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.

Max Cure Spin

    Fly Wheel Sports at 85 Montauk Highway, East Hampton, is participating in a nationwide fund-raiser for the Max Cure Foundation this Saturday, beginning at 2 p.m.

    Richard Plotkin, the foundation’s founder, who is a part-time Amagansett resident, said in an e-mail that Fly Wheel has allocated 55 spinning bikes to the foundation, whose “mission is to fund pediatric cancer cures, to develop less toxic treatments for children with the disease, and to support low-income families whose children have been struck by cancer.”

    “One hundred percent of the proceeds [the donation is $50 an hour] will be donated to the Max Cure Foundation,” Plotkin said.

    Local families who have been beneficiaries of the foundation include Jim and Brigid Stewart of Sag Harbor, and Amos and Canela Ryan of Medford. A benefit for the Ryans — he was a former East Hampton High School and Southampton College basketball star — was held at Luly Duke’s house at Three Mile Harbor last summer. The Stewarts, whose daughter, Katy, died of a rare form of liver cancer, in 2010, have benefited from Max Cure Foundation carnivals at the East Hampton Indoor/Outdoor Tennis Club.

    Fly Wheel studios in Atlanta, Boca Raton, Fla., Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Dallas, Englewood, N.J., Miami, Milburn, N.J., Philadelphia, Seattle, and New York City are participating in the fund-raiser as well.

MagicMasters

    The Harlem MagicMasters will be matched against East Hampton teachers in a fund-raiser for the East Hampton Coaches Association at East Hampton High School Saturday night at 7. Pat Hand, at the high school’s athletic office, and Becky Schwartz, at the John M. Marshall Elementary School, have tickets. At the door, they’ll cost $12 for adults and $10 for children.

   Hayden Ward, a Montauker, whose basketball talent was called into question by his peers when he first arrived at East Hampton High School, has been named as the State University of New York Athletic Conference’s player of the year.

    “Good for him,” said Ed Petrie, Ward’s coach here (who was not among the doubters) when given the news. “Hayden has improved every year — he’s come a long way. He’s worked hard, which is what you hope for all your players. He’s always had a great attitude and a great work ethic. And,” Petrie said with emphasis, “he wanted to get better — that’s the key.”

    There are 10 SUNYAC teams, the State University at Oswego, where Ward has played the past four years, being one of them. Last year, the 6-foot-6 power forward, who finished his career as Oswego’s second-leading all-time rebounder and ninth-highest scorer, led the Lakers to their first conference championship since 1965, and to their second straight appearance in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division III tournament. 

    This season, the team, the conference’s fourth seed, did not fare quite as well, losing to the eventual SUNYAC champion, Cortland, in a semifinal, which put it out of the running for a return trip to the N.C.A.A.s.

    “We could have won the whole thing again this year, but we lost a couple of games that we should have won, including that one to Cortland in the semis,” Ward said during a telephone conversation Sunday evening. “We had a good season, though. We finished at 19-8.”

    The quiet-spoken redhead said he’d averaged 18 points and 10 rebounds per game this year, winding up his career with 1,393 points and 892 rebounds. He had 13 double-double performances, including a career-high 33 points and 18 rebounds in the “senior day” game with Oneonta.

    His father, John, with whom he plays slow-pitch softball on Uihlein’s team, had been a baseball player, and thus it was as a baseball player that Ward arrived at East Hampton High. Petrie, he said, had helped him greatly with his shooting. That he is a 35 to 40-percent shooter from beyond the arc testifies to the effectiveness of that work. The rebounding came more easily, as he is a fighter.

    At East Hampton, Ward anchored two county-champion and state Final Four teams.

    He acknowledged that he had a strong will.

    That he was able to play all four years in college — spending four to five hours a day on the court — while doing well academically is further testimony to his determination.

    Asked what his post-graduation plans were — Ward is majoring in business administration and minoring in coaching — he said he’d like to play professionally overseas if possible. He would talk to his coach (Jason Leone) about that soon, he said.

    He would do well to talk also to Howard Wood, given that Wood, now East Hampton High’s girls basketball coach, played for a decade in Spain’s top professional leagues.

    “One more thing,” he said in parting, “our class’s 83 wins were the most in Oswego’s history.”

   Scorpion, a team led by Antonio Padilla, Mario Olaya, and Danny Bedoya, defeated the very competitive Virgen del Milagro entry, whose lineup included Missael Piadranarte and the league’s leading goal scorer, Marco Bautista, 3-1 in a hotly contested men’s open futsal final at the Sportime arena in Amagansett Saturday night.

    Earlier that evening, the Andesitos, with Nancy Sisalima making good on two tries, prevailed 5-4 in a penalty kick shootout over Union Latina to win the women’s division, and El Veneno, behind Walter Criollo’s hat trick, defeated the Cosmos 6-3 in the men’s 38-plus final.

    In other action, Sportime, a women’s team coached by Ramon Naula, who oversees adult soccer at the arena, took third place in the women’s league, shutting out a shorthanded Hamptons squad 6-0 as Sophie Gianis, a Pierson High School senior, Anna Strong, and Jen Inamagua each scored two goals.

    Sportime had gone undefeated in the regular season, but, with Inamagua absent, was upset 1-0 by Union Latina in the semifinal round. Claudia Meza’s perfectly placed long kick in the second half won it for Union Latina.

    Virgen del Milagro was the defending men’s champion, but in the early going of the extremely fast-paced final, Bedoya, who had received a pass from Padilla, beat Olger (Quique) Araya, Virgen’s goalie, to go up 1-0.

    Piadranarte, as sure a ball-handler as any on the floor in the 7-on-7 battle, brought Virgen even with a blast from about eight yards out that zipped by Scorpion’s keeper, Franklin Tacuri, just before the first half ended.

    In the early minutes of the second frame, Padilla, who was to be named the game’s most valuable player, converted a free kick he’d taken after Araya had incurred a penalty for coming out of the box. Taken in close, Padilla’s ground-hugger, which was deflected off a defender’s leg, caught Araya off-balance.

    Soon after, Virgen, with Marco Bautista having carried the ball up the left side and Jhon Romero advancing with him, on the right, looked as if it would tie the count at 2-2, but play was interrupted in an untimely fashion — much to Virgen’s consternation — by a quixotic sounding of the buzzer.

    “It’s a shame,” Araya said afterward when asked why Virgen del Milagro had refused to participate in the awards ceremony that followed the final, “but that’s soccer. The indoor game is so fast that you dare not fall asleep . . . and that includes the referees.”

    With 12:40 left, Padilla went airborne as the result of a collision with Oscar Bautista, who was red-carded (and thus was ejected from the game, leaving Virgen to play a man-down thereafter) as Padilla, lying in pain on his back, was ministered to, by, among others, Araya, an emergency medical technician with the East Hampton Fire Department. Padilla, his head bandaged, was subsequently taken to the sidelines as Jimmy Baculima — to cheers from the sidelines — replaced him.

    Baculima quickly got off two serious shots. Araya saved the first, and the next, made after stealing the ball from Piadranarte, clanged off the right post. Araya came up big twice more as the clock was running down, knocking back over the crossbar a shot taken by Olaya, who’d juked Franklin Bermeo, and parrying a bid by Bedoya.

    With 2:30 left to play, Olaya brushed by a defender on the left side and passed to Baculima, who, unmarked, beat Araya, capping Scorpion’s scoring and effectively putting the game out of Virgen’s reach.

    There was to be another serious Scorpion attack with two minutes to go, but somehow Araya, who momentarily faced three attackers alone, survived it.

    At the awards ceremony, Christine Carrol, Sportime’s goalie (who was in Thailand on a Ross School M-Term trip), was named the women’s league’s M.V.P. and her teammate Inamagua was cited as that league’s high-scorer; Criollo, of El Veneno, was named the 38-plus men’s league’s M.V.P.; Wilson Garcia, of the Cosmos, was that league’s top scorer, and Piadranarte was the open men’s league M.V.P.

    Scorpion reached the final by defeating Liga del Milagro in a penalty shootout thanks to a goal by Milton Quizhpi, and Virgen del Milagro defeated La Calle 6-1 as Marco Bautista scored four of the winner’s goals.

    Sportime’s next adult soccer season is to begin Friday, March 15.

   Now is the time for all worthy nominees to come the attention of East Hampton High School’s Hall of Fame committee, its chairman, Jim Nicoletti, said in so many words during a conversation Friday.

    “We want to keep the momentum going,” said Nicoletti, who oversaw the induction of the Hall’s first class at homecoming weekend last September, a day he aptly described at the time as “one of the greatest days in Bonac sports history.”

    “You know, thinking back on that, we really didn’t know what to expect,” said the high school’s former longtime varsity baseball and tennis coach. “A week before the ceremony 90 people had signed up for the induction day breakfast. But then it began to snowball. Joe [Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director] called me to say there were 40 more, and then, when he called to say there were more than 200 he suggested we think of cutting it off. We had to order the food and the acceptances kept coming. We wound up with over 400 people at the breakfast and the ceremony! It was a great day, the presenters and the inductees spoke movingly, especially Howard [Wood] saying he wished everyone there could one time in their lives have the opportunity to feel what he was feeling. Every single Hall of Fame inductee was represented — by family members in the case of those who were posthumous honorees. People came from as far away as Florida. And then that night the football team, which had been struggling, won!”

    “Somebody said to me that day, ‘Are you going to do this every year?’ Some Halls don’t have an induction ceremony every year — they have it every other year — and you do wonder how we could ever top that inaugural induction, but then you consider that there’ll be a different cast of characters this year . . . new inductees, new teams . . . some new committee members. . . . So, what we need now are nominations from the public, from family members, friends, coaches. . . . The nominators must do the research, however — committee members can’t be the researchers. Telephoning the nominee for information, or the nominee’s family, should be helpful.”

    Nicoletti said the committee — whose new members are Ginny Reale, Bob Budd, and Dave Cheney — has set a deadline of March 29 for receiving the 2013 nominations, which can be had online (by going to the ehufsd.org Web site) or which can be picked up at the East Hampton Library or at the athletic office at East Hampton High School.

    Nicoletti added that the committee’s board of historical advisers has two new members — Chris Tracey and Jim Brooks, who have replaced Budd and Cheney.

    “I put out 60 nominating packets in the hall last year, and they were all gone by the time the ceremony was over, but apparently the people who picked them up have been putting it off. That’s why we’ve set the deadline at the end of this month.”

    “We may decide to consider up to 12 nominees this year, say, which means that each of us on the committee will pick his or her 12 favorites from among last year’s list of nominees who didn’t make it and from the new nominations. Recommendations must be seconded by a fellow committee member. That gets the prospective inductee’s name on the ballot. A certain number of votes is required for induction.”

    Nominations (the nominees must have played sports at East Hampton High School and must have graduated from it at least 10 years prior to their consideration for the Hall of Fame) “remain active for 10 years,” said Nicoletti, who added that “everybody we get a packet on will be considered this year.”

    Nominating packets can be taken to the high school’s athletic office, or mailed in care of Jim Nicoletti, East Hampton High School Athletics, 2 Long Lane, East Hampton 11937.

    “If people have any questions, they can call me at 324-8260.”

   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.

    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.

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.

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.

   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.”