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.”

   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.

   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.”

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.

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.”

    Ashley West, a runner who comes from a talented soccer family, winced when asked if she’d ever played the game.

    “Just once,” she said. “I scored . . . but it was the wrong goal.”

    And so began a running career whose latest goal is to compete in the national Division III championships.

    A freshman at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., West, who was recently named the Landmark Conference’s winter track athlete of the year as well as winter track’s co-rookie of the year, won the mile and the 800 in the conference’s winter meet and anchored the 4-by-400 relay team that came in second. Her 2:19.07 in the 800 set a school and conference record, and her 5:09 in the mile “missed setting school and conference records by a 10th of a second.”

    The relay team’s 4:08 set a school record too, she said.

    Bill Herzog, who has coached her since she was a seventh grader, said, “Those are great accomplishments. She had a very good cross-country season — she was the conference’s rookie of the year in cross-country too — and she had a very, very successful winter season. I’m sorry I couldn’t get down to see her in the conference meet. . . . She’s a real­ competitor, she works extremely hard, sometimes too hard.”

    West was quick to admit that she could on occasion be her worst enemy. “Shani [Cuesta], who was my main coach in high school — she’s tiny but very intense — knew that I liked to psych myself out before a big race. I guess Bill knew too, but he didn’t tell me. When I’m up against tough opponents, I tend to doubt myself, and I run a bad race as a result. Shani used to tell me that she knew I could do it — that I should run my own race. Not think about it, just do it. I still have that problem in college sometimes, but my coach, Marty Owens — he never cracks a smile — tells me when I say I don’t know what to do and all that, ‘Just shut up and run.’ ”

    Two leg stress fractures — one incurred during the spring of her junior year at East Hampton High School and the other occurring that fall — made running full-out problematic for a while, the latter one effectively putting the state cross-country meet out of reach in her senior year. “My leg hurt so much in the state qualifier that I had to pull out — I had no stamina, I felt like crap.” But, characteristically, she rebounded quickly, rehabbing on treadmills, and made Suffolk’s intersectional relay that winter, a team that was to take third place at the state meet, and she also competed at New York City’s 168th Street Armory in the national 400. In the spring, she won the divisional 200 and placed fourth in the state qualifier 400.

    In other words, when it comes to running, she can do it all.

    “I guess,” she said in answer to a question, “that the 800 is my favorite race. I feel very comfortable in it. I didn’t­ know it was my event when I was in high school, but Marty Owens could see that it was. I’ve got the stamina and the leg speed. It’s a very hard race, but I know I can get my time lower. My college coach thinks the mile might be my race too. I was tired for most of the conference mile, but I had a kick at the end.”

    “We’ve started spring training now,” she continued. “I think I’ll be running mostly in the 8 and in the 4-by-4, and they may sprinkle in one or two 4s and a couple of 1,500s.”

    Asked if she could run the 100, as well, West smiled and said, “I can run the 100, but they won’t put me in it. It’s the same with the 2.”

    And her goal now? “To run in the nationals. It’s my coach’s goal for me too. I almost had a shot this year — I was very close in the 800 — but the qualifying meet at Ursinus got canceled.”

    As for her coach, the aforementioned Marty Owens, he replied via e-mail: “Man, I could go on for pages about Ashley. She is a very talented runner who is definitely coming into her own here at Susquehanna University. She may be one of the most coachable athletes I have worked with. . . . I think she is going to do a lot of great things in her career, and that her best races are ahead of her. As she gains experience and knowledge, she is not only going to be a dominant runner in our conference, but she will do some things at the national level, as well. . . . I see many more conference championships and records, and several trips to the N.C.A.A. indoor and outdoor championships in her future.”

    Might she run a marathon at some point? “I don’t know — I want to run more 5Ks,” she said. “My cousin, Arianna Bailey, who goes to Messiah [as does West’s older brother, Brandon, who tended the goal for Messiah’s national-champion men’s soccer team this past fall], wants me to run a half-marathon. But I’m happy where I am.”

   Bridgehampton High School’s boys basketball team, which had only one senior starter and a thin bench, took its coaches and fans on a playoff joy ride that hit the wall in the last half-second of the Class D regional final Friday in the form of a desperation 3-point shot from the top of the key that knifed through the nets and put a dagger in the hard-playing Killer Bees’ hearts.

    The stunning 44-42 loss to Martin Luther King Jr. High School stopped the Bees just short of what would have been the storied school’s first trip to Glens Falls in 15 years. Aside from Mount Vernon, Bridgehampton has won more state championships — eight — than any New York high school.

    Asked about the heartbreaking endgame, Carl Johnson, Bridgehampton’s coach — the sole coach in New York State to play on and coach championship teams — said, “With 15 seconds left, they called a timeout during which I told our kids that they had a foul to give, and that they should foul when the clock got down to 10 seconds. I was going to call a timeout then and reset our defense to throw Martin Luther King off. But we never fouled . . . kids are kids.”

    When play resumed, Martin Luther King’s star, Rajien Griffin, according to Newsday’s account, “fought through a screen to get off a 3 from the top of the key.”

    The forced shot hit off the back of the rim and somehow wound up back in Griffin’s hands after it had been tipped by one of his teammates and by a Bridgehampton player as well.

    “I saw there were two seconds on the clock,” Griffin, who finished with a game-high 22 points, was to tell sportswriters later. “I had to shoot . . . when it left my hand I had a very good feeling.”

    “We played our hearts out,” Johnson said in the stunned aftermath. “It ­wasn’t in the cards. . . . At some point they’ll realize what a great season we had.”

    “I’m still not over it,” Joe Zucker, the well-known artist who is Johnson’s assistant, said Monday. “The kid kept dribbling around. If we’d fouled him, which was the plan, they would have had to inbound the ball from 40 feet away. . . . It was a high-pressure situation. The kid hit a 25-footer. What a way to lose.”

    Johnson said he had thought about retiring from coaching before the school year began, but was quickly won over by his hard-working young players, who were led by Jason Hopson, an all-county senior guard-forward who scored 14 points in Friday’s game and 24 points in a convincing 71-55 regional semifinal win over Coleman Catholic on March 6.

    Hopson’s chief helpmates during the campaign were two freshmen — a thick-chested 6-footer, Josh Lamison, who plays down low in the hard-nosed tradition of J.P. Harding and Duane White, and Tylik Furman, a quick guard whose father, Charles, played on the 1998 team that routed Hammond and Jasper-Troupsburg in that year’s Final Four. Bridgehampton had no junior varsity team this season.

    Marcus Edwards, the former East Hampton High School star, who recently graduated from Babson College with a degree in business administration, went to the Bridgehampton-Coleman game and reported afterward that “Bridgehampton came to play. They won the opening tip and pretty much scored at will, with most of their points coming in the paint. Jason, who controlled the tempo, hit three 3-pointers in the first half. Josh was the go-to man and rebounded very well, and Anajae Lamb took charges and got steals as well as key baskets. Bridgehampton led by as much as 15 points in the first half, which they dominated.”

    “They came out in a 2-1-2 defense in the second, and Jason continued to run the offense, though they did better when they forced turnovers and got rebounds. With 1 minute and 38 seconds left to play in the third, Jason banged his knee, and it looked as though he might have injured himself — he was obviously in pain. He went to the sidelines, but returned soon after.”

    “Jason started the fourth by hitting a 3, and another 3 by him, with 2:21 left to play, secured the win. He was the game’s dominant player, controlling the tempo, scoring, and rebounding. The crowd fueled them. Its high energy propelled Bridgehampton’s short roster to the victory.”

    Lamison and Furman were named to the all-league team. Hopson, who’s reportedly considering a postgrad year at the Berkshire School in Sheffield, Mass., is League VIII’s player of the year. Zucker said of Hopson’s reported postgrad plan, “This is the best thing to come out of this. He’s a great kid and a good player who can handle the ball. He’s been carrying us all year. At prep school he might grow another half-inch and then go on to play in college.”

    “I haven’t decided yet,” Johnson said, when asked if he might retire now. “This has been an exciting year. I’ll have to think long and hard about it. As of now, I’m where I was when the season began. They took me and Joe on a good ride!”

With Reporting by Marcus Edwards

   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.”

   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?

    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.”