basketball at the middle school.

    Novella Waygood, a mother of three sons, one a ninth grader in the high school and one a fifth grader who’s a gifted athlete, said, with tears in her eyes, that she was extremely grateful to the youth coaches — Bill McKee, Chris Stuart, Don Reese and Dave Rutkowski among them — for making athletics affordable to her children and to others in need. Their children’s prowess would ultimately redound to the school’s credit, she said, in arguing that these programs ought not to be hampered in any way.

    For-profit groups apparently are forbidden to use school grounds at the moment, though Tim Brenneman, whose son, Zach, an all-American lacrosse midfielder when he was at Notre Dame, ran a successful youth lacrosse camp at the town-owned Stephen Hand’s Path fields last summer, said nonprofits made money too, and thus when it came to considering who could and who could not use school property for clinics and camps and such the question of money ought to be moot.

    And finally, the family of Bud Collum, who live on the other side of the football practice field, said that while they had nothing against athletics, couldn’t the porta potties alongside the bleachers and the hot dog and hamburger stands customarily set up next to the track shed be moved, and couldn’t the music, aside from that played by the band at football games, be toned down?

   Joe Vas, the East Hampton School District’s athletic director, was sanguine regarding spring during a preseason talk at his office Monday.

    “Sunny days from here on in,” he said. “It’s supposed to be in the 40s all this week. Let’s hope we’ve seen the last of the storms.”

    There was still snow on East Hampton’s turf field when the boys and girls lacrosse teams practiced there Saturday morning, and when Rich King and Don McGovern conducted a soccer clinic there for kindergartners through eighth graders on Sunday.

    The baseball and softball teams practiced in the school’s gymnasium Saturday morning. When Lou Reale, the veteran softball coach, was encountered, he shook his head and smiled. “Things are going to be interesting. Casey [Waleko, his all-state pitcher] is having an M.R.I. on her back, and Sam Mathews [Waleko’s backup last year] quit.”

    Ali Harden, the team’s shortstop, was pitching that day, and didn’t look bad, although she last pitched, she said in reply to a question, as an eighth grader. Given that Jessie Stavola, one of the best pitchers ever to come out of Long Island, is Reale’s assistant this season (replacing Erin Abran, who’s taking some time off), Harned won’t lack for expert instruction.

    The numbers are down this year for softball and for boys lacrosse — neither program is fielding a junior varsity this spring — though Vas said that about 60 other schools on the Island are in similar sagging numbers situations in various sports. “But that’s the way it is in sports,” he said, “interest and talent run in cycles.”

The good news numbers-wise is that 100 have turned out for boys and girls track, 48 are out for baseball, and 30-plus are out for boys tennis.

   With 38 hopefuls, it’s been decided that boys lacrosse, whose head coach is Mike Vitulli, will be varsity-only, “to keep the kids together.” Neil Falkenhan, an East Hampton alum who played the sport at Quinnipiac, is assisting Vitulli.

   Ed Bahns and Will Collins continue to coach varsity baseball, and Mike Ritsi, who manages Sportime’s multisport arena in Amagansett, is back coaching the jayvee.

   Shani Cuesta has taken over as the head coach of the girls track team, assisted by Jenn Reich, a first-timer, whose brother, Chris, coaches the boys team along with Luis Morales.

   “I think girls lacrosse [Matt Maloney returns as the varsity coach, assisted by Rich King] will have a shot at making the playoffs again,” said Vas, when asked if he’d seen any of Bonac’s team in action. “They’ve been playing all winter at Calverton. Boys lacrosse will be decent, softball is young, though Lou is a terrific coach. They’ll be going to Florida again during the spring break. Baseball’s been out every day working out. Track’s sheer numbers alone will overwhelm people.”

   He added that the holes in the rubberized track would be patched soon, and that the worn high jump and pole vault pads would be replaced.

   “The weather’s been okay,” Vas continued. “We’ve only missed a little time outside. Having a turf field helps, and our grounds crew [Dave Fioriello, Lou Russo, Dale Greene, and Dexter Grady] has been great.”