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.

   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.”

   For Steve Redlus, who played for the team that was on its way to a county championship in 1995 when a controversial downfield-blocking call on its tight end, Troy LaMonda, stifled a probable victory drive, realized a dream this week when he was named as East Hampton High’s varsity football coach, replacing Bill Barbour Jr., who recently resigned.

    When five years ago Barbour replaced David MacGarva, it was thought that the program, whose numbers were far outweighed by those of the schools up west, might turn around, but that has not been the case.

    It has become an adage here that football prospects would rather surf, and while that may be a half-truth, or a quarter-truth, the fact is that the sporting menu has become so various in the past 20 or so years that the traditional big three of football, basketball, and baseball no longer hold the sway over athletes that they once did.

    All by way of saying that Redlus, 35, a physical education and adaptive physical education teacher at the high school — as well as the varsity football team’s offensive coordinator — knows what he’s up against.

    It has helped that East Hampton was able to move out of the black-and-blue division this past year, “though Division IV still has its powerhouses, the Babylons, the Shoreham-Wading Rivers, the Mount Sinais, the John Glenns, just as in Division III,” Redlus said. “Division III’s a meat grinder, there are no breaks, whereas in Division IV there are some games where you’re not overmatched physically.”

    At the end of the month the new coach, who played football for four years at the State University at Brockport and helped coach there for a year, will know where East Hampton will be seeded among the conference’s 14 teams and what the fall’s schedule will be.

    Meanwhile, Redlus, who captained Brockport’s football team in his senior year and played varsity basketball there for three years, is going to be actively promoting the sport at the junior high and youth levels, not only here, but at Pierson, in Sag Harbor, and at Bridgehampton. In addition, Redlus said he will meet one-on-one with the players in the high school, emphasizing the need to get bigger, stronger, and faster.

    In order to move down to Conference IV, East Hampton divested itself of Pierson, with which it had been combined at the varsity level, though it remains combined with the Sag Harbor school in the lower grades.

    A believer in well-rounded athleticism, Redlus will not demand a particular allegiance to football, though weight training during the school year and in the off-season will be emphasized. “I want every kid to play three sports, I want them to be in competitive situations the year round . . . on the wrestling mat, on the lacrosse field . . . Richie Browne — one of our returning senior linemen — is a great example of what I’m saying. He went out for wrestling this year for the first time and did great. He lost 20 pounds and is in the best shape of his life. Consequently, he’ll be a better football player because he went out for wrestling.”

    And Mike Burns, the popular former athletic director, boys track coach, and longtime assistant varsity coach here, is to play a significant role in the new coach’s revival plans.

    When asked if the return of Burns — a teaching retiree — had been his idea, Redlus replied by way of explanation, and with a smile, “He’s my father-in-law — he couldn’t refuse. I’m married to his daughter Maureen, who’s a preschool teacher at the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center.”

    His father-in-law, he added, had helped coach Westhampton Beach to consecutive county championships in 2011 and ’12.

    Redlus, who’s also the president of the East Hampton Coaches Association, said he’ll hold monthly coaching staff meetings from here on. His appointment was announced by the athletic director, Joe Vas, Friday morning.

    Vas and Redlus said there are two assistant coaching positions open, one of which had been occupied by Jason Menu, who, like Barbour, cited family obligations as a major reason for resigning.

    When asked about the seniors expected to return, Redlus said, “We’ll have Cort Heneveld [the Annapolis-bound quarterback], who was all-county this fall, and Bryan Gamble, an all-division center and defensive lineman, and Ben Newberry, an outside linebacker and guard, among others. I’ve named Cort, Bryan, and Ben as the team’s captains.”

    “We’re looking at a total rebuild of the entire program — high school, middle school, and youth programs all figure in my plans. I want everybody to be on the same page.”

    “I’m meeting with Pierson’s athletic director on Feb. 27. I’m hoping their juniors will play on our jayvee, with the idea that in time we’ll move back up to Division III. . . . We’ve had some great players from Pierson over the years, among them Pete Deleski, who coaches our jayvee, Mike Daniels, an inside linebacker and center who was a teammate of mine, Randy Steyart, who played at Sacred Heart, Matt Paul, who played for a year at Temple. . . .”

    Ditto Bridgehampton. “I played with Relly Hopson and Oran Davis . . . I used to pick up Maurice and Jarrel Walker on the way to 6 a.m. practice. . . . We’ve got Anaje Lamb, who’ll be a senior, on our team now. He’s an offensive and defensive lineman. We’re still combined at the varsity level with Bridgehampton.”

    It won’t be easy to repeat as a playoff contender: East Hampton has only nine varsity returnees, and there were last fall only 16 on the jayvee. Moreover, the East Hampton Middle School’s squad, to which Springs and Sag Harbor contribute, “only had 12 eighth graders, though there were 33 seventh graders. Those are the kids we’ll be concentrating on. . . . If we were able to keep 20 kids at each grade level, we’d have 40 on the varsity, which would be a nice number.”

    Asked about the recent concerns having to do with concussions, Redlus said, “There will always be injuries in football — that’s part of the game — but we’ll teach the correct tackling fundamentals, tackling with the head up, not down. That will be a major focus.”

    “Our team goal,” Redlus said in parting, “is to make the playoffs again. If we do, it would be the first time we’ve done that back-to-back since my senior year in 1995 and Robbie Peters’s in ’96.”

    “I’m looking forward to the grind and to the challenge of coaching high school football. . . . It’s definitely a dream come true.”

   East Hampton High School’s boys and girls basketball teams went one-and-done in the county playoffs last week, though the boys, as has been their custom all season, fought to the end, and Kaelyn Ward, as also has been the case all season, played valiantly in her career finale.

    Ward led her team with 25 points Friday and finished with 1,160 in her career. “Kaelyn went down fighting,” said the girls’ coach, Howard Wood. Islip, the opponent, won the first-round Class A matchup 73-41 as Shannon Duer, who scored 33 points and captured 20 rebounds, did her thing down low. “She’s a phenomenal player, very strong, and pretty much unstoppable,” said Wood.

    Rolando Garces scored a game-high 22 points in the boys’ 56-53 loss at third-seeded Islip last Thursday, “though, as a team, we ­didn’t shoot well,” said the boys’ coach, Bill McKee, “and we made some mistakes at the end.”

    Even so, the Bonackers, who trailed by 13 points at one point, came back to take the lead with two minutes to go, only to watch it vanish in the final ticks. “They hit a basket to put them up by 2, we came down and missed a good shot with 20 seconds left. We had to foul. They made a free throw with only two seconds left, and that sealed it.”

    “We would have liked to have won so that we could play Harborfields, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. It was a game that’s been typical of our season, right down to the wire. We’ve played in seven games that have been decided by 3 or fewer points and we’ve gone 5-2 in them. I told the kids I was proud of them, that they should hold their heads high. They never quit and played their hearts out. I really appreciated it. A coach couldn’t ask for anything more.”

   Tuesday morning, McKee announced that Thomas King, the team’s poised and versatile senior point guard, had been named to the all-county team, “a big honor for him. He’s played four years and each year he’s gotten a little better. We’re going to miss him — he played everywhere really, at the point, and as a forward and center at times.”

King, who’s weighing whether to attend Quinnipiac, Mercy, or Hardwick College in the fall, averaged 16 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 assists per game.

   McKee also will miss Garces, the baseline-driving senior forward who was named to the all-league team, and who, according to the coach, “is the perfect example of what hard work can do. Rolando played a total of 10 minutes all last season. The game was too fast for him, but he decided that he wanted to be a player. He was at every open gym we had and played with college players all summer at the high school — high-level pickup games that Coach Petrie began here in 1969. He lives in Montauk, so it wasn’t easy for him. Sometimes he took a bus, sometimes a train, but he was always there.”

   Asked in what particular area or areas Garces’s game had improved, McKee replied, “Ballhandling — he became a much better ballhandler in the off-season.”

Another post-season honoree was Danny McKee, the coach’s son, who was the second-leading 3-point shooter in the county, with 45, vis a vis the leader’s 53. McKee, a junior, was honorable mention all-league.

    He, Thomas Nelson (the team’s leading rebounder), Brendan Hughes, David Moss, and Charles Barranco will be next year’s seniors. Brandon Neff, who hit some key 3s coming off the bench this season, will be a junior.

    The elder McKee’s advice to them is to avail themselves as often as possible of the open gym hours, and of the “Dr. Dish” shooting and rebounding machine that the East Hampton Youth Basketball and Football Association recently gave to the basketball program.

   Shelter Island had a chance last Thursday to hail the first county-championship boys basketball team the tiny school district has ever had.

    When told of the possibility after Bridgehampton’s 53-40 win in the county Class D final at Westhampton Beach High School, Carl Johnson, the Killer Bees’ coach, who has played on and coached state-championship teams, said, “I’m glad they didn’t do it against me!”

    For a while it looked as if the Indians might. They led 19-16 at the break following two quarters of turnover-plagued play. The margin was 4 points, in Bridgehampton’s favor, when the fourth quarter began, and the rest was history as the Bees, led by two freshmen, their 205-pound inside man, Josh Lamison, and their point guard, Tylik Furman, who became increasingly confident, began to sting and sting and sting.

    When it was over, Shelter Island’s coach, Mike Mundy, could take heart in knowing that the program, which once rode an arguably historic 77-game losing streak, is on the rebound. Mundy’s brother, Jerry, had played on the last Harelegger team to beat a Bridgehampton one 44 years ago — a drought that recently ended with a 39-34 Shelter Island regular-season victory.

    Recalling those hapless years at an East Hampton Coaches Association golf outing in 2010, Henry Uihlein said a 74-4 Bridgehampton lead at the half of his boys basketball coaching debut had prompted him to tell his charges in the locker room that they were “only 35 baskets behind . . . I thought that was putting a better face on it.”

    “We beat them at Bridgehampton and they beat us on Shelter Island,” the elder Mundy, who had brought along his high school yearbook, said before last Thursday’s showdown.

    “We had the county scoring champion that year in Bob Miller, who could hit from anywhere. We won the league and we scored 100 or more points in six games. And remember, there were no 3-pointers then; all we did was run. Our only league loss was to Bridgehampton. We beat Pierson both times. . . .”

    But a county championship that year was pretty much out of the question for Shelter Island, which lost 81-62 to Central Islip in the first round, inasmuch as the county tournament was an open one — there were no enrollment classification brackets within it as is the case today.

    Taking Mundy one step further back, Cliff Clark, the South Ferry owner, recalled that the ’57-58 Shelter Island team had gone 16-0 with an average winning margin of 30-plus points. “Bill McManus, who practiced dentistry in East Hampton, was the star. He averaged 23 points a game. He was on the freshman team at Brown University, but then focused on med school. . . . That team was really good. It had a 6-5 center, Rollie Clark, no relation, a 6-3 forward, Gene Mosca, and my brother Bill was a center-forward. [Bridgehampton’s] Carl Yastzemski was a little ahead of those guys. . . . Then came that huge drought. We’re on the upswing now, though. This was a big year.”

    Getting back to the game, things began to go south for Shelter Island when, near the end of the third quarter, Jerome Walker and Furman hit back-to-back 3-pointers to give the Bees the lead, at 30-28, and, following a basket by the Indians’ Nathan Mundy, Lamison began to take over in the paint.

    The Bees took a 34-30 lead into the fourth, which Furman began with a fastbreak layup. Lamison then put back another Furman miss for 38-30, and so it went.

    Bridgehampton’s crushing 17-0 run finally came to an end when Riley Willumsen made two foul shots with two and a half minutes left to play.

    Lamison was to finish with 16 points and 16 rebounds. Furman had 15 points. Mundy led Shelter Island with 15 points.

    “Defense never was a problem for us today,” Johnson said afterward, “though our offense was. Josh was unbelievable, and, you know, when someone gets going it can be contagious. The key really was Jason [Hopson, Bridgehampton’s high-scoring senior]. If he moves, which he did in the second half, then that opens it up; everyone always keys on him. He was just standing around in the first half, that’s why I yelled at him during halftime. He doesn’t need to score to be effective. Josh is a 6-footer, but he has the reach of a 6-4 guy. He took over with his rebounding and putbacks, and Tylik, who’s less comfortable shooting from the outside, began taking it to the hoop. . . . “

    The Bees were to have played Stony Brook — a 57-27 victor over Pierson in last Thursday’s C final — in the county C-D game yesterday.

    As for the state tournament, Johnson said, “Rockland and Westchester haven’t even begun their tournaments yet. I think we may wind up playing Livingston Manor, the number-one team in Rockland, in the regional final, but that’s two weeks away.”

    The Bees will have to win two games to get to the Class D Final Four at Glens Falls in mid-March. When asked how long it had been since Bridgehampton’s last trip there, Johnson smiled and said, “1998. It’s been too long!”

   The day of the league boys swimming meet, Craig Brierley and his son Thomas met with Sinead FitzGibbon, a well-respected physical therapist and endurance athlete here, concerning a sore shoulder.

    “An M.R.I. showed a minor stress fracture,” the elder Brierley said, “but Sinead said he was good to go. If she hadn’t given us the green light, I was prepared to shut him down. Strengthening exercises with her and stroke correction with me — as a coach your form is never good enough — should do it.”

    Meanwhile, the lean, tousle-haired East Hampton High School junior went out and won the 100-yard county backstroke championship at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood Saturday, in 54.33 seconds, thus becoming the first here in the boys’ program’s four-year span to win a county title. Brierley was seeded fourth in the event, “and all four guys,” his father said, “qualified for the states, all within two-tenths of a second of each other. It was the most exciting race of the meet.”

    Asked if he’d expected his son to win, Craig Brierley said, “I had no idea what to expect. He was in only one individual event that day, and I knew he was highly motivated to make the cut. . . . He was thrilled with the win — it was a season goal for him.”

    Brierley’s teammate and fellow junior Trevor Mott, who qualified for the state meet’s 500-yard freestyle event during the regular season, and who was seeded third in the county 500, placed sixth, in 4:58.27, somewhat slower than his personal best, 4:52.30.

    “He did well, but the fact that he’d already qualified for state meet probably had something to do with it,” said the elder Brierley, “and he was also saving himself for the relays.”

    Mott set a personal record in the 50-yard breaststroke, with the 29.43 he swam in his leg of the 200 medley relay and with the 52.35 he swam in his 100-yard leg in the 400 free relay. The 200 medley relay team, which included Thomas Brierley, Chris Kalbacher, and Shane McCann, finished seventh, and the 400 freestyle relay team of Thomas Paradiso (subbing for Rob Rewinski), Alex Astilean, Mott, and Thomas Brierley, placed eighth.

    With everyone “on or very near their best times,” Brierley and Brian Cunningham’s team of 13 finished 12th, bettering last year’s finish by three spots. “We had a couple of D.Q.s [in the 100 butterfly and 200 free relay], and one of our swimmers who would have scored was away, but I’m very happy with how we did.”         

    The 200 free relay, which comprised Rewinski, Tyler Menold, Astilean, and McCann, was disqualified because of an alleged false start by the anchorman, McCann.

    Concerning Rewinski’s disqualification  in the 100 butterfly, Brierley said, “He did a great job, but he touched out with one hand — in the fly and in the breast you have to touch the walls with both hands.”

    Other P.R.s for East Hampton were Kalbacher’s 26.80 in the 50-yard butterfly leg he swam in the 200 medley relay and the 1:02.88 he swam in the 100 fly; the 200 medley relay team’s 1:45.82; Andrew Winthrop’s 2:04.87 in the 200 free; Astilean’s 2:18.02 in the 200 individual medley and his 53.80 as part of the 400 relay; Thomas Brierley’s 54.33 in the backstroke and his 49.33 100-yard leg in the 400 relay; Paradiso’s 55.70 in his 100 leg in the 400 relay, and the 400 relay team’s 3:31.22.

    Hauppauge, a team that East Hampton — the league runnerup to Sayville-Bayport — had defeated in a dual meet this season and had edged out for the runnerup spot by one point in the recent league meet, finished higher than the Bonackers Saturday, in sixth place, “but that had a lot to do with the fact that they have considerably more club swimmers than the handful we have. You have to qualify for the counties. Because they have more U.S.A. swimmers — seven of our 32 kids are — more of them qualified, which enabled them to score more points.”

    Thomas Brierley was named afterward as East Hampton’s swimmer-of-the-meet. Winthrop was so named following the league meet at which he turned in personal bests in the 200 free and 500 free. Parker Fenelon, a first-year swimmer, was voted swimmer-of-the-meet by the captains following the regular-season finale here with North Babylon.

    “After the county meet we continued what’s becoming a tradition by going to Dave & Buster’s, a restaurant that has a big game room,” said the coach.

   You hardly hear anyone call it Lake Munchogue these days. The Hagstrom Suffolk County Atlas still has it down by its Native-American name, while including Oyster Pond in parentheses below. Many of the other water bodies on the South Fork retained names derived from the local dialects of the Algonkian language since settlement. There are Shinnecock, Noyac, and Mecox Bays as well as Lake Agawam, Poxabogue, Wickatuck, and Sagaponack Ponds and Sebonac Creek in Southampton Town. While in East Hampton there are Accabonac and Napeague Harbors and Napeague Bay. While Montauk still has its Lake Montauk named after the Montauketts, all of its other waters go by anglicized names, from west to east, Block Island Sound, Fresh Pond, Fort Pond Bay, Fort Pond, Tuthill Pond, Peter’s Run, Stepping Stones Pond, Little Reed Pond, Big Reed Pond, Oyster Pond, and Money Pond.

    With the exception of Money Pond, Oyster Pond is different from all the others, which are either tidal or fresh. It is a coastal pond (like Georgica Pond in Wainscott and Sagg Pond in Sagaponack, Mecox Bay in Bridgehampton, and Squire Pond in Squire Town, Hampton Bays), and thus varies in salinity from year to year, depending upon the number and extent of tidal excursions that take place in any one year. Hook Pond in East Hampton Village was a true coastal pond with an intermittent opening until the Maidstone Golf Course came along in the 1930s.

    After Hurricane Sandy visited at the end of last October, Oyster Pond was widely open to Block Island Sound.  It became salty and is still quite salty almost four months later.

    Coastal ponds have unique communities consisting of flora and fauna that can adjust to varying salinities and varying temperatures. Such coastal ponds up until the mid-20th century were the breeding grounds of one of these very adaptable species, the southern leopard frog, now approaching the endangered level in New York State. In the 1990s the only viable southern leopard frog breeding habitat on Long Island was Oyster Pond, but since then none have been found despite exhaustive annual searches. The leopard frog’s tadpoles were able to tolerate brackish conditions, an ability not found in the genomes of the other 15 or so amphibian species found on Long Island.

    Of course the American oyster (Ostrea virginica), after which the pond was named, thrives in such brackish waters, and in most years, Oyster Pond is chock full of them. From time to time they have been used by the East Hampton Town Trustees in shellfish transplant programs to stock oysters in other town waters where their numbers had become depleted. Before Shinnecock Bay was opened to the ocean by the storm of the last century, the Hurricane of 1938, and thus became permanently tidal, much of the bay’s waters and those connected to it on its west end were rife with oysters. Oddly, Georgica Pond, which has similarly brackish waters that vary throughout the year from almost fresh to quite marine, has no oysters and attempts to start them there have not been successful.

    Oyster Pond also has an unusual water snake (Nerodia sipedon) that can handle the salt content, as well, and feeds on killifishes and probably fed on the larvae of the leopard frog during its heyday there. The only other semi-marine habitat where I have found this water snake on the South Fork is in Squire Pond. While the Long Pond chain of ponds situated between Sag Harbor and Sagaponack also has water snakes, they are not quite the same.

    Then, too, there are several rare-to-New York plants found along the edges of Oyster Pond, the rarest of which is the sea purslane, a succulent dwarfish plant with tiny nondescript flowers lacking petals, looking a little like the flower garden portulaca with less colorful flowers. When the pond is low, say after a drought period, this plant takes root and flourishes. When the pond is high, it waits in the wings to start anew. Some of the rushes and sedges along the pond’s shores are also uncommon.

    Although it is relatively isolated and visited by only a handful of people in a given week, Oyster Pond suffers its share of slings and arrows. It is in the watershed that includes most of Montauk east of Lake Montauk and which stretches all the way south to the ocean bluffs. Thus a sewage spill in the mid-1980s that originated in the old Fort Hero Base housing, went under Montauk Point State Parkway and reached all the way to Oyster Pond. Then in the winter of 1990-91, an oil storage tank behind the bluffs of Fort Hero burst and oil made it all the way to the pond. It may have been one of the causes of the demise of the southern leopard frog population which occurred a year or two later.

    Oyster Pond was once an arm of Block Island Sound that has managed to survive in an area of duny shoreline severely under attack in this century by northeasters and tropical storms. Some parts of this shoreline running from the Montauk Lighthouse to Big Reed Pond on the west have lost more than five feet a year since the beginning of the new millennium. Thus, even though it is owned and protected by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, it may be gone before the beginning of the next century, a victim of rising sea level.

    Its significance to the Montauketts, whose village was hardly more than a stone’s throw away, is yet to be completely explained. Until European settlers came along, aside from skirmishes with the Indian groups on the north side of Long Island Sound, the Montauketts never had it so good.

    They had Fort Pond, the second largest freshwater lake on Long Island, Big Reed Pond, the third largest lake, with its seapoosed alewife runs, Block Island Sound, and the ocean. There were shellfish galore — blue mussels, oysters, hard clams, soft clams, bay scallops, and lobsters. They had access to the only rocky intertidal headland on the ocean north of the Caribbean Sea, wild turkeys, waterfowl, the heath hen, bobwhites, acorns, hickory nuts, and the like, a high vantage point from which to survey the rest of the world and the warmest climate on Long Island. And no deer ticks, lone star ticks, or chiggers.

    It certainly was worth much more than a few gold coins, patent jewelry, pots and pans, and a free ride and repatriation to much less fruitful quarters.

    Since the proprietors bought the land, the takeover by Arthur Benson in 1885, the rise and fall of Carl Fisher, and the opening of Lake Montauk to the sea in the early 1920s, and all the others that followed including the Montauk Holding Company, Macy’s Leisurerama, and so on, someone or some group has always tried to subdue Montauk with a heavy hand. No matter how much they try, Montauk will remain completely in the hands of God, Mother Nature, and the surrounding seas. In years to come it won’t be that much different than when the Montauketts more than 5,000 years ago first camped on the banks of Oyster Pond, uh, make that Lake Munchogue.

Friday, March 1

BOYS SWIMMING, state meet, Webster Schroeder High School near Rochester, also Saturday.

FUTSAL, men’s league semifinals, La Calle vs. Virgen del Milagro, 7 p.m., and Scorpion vs. Liga del Milagro, 8, Sportime Arena, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Saturday, March 2

FUTSAL, playoff finals in women’s and men’s leagues, 5-11 p.m., Sportime Arena, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Monday, March 4

SPRING SPORTS, practices begin at South Fork schools, 3 p.m.

Wednesday, March 6

BOYS BASKETBALL, Class D regional semifinal, Section IX winner vs. Bridgehampton, Center Moriches High School, 5 p.m.

    A sportswriter in search of something to write about Sunday morning, this being the depths of winter, stopped off first at the Buckskill Winter Club where Joanne Doran, the manager and figure skating director, told him of a number of new offerings there, after which he swung by Sportime’s Arena in Amagansett for a talk with its manager, Mike Ritsi, Tyler Jarvis, and Bob Nicholson, whose 9-year-old son, Brett, plays on four traveling roller hockey teams, including a 17-and-under squad.

    Doran, whose sons, Chris and Matt, are avid ice hockey players, said figure skating has been taking off at Buckskill, and that there has been increased interest in the ice hockey program — whose goal is to form a South Fork high school team — too.

    Doran oversees a structured U.S. Figure Skating curriculum (including evaluation and testing) that spans preschool “Snowplow Sams” and teenaged “Ice Stars,” advanced figure skaters. Basic figure skating lessons are also given to adults, said Doran, who’s been a U.S. Figure Skating instructor for 23 years.

    The Snowplow Sam classes, “for kids who don’t know how to skate,” had been “extremely popular,” she said. “We’ve got at least 25. They learn how to fall, how to recover, edging, stroking, balance. . . . We have tons of local people now, from Southampton and Sag Harbor to Springs and Montauk.”

    There is a basic skills program, under Tim Luzadre, in ice hockey, as well, which introduces kids to the fundamental moves, including forward skating, backward skating, stops, edges, crossovers, and turns.

    Adding the Ice Stars clinics, designed to improve skills, using the entire ice rink surface, had been her idea, said Doran, who added that she hoped she could have a figure skating club at Buckskill in the near future.

    “The kids are enthusiastic. We’re giving an exhibition on March 10 at 1 p.m. We’ll be doing a lot of numbers, and four or five girls will be doing solos. We’ll have a mystery guest too,” she said with a smile. “Somebody in costume . . . a character.”

    In all, it had been “a great season [the rink is to close March 17] for figure skaters, and for hockey too.”

    At Sportime’s Multi-Sport Arena, it was learned that the adult men’s and women’s futsal soccer leagues are to have their finals Saturday, beginning with the women’s consolation game at 5 p.m. and ending with the men’s final at 10.

    Men’s semifinal games are to be played tomorrow between La Calle and Virgen del Milagro at 7 p.m., and between Scorpion and Liga del Milagro at 8.

    The Blackhawks (Jarvis’s team) lead the adult roller hockey league with a 7-2-0 record, followed by Wild, at 6-2-0, the Rangers, at 4-3-0, the Kings, at 3-5-0, and the Predators, at 1-5-0.

    Jarvis, a 23-year-old who’s overseeing Sportime’s youth hockey program — he said he couldn’t imagine having a better job — leads the adult league’s individual standings with 31 goals and 18 assists, followed by Wild’s Matt Brierley (19 and 7), the Blackhawks’ James Keogh (7 and 14), the Kings’ Brian Rubenstein (8 and 11), the Rangers’ Dan Rodriguez (13 and 4), and the Blackhawks’ Mike Murphy (12 and 5).

    Kyle Mannix of the Wild leads the goalies with an .878 percent save average.

    The three youth hockey teams seem to be well matched. As of this week, the Predators led, with a 4-2-0 record; the Devils were 4-3-0, and the Kings were 4-4-0.

    The Kings’ Robby Nicholson (23 goals and 2 assists), the Devils’ Matt Kreymborg (15 and 3), and the Predators’ Hunter Mangano (10 and 6) are the leading scorers.

    Ritsi and Jarvis, when asked why there had been a fall-off in youth hockey — the elder Nicholson said he remembered the days about 15 years ago when there were 300 enrolled in the program — cited the many options that existed today, though Robby and Brett’s father traced it chiefly to a decline here of the middle class. The bad economy had forced working people to sell and to move to less expensive places, he said, and they weren’t being replaced.