Both of East Hampton High’s winter track teams finished at the bottom of the heap in league meets at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood this past weekend, but both are very young, and, particularly in the girls’ case, have thin rosters.

    Nevertheless, there was some good news: Chjuvaughn Cameron placed third among the freshmen in the countywide freshman-sophomore meet’s 55-meter dash Friday in a personal best time of 7.15 seconds, and, in the same category, Erik Engstrom placed fourth in the 1,600 in a personal best 5:00.54.

    “Chjuvaughn and Erik took home medals for their efforts,” said the boys coach, Chris Reich, “as did our freshman 4-by-200 relay team of Cameron, Daniel Soto, Connor Gonzalez, and Jackson Rafferty for finishing fifth. It was the best meet of the season for us.”

    Jack Bistrian, Paul King, Liam McGovern, Erik Perez (who “p.r.’d” in the 1,000), and Erik Sanchez “also did well,” Reich said.

    The team scored only 1 point in the league meet Sunday night, the result of Engstrom’s sixth-place finish in the 3,200.

    “With only one senior and with 10 of our 17 athletes being freshmen or sophomores, it’s hard to compete at the league championship level, especially having no field event athletes [high jump, long jump, triple jump, hurdles, and shot-put],” the coach continued.

    “If Adam Cebulski had stayed healthy this winter, he should have been able to break 4:40 in the mile and thus earn fourth place in the league. Because of his weak IT band, he was only able to run a 4:58, but at least he’ll be healthy and ready to go come the spring track season.”

    The girls team, which has a roster of 12, half of them ninth graders, scored points in the 1,000, the 1,500, the 4-by-800 relay, and in the shot-put at the league meet Saturday.

    Dana Cebulski placed fifth in the 1,000 in 3:10.04 and fifth in the 1,500 in 5:11.15. Cebulski also anchored the fifth-place 4x800 relay team whose other members were Devon Brown, Elena Skerys, and Alyssa Bahel. Annie Schuppe’s personal best throw of 26 feet 6 inches enabled her to place sixth in the shot-put, worth 1 point. The fifth-place showings were worth 2.

    “I’m proud of the girls and of the way they improved throughout the season,” said the girls coach, Shani Cuesta. “We had a small squad and half were freshmen, which makes it difficult to score against larger teams in the league.”

    Having to forfeit at 120 and 126 pounds again denied a possible win to East Hampton High School’s wrestling team here in a match with Miller Place on Jan. 23.

    The good news, however, was that the 120-pounder, Lucas Escobar, the team’s best wrestler, who had suffered a broken clavicle earlier in the season, had been cleared to compete in the league meet at Westhampton Beach High School this Saturday.

    “Of the 13 matches wrestled, we won eight,” Steve Tseperkas, Bonac’s coach, said. Miller Place, which had been winless going into the match, as was the case also with East Hampton, wound up a 40-34 winner.

    The match began at 152 pounds, and East Hampton’s entrant, Dallas Foglia, won by a major decision, worth 4 points, over John Krause. Juan Varon was pinned in the second period at 160 by Miller Place’s Jake McKeown; Dana Harvey won a major decision over Kyle Vetrano at 170; Luciano Escobar, Lucas’s younger brother, won 11-8 at 182; Alfredo Perez won 13-4 at 195; Kevin Heine pinned Rob Leen in the second period at 220, and Richie Browne won by major decision at 285.

    Starting around again, Jonathan Hansen was pinned in the third period at 99 pounds by the Panthers’ Seamus O’Connell; Haiau Duong was pinned in the first period at 106 by Connor Hag; Kevin Boles was pinned in the third period at 113 by Alex Hin; East Hampton, as aforesaid, forfeited at 120 and at 126; Matt Smudzinski won 5-0 at 132; Anthony Pineda won by major decision at 138, and Colton Kalbacher pinned his man, Justin Simon, in the third period.

    All in all, “it was a good showing,” said Tseperkas. “If we hadn’t had to forfeit at those two weights, and if the ref had called the pins we had at 170, 182, 195, and 285 — he was slow getting down — things would have been different.”

    Regarding recent tournaments, the coach said that “we had four place-winners at Mattituck [Jan. 19]. Heine won at 220, Browne was fourth at 285, Colton was sixth at 145, and Alfredo was sixth at 195. . . . There were 13 teams there. Connetquot won it.”

    At Port Jefferson’s Bob Armstrong invitational tournament this past Saturday, Heine won at 220; Kalbacher was third at 145, edging Islip’s John Theo 3-2 in the consolation match thanks to a third-period takedown, thus avenging an earlier-season loss; Browne, who has placed in all four tournaments he’s vied in this season, was third at 285, and Luciano Escobar was fourth at 182.

    The top four in each of the league meet’s weight classes are to advance to the county meet, at Hofstra University on Feb. 10 and 11. “If you don’t make it to the semis, you’re out,” said the coach, who added that he thought Heine, whom he expected to be seeded behind Westhampton’s Jake Martin at 220, had the best chance. Lucas Escobar and Kalbacher also had chances, he said, “though both of those weight classes are loaded. Lucas will have to have a good day and Colton will have to upset someone. Richie Browne also has a chance, and Foglia’s a dark horse at 152.”

   The East Hampton High School girls basketball team scored a season-high 64 points in Friday’s game here with Miller Place, a feisty opponent whose post players impressed Bonac’s coach, Howard Wood, with their grit.

    “Those girls play hard,” the former professional power forward said of the Panthers’ big girls following the 64-51 decision. “They were posting our girls up hard — that’s what you should do.”

    Meanwhile, Wood said of Bonac’s defenders, “We don’t move our feet, and then we reach in. That’s what you shouldn’t do.”

    Nevertheless, it was, all in all, a good night for Wood’s charges, who as a result needed to win only one of their remaining four games to make the playoffs.

    East Hampton finished with three players — Kaelyn Ward, Carley Seekamp, and Emma Newburger — in double figures, Ward with 18, and Seekamp and Newburger each with 12, and with one — Courtney Dess, who had 9 — just shy of double digits.

    By halftime, the home team led 33-20, though one of its post players, Ryann Ward, had three fouls, and Seekamp, another “big,” who was to foul out midway through the fourth quarter, had two.

    East Hampton tallied 21 points in the second quarter and also in the all-important third.

    A follow by Ryann Ward of a Kaelyn Ward miss made it 35-20 as the third period began. The visitors fought back to 37-26, but they were to come no closer. A nice move to the hoop by Seekamp made it 39-26, but a moment later, with 5:30 left in the period, her fourth foul forced her temporarily to the sidelines.

    Miller Place pressed full-court the entire second half, but, despite some turnovers, the Bonackers, with Kaelyn Ward inbounding the ball and sometimes passing over the defense to either Jackie Messemer or Newburger for easy layups, managed to overcome it.

    Ryann Ward’s fourth foul in the final minutes of the third returned her to the bench as Ashley Rojas subbed in. Soon after, Rojas converted both ends of a 1-and-1, for a 51-35 lead, and, following a Miller Place basket, Kaelyn Ward sank a 3-pointer off the dribble for 54-37, though a basket by the visitors with four seconds left on the clock didn’t improve Wood’s mood.

    “No silly fouls. Move your feet. Don’t reach!” he was heard to say during the huddle that preceded the fourth frame, which began with Seekamp, Ryann Ward, Kaelyn Ward, Messemer, and Rojas on the floor.

    A Seekamp putback of a Kaelyn Ward miss got the final quarter going, though, following a Panther basket and Kaelyn Ward’s overthrown pass, which had been intended for Seekamp, Wood was prompted to call another timeout.

    Somewhat later in the period, after Miller Place, down at the time by 12, had called for a timeout, Wood reminded his players that “the game is not over — we’ve got five to six minutes to go.”

    Subsequently, Kaelyn Ward made good on both ends of a 1-and-1 for 58-44, and she parlayed a midcourt steal a moment later into another trip to the foul line, where she made good on her second attempt for 59-44.

    Seekamp fouled out soon after, which returned Newburger to the floor, and though East Hampton went 2-for-7 from the field and 1-for-5 from the foul line down the stretch, it finished up winning by the same 13-point margin it had enjoyed at halftime.

    A 3-point play by Messemer in the final minute brightened an otherwise pedestrian endgame.

    “I can’t even count how many free throws we missed,” Wood said afterward as he scanned the scorebook in the adjacent coaches’ office. (In the second half, the team went 4-for-13 from the foul line.)

    When told by this writer that he ­didn’t remember the last time a girls basketball team here had scored 64 points, Wood smiled and said, “We should have had 80!”

    As for the near future, he said, in parting, “We need to win one with four left to make the playoffs, but I want us to win four of four. That would give us good momentum.”

   The East Hampton High School boys swimming team continued its stellar season with a 60-41 win at West Islip last Thursday. It was the fourth win in a row for the second-place swimmers, who are coached by Craig Brierley and Brian Cunningham, and it improved their league record to 4-1.

    The team, which is in only its fourth year of competition, was 4-2 over all as of Monday, though that mark would be 5-1 had the Bonackers not had to cede diving points in a nonleague meet earlier in the season at Sachem East. Sayville (5-0 league) is the sole team to have beaten East Hampton this winter.

    East Hampton’s bowling team, coached by Pat Hand and Ed Bahns, is also a league runner-up. The bowlers lost 22-12 in a showdown with first-place Eastport-South Manor at the Shirley Bowl on Jan. 22.

    Later in the week, Hand said her charges would have had to win 28 points from the Sharks to win the school’s first league championship since the 2005-6 season.

    While it wasn’t to be, “we fought back,” said Hand, who added that “we barely had five minutes to practice after we arrived, and the kids were freezing.”

    Eastport won the first game handily, though the Bonackers, with 201, 210, and 211 scores, totaled 930 pins in the second game to Eastport’s 947, and they hit for 996 in the third, the only game they were to win. Jackson Clark, a junior, led the way with a 228-622 series.

    The bowlers enjoyed their second 1,000-plus-point game last Thursday as they trounced Westhampton Beach 30-3 in the final regular season match at the East Hampton Bowl. Chris Duran, the senior anchorman, paced the team with a 225-622 series.

    Duran is one of three seniors who have started for Hand this winter — Gabby Green and Brianna Semb being the others. Victoria Nardo, who saw action against Westhampton, is also a senior, which leaves Jacob Grossman, a sophomore, who was the team’s top scorer — averaging 194.61 — and five juniors as the expected returnees.

    Back to the swimming team, Thomas Brierley, when questioned before Monday’s practice, said of the squad’s exceptional showings, “Everyone’s been working hard, we’ve got a lot of depth, and everyone gets along.”

    “Trevor and I hope to make it to the states, him in the 500 free and me in the 100 back. A bunch of others ought to qualify for the sectionals [the county meet].”

    In addition, he said, “All our relay teams are doing really well — all of them hope to make it to the countys.”

    Thomas’s father, Craig, said by way of e-mail that Tyler Menold had been picked by the captains as the swimmer of the meet with West Islip. “He was a steady force in the breaststroke, placing second to Trevor [Mott], and in the winning 200 free relay. He is a very important member of the team, always works hard, and has been steadily improving his times.”

    The elder Brierley added that at West Islip the times of Alex Astilean in the 200 individual medley and of T.J. Paradiso in the 100 free had qualified them for the sectional meet.

    Among the personal bests that day, he said, were Mott’s breaststroke leg in the 200 medley A relay; Joe Gengarelly’s breaststroke leg in the 200 medley B relay; Rob Rewinski’s freestyle legs in the 200 medley B relay and in the 400 free A relay; Andrew Winthrop in the 200 free; T.J. Paradiso in the 100 free; Cort Heneveld in the 200 freestyle B relay, and Claudio Figueroa in the 400 free B relay.

    Winners at West Islip were the 200-yard medley relay team of Anthony McGorisk, Mott, Chris Kalbacher, and Shane McCann; Thomas Brierley in the 200 freestyle; Astilean in the 200 individual medley; Mott in the 500 free; the 200 freestyle relay team of Thomas Brierley, Menold, Paradiso, and McCann; Thomas Brierley in the 100 backstroke; Mott in the 100 breaststroke, and the 400 freestyle relay team of Astilean, Rewinski, Mott, and Thomas Brierley.

   It wasn’t just the fact that his boys basketball team was one step closer to making the playoffs that contributed to Bill McKee’s sunny mood this past weekend; it was also the gift of a $7,500 Dr. Dish shooting and rebounding machine that made its debut Saturday morning at Biddy basketball practice at the John M. Marshall Elementary School.

    The versatile apparatus, which collects balls in a conically shaped mesh net (whose height is set so as to accept only correctly arced shots) and passes them out to whichever spot or spots on the court that it is programmed to do, was given to the boys and girls basketball programs, said McKee, by the East Hampton Youth Basketball and Football Association.

    “They raised the money in just three weeks. . . . It’s fantastic, an incredible gift that will help all of our kids, boys and girls, become better players. I really don’t know how to say thank you.”

    “You can see,” he said to an observer, as Dr. Dish fed a ball out every three seconds to a long file of boys standing at the top of the key, “how the kids are taking to it. They’ve got off 280 shots already in — how long have you been here? — 15 or so minutes.”

    McKee said that the machine’s chief advantage lay in enabling a shooter “to get off a lot of shots, from one part of the court or from different parts of the court — it can rotate left to right or right to left — in a short period of time.”

    McKee’s assistant, Bob Vacca, considered one of the best pure shooters ever to come out of Suffolk County, seconded that. “Once, at a Y camp in Montana, I set out to shoot 1,000 shots in one day,” Vacca said. “It took me all day — eight hours. I was feeding myself. With this machine, you can shoot 1,000 shots in an hour. And it won’t let you shoot line drives. The higher the arc the more consistent your shot will be. You’ll get a softer arc on your shot without even thinking about it.”

    “These machines [manufactured by Airborne Athletics of Burnsville, Minn.] have been around for a while, a lot of college programs use them, but this is the most updated version,” he added.

    “We’ll use it for all our youth teams, for junior high, and for junior varsity and varsity, boys and girls,” said McKee, “and it should prove to be a great incentive to practice in the off-season. Our summertime goal is to take 20,000 shots as a program. . . . It will also be used in fund-raisers.”

    And then, turning to the present basketball campaign, McKee said of last Thursday’s 48-40 win at Miller Place, “It was an ugly win, but, as I like to say, an ugly win is better than a pretty loss.”

    “We had Thomas King back for the first time in three games, and his four foul shots at the end of the game kept us in the lead.”

    “It was a win we needed to have if we’re to make the playoffs, which is our goal. We need to win two of our final four to do it.”

    “We’ve got Shoreham-Wading River at home Tuesday — they beat us by 4 points at their place. But, as I’ve been saying all season, it’s the team that comes to play that’s going to win in this league. Last night, John Glenn, which only had two wins, beat Bayport, which was in second place. We beat Miller Place 60-39 at our place and they took us down to the wire at theirs, and they’ve got no league wins. . . . You’ve got to be ready to play every night.”

    Miller Place, he said, had played man-for-man defense the entire game, and doubled the ball at times. Consequently, the Bonackers, who went 20-for-60 from the field, didn’t shoot well.

    Rolando Garces led the winners with 15 points. King had 14 and Brendan Hughes had 10 to go with 8 rebounds. “He’s become a very steady contributor for us,” said McKee. “He’s not flashy, but at the end of every game, when you look at the scorebook, you’ll see he’s had 10 points and 8 rebounds, or thereabouts.”

    Thomas Nelson was the leading rebounder at Miller Place, with 12 boards.

    “It was a good win for us, one that we needed to have,” said McKee.

   The East Hampton High School boys swimming team knocked Hauppauge out of a first-place tie with Sayville-Bayport by defeating the Eagles 95-75 at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter on Jan. 9, thus improving to 2-1 in league competition and dropping Hauppauge (3-1) into a second-place tie with Harborfields.

    The meet was swum before a full house. “Going into the last event, the 400-yard freestyle relay,” said East Hampton’s coach, Craig Brierley, “the top of the roof was coming off. The meet was decided by then, but the crowd didn’t know it.”

    “Alex Astilean led off for us with a 1:03, their guy did a 55.5. Rob Rewinski made up two seconds, turning in a 51.9 to their 54.3. They were ahead at that point by six seconds. Trevor Mott’s 51.4 — their guy did a 54.9 — brought us to within two, leaving it up to Thomas [Brierley, Craig Brierley’s son] and their anchor guy, Nicholas Lauritano. They came off the third wall together, and Thomas, who did a 50.1, pulled away in the last lap, and we wound up beating them 3:36.72 to 3:38.63. Everybody in the place was screaming. The parents were on their feet, the Hurricanes, their team. . . . It’s a testimony to how far our program has come. It was awesome, I was really pleased.”

    Hauppauge’s best swimmer, Justin Plaschka, who’s been to the states, won the 200 freestyle and the 100 backstroke, but the 200 freestyle relay team he anchored finished second — a very close second — to East Hampton’s, which comprised Rewinski, Thomas Paradiso, Astilean, and Shane McCann. East Hampton’s time in that event was 139.26; Hauppauge’s 1:39.48.

    At the intermission (time that would have been devoted to diving at UpIsland schools), East Hampton nursed a 6-point lead, having won the 200 medley relay (with Brierley, Mott, Christopher Kalbacher, and McCann), the 200 individual medley (Brierley) and the 50 free (McCann), and having placed second in the 200 free (Mott) and the 50 free (Rewinski).

    Astilean (second), Kyle Sturmann (third), and Kalbacher (fourth) got points for East Hampton in the 100 butterfly, which was won by Hauppauge’s Travis Maida. And Rewinski (third), Robert Anderson (fourth), and Anthony McGorisk (fifth) won points for the Bonackers in the 100 free, which was won by Lauritano.

    Brierley ran away with the 500 free in 5:02.61. The runner-up, Troy Maida, finished in 5:30.99. Brierley’s teammates Andrew Winthrop and Nick Pucci placed third and fourth in that long-distance test.

    Plaschka, as aforesaid, won the 100 back, though McGorisk was the runner-up, and Christian Brierley, Thomas’s younger brother, was fourth.

    Although Trevor Maida won the 100 breaststroke, and thus won 6 points for the visitors, East Hampton’s Mott (4), Joe Gengarelly (3), and Tyler Menold (2) totaled 9 given their second, third, and fourth-place finishes.

    Though Plaschka was the fastest swimmer that day, he was limited to two individual events, enabling Brierley to make better strategic use of his older son and Mott. The coach added that McCann’s 24.01 in the 50 was a personal best, as was McGorisk’s 1:02.31 in the 100 backstroke. “He took two seconds off his best time that day — he’s been dropping his time every time out.”

    “Guys have been stepping up, and we’re not even into the competitive phase of our training yet. . . . We swam 2,000 yards before the meet even began. Everybody’s at or above their projected potential. Our goal, of course, is the leagues and the countys. We’ll taper for two or three weeks leading up to the county meet. Our yardage will drop, but the quality will be heightened. We’ll be swimming at race pace with a lot of rest, focusing on the details.”

    The team’s five captains, Thomas Brierley, Mott, Winthrop, Sergio Betancur, and Christian Figueroa, of Bridgehampton, named Rewinski as the swimmer of the meet. He took third in the 100 free, second in the 50 free, and was a member of the winning 200 and 400 freestyle relay teams.

    “He’s been having some soreness in his triceps muscle,” the coach said in an e-mail, “and even though he went for a treatment right before the meet, and wasn’t 100 percent, in his opinion, he said he felt good enough to swim. That willingness to swim so that his teammates wouldn’t be let down was what earned him the captains’ accolades.”

   There almost wasn’t a boys basketball game at Sag Harbor Friday night because the already-slim ranks of Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees had been pared even further by two academic ineligibilities, which had prompted the Bees’ coach, Carl Johnson, earlier in the week to forfeit a contest to Bridgehampton’s chief Class D rival, Shelter Island.

    At last Thursday’s practice, Johnson, who has played for and coached Bridgehampton teams that have won state championships — a golden era that’s ever more receding into the distance — said the two players who’d been ruled academically ineligible had rectified the failing grades, and that thus Friday’s clash in the Harbor was on.

    (Bridgehampton’s academic eligibility policy, which prohibits athletes with one failing grade from playing, is stricter than other neighboring schools’.)

    “Is the aim to punish a kid or to help him become a better student?” said Johnson. “If I’d had a junior varsity team, I would have pulled two kids up from the jayvee to replace the ones who were academically ineligible, but I don’t have that luxury. I don’t want academic requirements to be watered down, but I do think our policy is too strict. With some schools — I know, because I’ve talked to other coaches — you can’t play if you’ve got two fails, and with some it’s even three. One fail could be because of a personality conflict. Also, kids learn at different rates.”

    “We’re not going to play games with five kids anymore,” Johnson’s assistant, Joe Zucker, a well-known artist, said during a separate conversation that day. “We did that last year at Smithtown Christian and wound up with three guys playing in overtime.”

    “We had six,” Johnson recalled at that day’s practice. “Three fouled out and we finished with three kids on the court in overtime. . . . We lost.”

    Zucker, however, said he remembered one of the referees that night remarking on Bridgehampton’s grit.

    That grit also was in evidence at Pierson’s packed Spirit Night gym Friday. The Whalers’ bench was full to the brimming, whereas two 5-foot-5-inch Bees sat with Johnson and Zucker on Bridgehampton’s.

    Later, following the 58-44 loss, Johnson said he and Zucker couldn’t have been prouder of the way their charges (all seven of whom saw action) had played.

    It was a battle royal, played from start to finish at a feverish pace amid a din, though the ejection of Bridgehampton’s strong freshman inside man and the team’s second-leading scorer, Josh Lamison, in the final minutes of the second quarter, eviscerated the Bees.

    “We’ve been talking about character all week,” said Johnson. “When things don’t go your way, you can either feel sorry for yourself or come out fighting. It’s easy to give up. I’m so proud of them because they didn’t give up.”

    Asked if he thought Lamison’s ejection had been “just,” the coach said, “No. They [Lamison and Pierson’s Jake Bennett] became entwined. They were hooked together, arm in arm. The ref [who said Lamison had slammed Bennett to the floor] saw the retaliation, not the initial contact.”

    Thirty-nine personal fouls were called that night, four technicals among them.

    A putback of Jason Hopson’s missed 3-pointer that followed a 3 by Tylik Furman enabled the Bees to pull to 25-22 near the end of the second quarter, but the Whalers put the game away in the third as Forrest Loesch, a relentlessly hard-charging forward who was to finish with a game-high 25 points, led the way. A reverse fast-break layup by Loesch in the period’s final minutes treated the Whalers to a 10-point lead.

    Entering the fourth, the home team led 47-31, and the band played on.

    “It was a battle,” Dan White, Pierson’s coach, said in the aftermath. “I’m very proud of our guys. Four years ago [on his arrival here] I didn’t know a thing about the Pierson-Bridgehampton rivalry. It’s always a battle with them . . . the gym was packed. This makes us 6-0 now. Our first goal, which I think is realistic, is to win our league. We were second last year. Then our goal is to go deep into the playoffs.”

    Of Loesch, who repeatedly bulled his way to the hoop through traffic, sending bodies flying, White said, “He’s sometimes a little out of control, but,” he said with an appreciative smile, “he’s a competitor.”

    Jason Hopson led Bridgehampton with 17 points.

    Bridgehampton made only eight of its 26 free throws. Had the Bees shot 70 percent — said to be a reasonable expectation — from the line, they would have been right there.

Thursday, January 24

BOWLING, Westhampton Beach vs. East Hampton, East Hampton Bowl, 3:30 p.m.

BOYS SWIMMING, East Hampton at West Islip, 3:30 p.m.

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

Friday, January 25

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Miller Place at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton boys at freshman-sophomore meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 5 p.m.

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Rocky Point, 6 p.m.

Saturday, January 26

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Port Jefferson tournament, 7 a.m.

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton girls at league championships, 7 p.m.

Sunday, January 27

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton boys at league championships, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 7 p.m.

Monday, January 28

BOYS BASKETBALL, Greenport at Ross, 6:15 p.m.

Tuesday, January 29

BOWLING, East Hampton at county tournament, Sayville Lanes, 1:30 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS SWIMMING, East Hampton at Deer Park, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

   East Hampton High School’s basketball teams continued this past week to point toward the postseason, though the boys, with Thomas King missing because of an injury, from both games, dug themselves into a bit of a hole.

    “Two tough losses,” said the boys’ coach, Bill McKee, referring to the games with Bayport-Blue Point and Mount Sinai. East Hampton lost 74-69 to Bayport in overtime and 53-49 at Mount Sinai last Thursday.

    “I don’t want to blame the losses on Thomas’s absence,” McKee said during a conversation Friday. “In both games we had our chances. The kids stepped up . . . Rolando [Garces] started at shooting guard, Danny [McKee’s son] played the point, and Thomas Nelson played away from the basket. . . . They fought all the way.”

    “Bayport was a lot bigger than we were, but we still did a nice job on the boards. It was a tough one to lose, because the kids worked so hard. We were down 49-39 going into the fourth quarter, and came back to tie it at the end of regulation. They outscored us 13-8 in overtime.”

    “Still, I was really pleased with the way we played. Rolando had 19 points, a season-high for him. We had 20 turnovers, which wasn’t good, but most of them came in the first half. We adjusted in the second. We shot great from the foul line, 24-for-26 over all and 17-for-19 in the second half. Our foul-shooting kept us in the game.”

    “Last night,” McKee continued, “Mount Sinai’s 22-12 fourth quarter did us in. I think we were a little worn down by that point. We became a little tentative at the offensive end. Mount Sinai was bigger than us too. We didn’t shoot well. You’re not going to win if you only score 49 points.”

    McKee said he hoped that King, who had to get his upper lip stitched after having been elbowed in the recent game at Amityville, would return to action tonight at Miller Place.

    Another starter, Juan Cuevas, who took a long vacation in the Dominican Republic during and following the Christmas break, has returned here, said McKee, “though he’s got to get up to speed in his school work before he can play. I hope we’ll have him back in time for Miller Place.”

    “We’ve dug ourselves into a hole — we’re 3-4 now and in fifth place in the league — but it’s not a hole that we can’t dig ourselves out of. We need to win three of our last five games to make the playoffs.”

    Regarding the girls, Howard Wood, their coach, asked Friday how they’d fared the night before, said, “We won at Mount Sinai [46-42], but it was ugly. We’d beaten them by 19 here, so you’d think we would have been confident, but they weren’t going to roll over and play dead. It was a very, very, very difficult game. Nothing was decided until the last couple of minutes. We made so many mental mistakes. For instance, there were 20 seconds left until the half and we told the girls to take one shot. You’re supposed to wait in such a situation. You don’t want to throw it up right away, you want to wait until there are four or five seconds left so the other team doesn’t get a chance to score. . . .”

    “We had a 6-point lead near the end, and they were in a 1-and-1 situation. You don’t want to foul them then and give them a chance to score 2 points while the clock is stopped, yet we did.”

    In the final moments, he said, “We said, ‘Give the ball to Kaelyn [Ward, the senior point guard, who recently scored her 1,000th career point] and clear out.’ ”

    Lexy Jones, a post player who started, and who did well on the boards, had to come out because of a hairline wrist fracture late in the fourth quarter.

    As for the 50-47 loss at Bayport on Jan. 15, Wood said he didn’t know all that much “because Louis [O’Neal, his assistant] coached the varsity that night and I coached the jayvee” in the absence of the junior varsity’s coach, Robyn Mott.

    The jayvee, he said, was impressive that night. “They won last night too. They don’t stand on their tiptoes when they go for rebounds — they jump up in the air. They fight like champs. They’ll be good if they keep playing.”

    The varsity was 4-3 in League VI play as of Friday, tied with Bayport-Blue Point for third place, behind 6-0 John Glenn and 6-1 Shoreham-Wading River. “Two more wins and we’re in the playoffs,” Wood said.

   East Hampton High School’s boys swimming team improved its league record to 3-1 this past week with an impressive 93.5-74.5 win here over Harborfields.

    As a result of the win, the Bonackers, whose roster is deep, rose from third to second place in League II, behind undefeated Sayville.

    Harborfields, at 3-2, Hauppauge, at 3-2, West Islip, at 2-2, Deer Park, at 2-3, Huntington, at 1-4, and North Babylon, at 0-5, were as of Tuesday in East Hampton’s wake.

    In other recent action, East Hampton’s bowling team clobbered Southampton, rolling its first 1,000-point game of the season, thus putting itself in contention for the first league championship since the 2005-06 season Tuesday.

    “Thirty-three points will be up for grabs when we bowl [league-leading] Eastport-South Manor Tuesday,” East Hampton’s coach, Pat Hand, said Friday. “If we get 18 we’ll be in good shape; if we don’t, Eastport will have it locked up.”

    Also last week, East Hampton’s wrestling team almost got a win over Amityville, but having to forfeit at 120 and 126 pounds did Steve Tseperkas’s charges in. The good news is that Tseperkas expects Lucas Escobar, arguably the team’s best wrestler, who suffered a broken clavicle in a recent 120-pound match, to be back for the league championships.

    Back to swimming, Craig Brierley said that the following competitors had “standout performances” against Harborfields: Robert Anderson (who was to be named the swimmer of the meet), in the 200 individual medley; Thomas Paradiso in the 200 individual medley; Thomas Brierley in the 200 freestyle and the 100 backstroke; Shane McCann in the 50 and 100 free; Cort Heneveld in the 50 free; Alex Astilean in the 100 butterfly; Anthony McGorisk in the 100 free; Trevor Mott in the 500 free; Tyler Menold in the 100 breaststroke, and Joe Gengarelly in the 100 breast.

    With the exception of Brierley, who failed to win the 200 free for the first time this season, all of the above, including Brierley in the 100 back, turned in personal bests. Mott’s time in the 500 “was just .13 below the state cut.”

    The elder Brierley said Anderson’s performances were especially impressive considering that his grandfather (who was subsequently to die) was gravely ill. “He swam really well in all his events, though he did it with a heavy heart,” said the coach.

    Brierley added that “quite a few of the boys continue to put up best times even though they’ve been going through some heavy training.”

    Answering a question, the coach said he didn’t think the team had ever done so well. Three regular-season meets remained as of Tuesday, with West Islip, Deer Park, and North Babylon, which as of that day were in fifth, eighth, and sixth place in the eight-team league.

    As for the bowlers, while they took 31 of a possible 33 points from Southampton, Eastport on the same day was taking 29.5 from third-place Rocky Point. Going into Tuesday’s showdown, the Bonackers trailed the Sharks by 17 points.

    East Hampton jumped on the Mariners from the beginning. Jacob Grossman, who leads Pat Hand’s team with a 193.52 average, hit for 266, Gabby Green rolled a 224, Chris Duran (the team’s second-leading scorer, with a 186.52 average) had a 197, followed by Brianna Semb (175) and Jackson Clark (169). All told, then, the team tallied 1,031 in that first game, and while it slipped a bit thereafter to 793 and 800, those totals were enough to sink the second-to-last-place Mariners.

    Hand said she was not surprised by the drop-off. “I’ve seen it in the men’s league — it’s the mental part of the game.”

    Green led the team that day with a 224-569 series; Grossman had a 266-550. Mike Cenzoprano led Southampton with a 516.

    The wrestlers, as aforesaid, put up a good fight against Amityville in a battle of the winless.

    “I thought we would match up well with them,” Tseperkas said afterward, “but those forfeits, which gave them 12 points, killed us.”

    The match started at 138 pounds, went on up to 275, and then doubled around. Dallas Foglia got the Bonackers on the scoreboard with a pin at 152, and then, following two pins by Amityville wrestlers, Luciano Escobar flattened his opponent’s shoulders to the mat at 182, Alfredo Perez won 10-3 at 190, Kevin Heine (who weighs 185) won by pin at 220, Richie Browne won by pin at 275, Jonathan Hansen won by pin at 93, and Kevin Boles, who had been brought up from the junior varsity, won by pin at 112 after Haiau Duong was “teched” at 105.

    Following Boles’s match, East Hampton led 39-26, but then came the forfeits and a loss by pin at 132, enabling the visitors to prevail 44-39.

    Turning to winter track, Chris Reich, who coaches the boys indoor team, said he has hopes going into tomorrow’s freshman-sophomore meet at ­Suffolk Community College-­Brentwood. “Hopefully,” he said, “we’ll have Daniel Soto, Erik Engstrom, and Chjuvaughn Cameron finishing among the top five in the county in their events.”

    In an invitational meet this past weekend, Engstrom’s 10-minute-and-50-second time in the 3,200-meter race was a personal best. Adam Cebulski, who has missed some training because of a knee injury, ran a 5:01 in the 1,600. Cameron did a 42.23 in the 300, almost a second slower than his personal best in that event, and the 4-by-200 relay team of Jack Link, Addison Cook, Soto, and Cameron was one second off its best time, a 1:45.3.

    “The league championships are on Sunday,” said Reich, “the last meet of the season for most.”