Thursday, March 14

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

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

Friday, March 15

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

Saturday, March 16

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at multi-team scrimmage, Connetquot High School, 9 a.m.

BASEBALL, Mattituck at East Hampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

SPINNING, benefit Max Cure Foundation, Fly Wheel Sports, 85 Montauk Highway, East Hampton, 2 p.m.

BENEFIT BASKETBALL, Harlem MagicMasters vs. East Hampton Teachers, benefit East Hampton Coaches Association, East Hampton High School, 7 p.m.

Monday, March 18

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

BASEBALL, East Hampton vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Tuesday, March 19

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Patchogue-Medford,  scrimmage, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 20

SOFTBALL, Southampton at East Hampton, 3:30 p.m. scrimmage, 3:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton,  nonleague, 4 p.m.

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

    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.”

   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

   Karin Padden, who lives on one of Montauk’s high hills, said during a recent conversation that she had decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, “the world’s tallest free-standing mountain,” as a way of celebrating her 50th birthday.

    It was also her way of saying that she, who has experienced much grief in the past several years, including the death of her husband, Robert M. Padden on Nov. 10, 2010, continues to love life and is not one to shrink from challenges.    

    “I’m not a mountain climber,” she said in anticipation of her interviewer’s first question, though fitness, she added, had little to do with whether one might succumb to high altitude sickness. “Martina Navratilova is obviously fit, though she wasn’t able to do it.”

    Only about 40 to 50 percent of those who attempt the almost-20,000-foot climb make it to the top, said Padden, who runs six miles in Hither Woods every other day, saying “Je suis pret” (French for “I am ready’) before setting forth.  

    “I went with a friend of mine from Puerto Rico, a woman I’d met about 10 years ago at a raw food institute near Rincon.  We joined one of the groups, ‘Climb Kili,’ which is based in Tanzania. . . . There were nine in my group and we all made it.”

    No ropes were needed, she said, though the ascent into the clouds was plenty arduous. “Every day we saw people being carried down on stretchers.”

    And at one point, along a narrow embanked trail, she had pulled one of her fellow climbers out of the way of a bulging logging truck. “He said I’d saved his life; he had my back after that. I’m 5-2, height challenged, and he was 6-3, so he’d give me a boost whenever I needed it along the way. We all were given nicknames. Mine was Lucky. His, she said with a laugh, was Buffet Boy. He was a good sport.”

    The party, whose ages ranged from 44 to 68, attended by strong and attentive porter guides, hiked from a rain forest to moorland, to a high desert, and on up.

    They climbed four to seven hours a day on average for eight days (six-and-a-half up, one-and-a-half down) setting out at about 6:30 each morning, except for the climb to the summit, and breaking for lunch. “The higher you went the more the terrain looked like the moon.”

    They slept in small tents. “There were no showers, no bathrooms. . . . I just let my hair go. After a few days, I looked like Phyllis Diller.”

    When her interviewer said that, even so, it probably beat being on that fetid cruise ship in the Gulf, she laughed. “If I’d been on that ship, I would have jumped overboard when it got close to shore!”

    The wind and cold, she continued, had bothered her more than anything. “It gets colder and colder as you go up, especially the nights. . . . We saw all kinds of weather — rain, hail, snow, thunder. . . . Eight people in another group, a group of 18, decided to go back from the last camp. Two men were struck by lightning, and one died.”

    “The last night they got us up at 11 — we were tired, we hadn’t really slept because we were anxious about making it to the summit. We hiked for seven hours, arriving at sunrise. The guides had timed it that way.”

    By the stove in her kitchen, where the interview took place, she showed how it had been, their breathing labored as they, like astronauts, slowly put one foot after the other on the steep way up. “They’d say, in Swahili, ‘Slowly, slowly.’ If you climb too fast you get sick. Your muscles need more oxygen at altitude.”

    In writing of the experience later, she said, “There was no conversation, just the communal sound of our lungs stretching to capture all possible oxygen in each labored breath. The water in our camelbacks and bottles was frozen, which was just as well. It was too cold to expose the necessary parts to urinate. The hairs inside my nose were frozen. My ears were so cold and painful it felt like they’d snap off if it weren’t for the two hats holding them on my head. Some of the hikers were vomiting from mild altitude sickness. Many had to stop, but none turned around.”

    “Early in the final climb I began a series of mind-focusing exercises, starting with well-known prayers, which I repeated many times. Then I recited my secret Sanskrit chant, practiced ‘loving kindness’ meditation and Zen meditation before trying to remember — at 15,000 feet you begin to get silly — the lyrics to the songs I was studying [to sing at Carnegie Hall on March 24] before leaving New York. Then I had a silent conversation about all the good reasons I was climbing Kilimanjaro — pretty flowery stuff. I thought also about the quote I had put on the gravestone of my husband of 25 years: ‘Courage, above all else, is the first quality of a warrior.’ ”

    “The view from the summit, with the world at my feet, the full moon on one side of the universe, the rising sun on the other, and with the giant Furtwangler glacier incongruously set in the alpine desert,” was, she said, “the most beautiful view I’d ever seen. Feeling the slightest hint of warmth from the sunshine, I thought I’d never before been so happy to see a sunrise.”

    After 10 minutes, however, they were told to begin descending. “They want to get you out of the altitude, they hurry you down. . . . Going down was harder in places than going up. But they were, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Part of it, I think, was that they were eager to party. . . . We climbed from 11 at night until late in the afternoon of the next day, with a 2-hour rest in between.”

    “I was happy it was over,” she said.

    No, she said, she would not climb Mount Everest next.

    “Maybe I’ll do the Camino de Santiago. . . . I’ve got a long bucket list.”

Friday, March 8

BOYS BASKETBALL, state Class D regional final, Bridgehampton-John A. Coleman winner vs. Section IX winner, New Rochelle High School, 4:30 p.m.

LIFEGUARDING, fund-raising dinner for junior lifeguard training program, ENE restaurant, Montauk, 7-11 p.m.

Sunday, March 10

FIGURE SKATING, exhibition, Buckskill Winter Club, 1 p.m.

LIFEGUARDING, first session of free junior lifeguard training program for boys and girls aged 9 through 14, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter pool, 1:30-2:30, registration from 1:15.

Monday, March 11

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Center Moriches, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Wednesday, March 13

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at William Floyd, scrimmage, 4:30 p.m.

Thursday, March 14

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

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

February 4, 1988

    The Bridgehampton High School boys basketball team would have to “win one more game to make the playoffs,” its coach, John Niles, said following the Killer Bees’ 89-84 victory Monday over Pierson, a Class D and League Seven rival.

    The Sag Harbor team, 3-6 as of Tuesday, proved to be a worthy opponent. After almost giving up the ghost last week, at 1-5, the Whalers came back to upend Hampton Bays twice, and seemed to be coming on just as the Bees, who played poorly in Friday’s 72-62 loss at Center Moriches, were faltering.

    Niles attributed Friday’s loss in large part to “turmoil” arising from an academic eligibility policy that has particularly affected the basketball team. “We’ve got no continuity,” said the coach. “You never know who’s playing or who isn’t.”

    On Monday, Niles lost his standout sophomore point guard, who apparently was declared academically ineligible until a review Feb. 26, the day before the county Class D championship game.

    Five Bridgehampton players were declared academically ineligible Jan. 11, following a three-week probationary period, which on Jan. 15 was extended for two more weeks. Of the five, three were starters.

    The East Hampton High School wrestling team remains undefeated, at 4-0, as it flattened Greenport and Stony Brook in League Seven matches last week.

February 18, 1988

    Health Hampton would like to thank its many well wishers for their wonderful suggestions and letters of encouragement. Below please find suggestions that will be included in our proposal:

    1. More squash courts.

    2. Children’s exercise program.

    3. Divider fences between tennis courts.

    4. Moving golf units to an enclosed area.

    5. Installing plexiglass around the aerobic rooms to give a more open feeling to entire area.

    6. Establishing a relationship with a physical therapist/nutritionist.

    7. Donation of the facility to the local schools during off-peak hours.

    8. Formation of the Health Hampton road runners club for both adults and juniors.

    Other suggestions are presently under consideration. Please write us. We would appreciate knowing how we can build a facility that meets your needs.

    P.S. Is there any interest in polo?

    The East Hampton High School boys basketball team, by virtue of its victories over Bridgehampton and Hampton Bays last week, claimed a share of the League Seven title with Southampton.

    East Hampton’s Kenny Wood continued to lead the team in scoring with a school-record 42 points against Hampton Bays, and with 33 points against the Killer Bees. In setting the school single game record, Wood made 17 of 23 field goal attempts, and 8 of 10 free throws. He scored more points than the entire Hampton Bays team.

    Thomas Brierley and Trevor Mott, the first members of East Hampton High School’s boys swimming team ever to qualify for state meet competition, did well at this past weekend’s open meet at Webster-Schroeder High School outside Rochester.

    Brierley, who won Suffolk’s 100-yard backstroke championship in a time of 54.33 seconds, placed 14th among the public high school contestants by swimming a personal best 54.23 in the final. A fellow Suffolk swimmer, whom he had bested in the county final, edged him out by swimming a 54.00. “Otherwise, in addition to all-county, Thomas would have been all-Long Island too,” said Thomas’s father, and the team’s coach, Craig Brierley.

    Mott, who did not qualify for the 500 freestyle final, nevertheless acquitted himself well, swimming a 4:53.72 in the preliminaries, which resulted in a ranking of 25th among the public high school competitors. Mott’s time was not a personal best, but very close to the 4:52.30 he swam at the end of the season, which qualified him for the states.

    It was a banner year for Bonac’s boys team, which, with only three seniors, finished second to Sayville-Bayport in league competition and reaped more postseason honors than it ever has. Besides Brierley and Mott, who were named to the all-county team, the following were all-league selections: Shane McCann in the 50-yard freestyle; Thomas Brierley in the 200 free; Brierley, Mott, Chris Kalbacher, and McCann in the 200 medley relay; Robert Anderson, Thomas Paradiso, Alex Astilean, and McCann in the 200 free relay, and Rob Rewinski, Astilean, Mott, and Brierley in the 400 free relay.

   The Hampton Lifeguard Association will begin its junior lifeguard training program for boys and girls age 9 through 14 at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter pool Sunday at 1:30 p.m.

   The program, which is free, is to benefit from a fund-raising dinner at East by Northeast restaurant in Montauk tomorrow from 7 to 11 p.m. The tickets cost $40 per person ($75 for a couple) in advance, or $45 and $85 at the door. The party committee members are Kathy Piacentine, John Ryan Sr., Mary Lownes, Stephanie Bogetti, Lynne Calabrese, and Marigrace Ryan.