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.”

   Stony Hill Stables in Amagansett has always been a cute one, a wonderful place to start the kids riding, though when it’s come to the Hampton Classic, other South Fork barns have brought in far more ribbons.

    Now, however, that has changed: Stony Hill, whose owner is Wick Hotchkiss, and whose chief trainer for the past four years has been Aisha Ali-Duyck, can boast of five 2012 Long Island Horse Shows Association Winner’s Circle champions. They are Katarina Ammann, 9-and-under short-stirrup equitation grand champion and 13-and-under hunter grand champion (it’s the first time Stony Hill has had a double winner); Amelia Ruth, short stirrup 10-to-12 grand champion,  Caroline Cole, the mini-stirrup grand champion, and Oliver Ritter, 13, reserve jumper champion.

    “In all, Stony Hill riders won over 100 blue ribbons in 2012 and 37 championships,” said the justly-proud Ali-Duyck­ during a conversation this week at The Star.

    Asked if Hotchkiss, a well-known dressage competitor, were happy, the tall, young New York City-bred trainer smiled. “She’s very happy.”

    Ali-Duyck has a compelling story of her own, and it fits in well with the philosophy of Hotchkiss’s newly-formed Stony Hill Stables Foundation, whose goal is to avail more and more local youngsters of the joys — and responsibilities — that attend equestrian sports.

    “I’ve been riding since I was in the womb,” Ali-Duyck began, with a smile. “My mother rode with my father until she was seven months pregnant. When I was an infant, one of them would hold me on the horse and the other would take photos. It was sort of like what they do with babies in swimming pools. I was riding by myself with nothing to hold me up before I walked.”

    Her father, who, she said, grew up in a rough section of Elizabeth, N.J., had always wanted to ride, but his dream, ­because of circumstances, had to be ­deferred until he discovered in his college years the Union County-owned Watchung Stables in Mountainside, N.J.

    “He was putting himself through N.Y.U.’s Tisch School of the Arts’ film school at the time. He took my mom there on a date. She wanted them to have an activity they could do together. There are miles and miles of rolling trails, lakes, and hills on that 100-acre reservation. They cantered and galloped and fell in love with it. Riding was indeed his passion.”

    “He told the manager he’d do anything that needed doing around the stables. He read books, looked at videos . . . he’s a real genius in a lot of respects. They hired him when he was in his late 20s, and he stayed, becoming a very successful trainer.”

    “My father’s talent lies in his ability to transform young race horses who failed on the track into equestrian champions. He’s always proved people wrong who tell him his picks won’t pan out. . . . Moreover, he’s African-American . . . he’s had to overcome a lot.”

    “He’s always been my trainer. It was a family thing. I’d stay in the barn from the time it opened at 7 a.m. until it closed at 9. If it was the day of a show, I’d be up at 3 a.m. One of my favorite things has been watching him teach. He has a commanding presence. He can get a timid student and a seemingly crazy horse to perform beautifully.”

    “I was started off on a naughty horse,” Ali-Duyck continued, “and I fell off a lot, but I always got back on. I believe in the end goal, that if you’re brave you can reach your goal. . . . By the time I was 7, I was winning everything, on ponies my father had transformed or was in the process of transforming. Sometimes I was the guinea pig! Not everyone was happy. Mothers of kids I was beating who rode fancy horses said some terrible things, but my father always instilled in me that I belonged.”

    “I so enjoyed that team feeling with my father. . . . My happiest moments were when the two of us were warming up at dawn at a show, with the sun coming up and the dew on the grass. Those are the fondest memories of my childhood.”

    The sociability of riding was not limited to her father and mother (a psychology professor in New York University’s graduate school who uses dance in her work with at-risk teens in the Bronx): “I had great friendships that developed around horses. We had this whole group of girls, and some boys, including my younger brother, who also rode, that centered on the barn. There was a sense of community and teamwork.”

    “We were competitive,” Ali-Duyck said, “but in a good way. We’d always tap each other on the head before we went into the ring. For good luck, like a magic wand. We were all very close, through high school.”

    Riding “amazing ‘made’ horses” donated by wealthy alumnae at Skidmore College, where Cindy Ford was the riding coach, had been, she said, “a life-changing experience, but I wasn’t challenged academically, so I transferred to N.Y.U., where I continued to major in business on the way to becoming an event planner.”

    But riding, as had been the case with her father, ultimately (with his support) won the day.

    “It was always in the back of my head that I wanted to do dressage and teach and spend winters in Wellington [Fla.], but I knew enough about the horse world to say to myself, ‘Maybe in the next lifetime.’ ”

    “Then, in 2008 — I was a trainer at Watchung at the time — I saw Wick’s ad: Wanted, a working student to teach in the Hamptons and spend the winter in Wellington.(!)”

    “I came out and rode for Wick — that was my audition. I told her all I could offer was my loyalty and my hard work, but for Wick that was enough.  Often, working students have to buy a horse first before they’re signed on.”

    “That was the start of my career here. I began to give lessons and Wick could see I was a very strong teacher. She became my dressage trainer, and we went to Wellington, where I competed on a horse she’d borrowed from a friend and which I rode in clinics given by famous trainers. . . . Wick’s foundation has been bridging the gap between weekenders and the local kids here. There’s a great sense of community at Stony Hill, just as there was at Watchung.”

    Lara Lowlicht, the East Hampton Middle Schooler who this past year was the first recipient of a Stony Hill Stables Foundation riding scholarship, had done famously, Stony Hill’s trainer said.

    “She’s blown us all away. She knew how to ride, but she was rough around the edges. I saw she could be a champ­ion the first time I gave her a lesson. She works as hard as the hardest worker. On Shenanigans, which had been one of the school’s leadline ponies, she was the short-stirrup champion at the Saga­pon­ack Show. But on the day before the Classic — she never thought she’d ride in it — the pony injured a leg.”

    “Talk about a blow, yet Lara never complained or cried. Not even a frown.”

    “I told her I’d find her something, and I did — Dara, a school pony that hadn’t shown all summer. After an hour of jumping this horse, it was as if she’d ridden it all her life. They competed in a short-stirrup class at the Classic, a class of 29 kids, and got really great ribbons. She became one of the Classic’s poster girls.”

    “She knows,” Lara’s trainer said in parting, “that if you work hard you will succeed. She’s riding a number of the ponies who board here now. She’s turning into quite the young professional.”

    More scholarships are on the way, the young trainer said, “in dressage and jumping. We’re excited about the 2013 season. And we’ve got another ‘first.’ We’re taking five kids to Wellington to compete in the Winter Equestrian Festival this winter. . . . It’s great.”

   The honors keep coming in for Ed Petrie, New York State’s winningest public high school boys basketball coach, though the latest, in the form of his induction into his high school’s Hall of Fame, was a long time in coming.

    Petrie, who led F.E. Bellows (now Rye Neck) High School in Westchester County to back-to-back county boys basketball championships in 1950 and ’51, and who played in two N.I.T. tournaments with Seton Hall before setting forth on what was to become a half-century Hall of Fame career in high school coaching — 41 of those years spent at East Hampton — became Rye Neck’s first Hall of Fame inductee on Dec. 14.

    “Obviously, it was a long overdue honor,” Joe Noon, of San Ramon, Calif., wrote in a recent e-mail to Petrie and his wife, Nancy, who was a classmate of her husband’s at F.E. Bellows.

    “When you think about the era in which Eddie played,” said Noon, “an era in which most high school teams scored 30 points on a good night, his 27 points-per-game average in his senior year — not to mention the 51 points he scored against Pleasantville and the two county championships for little Bellows High School — were remarkable.”

    “I suspect [correctly] that Bellows/ Rye Neck’s Hall of Fame might be a recent development because it seems inconceivable that Eddie would not have been their first inductee years ago.”

    Nancy Petrie said that F.E. Bellows, which “was in the Rye Neck School District in Mamaroneck, is now an elementary school. Ed was the first inductee in Rye Neck’s first Hall of Fame class.”

    An article in The Journal News that appeared around the time Petrie was inducted into the Westchester Sports Hall of Fame in October (he’d been an inaugural inducted into East Hampton’s first Hall of Fame in September) said, after listing his many coaching accomplishments over the years, that “he developed those winning ways and a desire to coach in Westchester County, where he grew up and displayed great talent as a baseball and basketball player.”

   Though the East Hampton High School boys basketball team was missing two key players — Juan Cuevas, who starts, and Rolando Garces, the valuable sixth man — Bill McKee, the Bonackers’ coach, said during a conversation the day following a disappointing 56-55 loss at Shoreham-Wading River that “we just didn’t, for whatever reason, play well — we didn’t lose because Juan and Rolando weren’t there.”

    Both players were expected to be back for Tuesday’s game here with Elwood-John Glenn, a game that McKee said would be a big one. “We’ll have to beat them if we want to make the playoffs.”

    “We were down 22-5 early in the second quarter at Shoreham,” continued the coach as he oversaw a full John M. Marshall Elementary School gym of Biddy basketballers Saturday morning. “But we battled back — our kids never quit.”

    Brandon Neff, a slim sophomore with a deft touch from beyond the arc, started in place of Cuevas, and finished with four 3s in eight attempts. East Hampton wound up with nine 3-pointers in all (Shoreham had 10).

    In the final minutes, after erasing the aforementioned 17-point deficit, “we were up 49-46. They tied it with a 3, then Danny [McKee’s son, one of the team’s guards] hit a 3 to put us up 52-49. They came down and missed, but they came up with the rebound and fed the ball back out [to Kevin Turano] for a 3 that tied it again. We then had a good 2-point look, but missed, and [Turano] got another 3 before they added a foul shot [by Tim Rotanz] in the final 10 seconds for 56-52. Thomas King hit a 3 for us at the buzzer, so the score looked closer than it really was.”

    Shoreham outscored the Bonackers 16-5 in the first quarter, and went into the half up 33-19. Entering the fourth frame it was 43-31, but the visitors outscored the Wildcats 24-13 in the fourth.

    “The bottom line is that we didn’t play well — defensively or offensively,” said McKee.

    On the upside, Neeko Bachelor did well, said the coach, in coming off the bench midway through the third quarter, “especially on defense. He gave us a lift. Nevertheless, we were down by 16 in the fourth quarter. It was disappointing to lose the way we did at the end.”

    “In this league everyone’s capable of beating anyone on any given night. Any team that isn’t ready to play will have trouble.”

    As of the beginning of this week, games with Glenn, Amityville (away tomorrow), and Bayport-Blue Point (here Tuesday) remained until the season’s midway point is reached.

    As for the Biddy program, McKee said, “We’ve got 20 third and fourth graders, 50 fifth and sixth graders, and 50 seventh and eighth graders. That’s a lot. We’re busy here every Saturday morning!”

   East Hampton High’s winter track teams, while rather low in numbers, have some goers, mostly young, who have kept it interesting for their coaches, Chris Reich in the boys’ case and Shani Cuesta in the case of the girls.

    There are, to begin with, the Cebulskis, Adam and Dana, though Adam, because of a knee problem, was out of action this week. In a conversation before the Christmas break, after he’d run the 1,600 in 4 minutes and 46 seconds, Reich said, “If we can keep Adam healthy he could be the league champion in either the mile or 2-mile, or both, and qualify for the county and state qualifier meets.”

    Cuesta, in recounting the results of a crossover meet at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood Saturday, said that while Dana Cebulski had taken the Christmas break off, and thus was a bit rusty, she had impressed her with her willingness to run both the 1,500 and the 3,000. Cebulski finished third in each event, in 5:10.86 in the 1,500, and in 11:23.35 in the 3,000. It was the first time, said Cuesta, that her top long-distance runner had competed in the 3,000 this winter.

   Nina Piacentine, whose mother, Kathy, for a long time held East Hampton’s racewalk record — until it was broken last spring by Lena Vergnes — has been persuaded to give racewalking a try. “I’m so excited about Nina’s progress in this [1,500-meter] event,” said Cuesta. “She’s been taking 15 seconds off each time she competes. [Her time was 9:56.17 Saturday.] She’s been attending Gary Westerfield’s racewalking clinic up the Island every Wednesday to improve her form. She’s determined, just as her mother was. It’s exciting to see. She has the ability to move up quickly.”

   Piacentine also competed in the long jump Saturday, “but,” said her coach, “she didn’t have a chance to properly warm up because it came so soon after the racewalk.”

Annie Schuppe, a shot-putter who enjoyed a personal best throw of 24-4 3/4, also impressed her coach, who said that “every one of her throws was an improvement from the one before.”

Gabbie McKay’s 51.23 in the 300, while “not a personal best, was a great run for her considering that she has been out sick.”

   Ana Toledo’s personal best 53.59 in the 300 had also been noteworthy, Cuesta said, inasmuch as “she’s missed quite a few practices because of the flu.”

McKay, Alexa Berti, Kathryn Wood, Toledo, Schuppe, Lily Goldman, and Daisy Kelly all competed in the 55-meter dash, with McKay posting the best time, an 8.54.

    “I’ve got no seniors,” Cuesta said during a recent practice session. “Dana and Alyssa Bahel are sophomores, Nina, Alexa, and Ana [the latter two I-Tri girls] are ninth graders, as are Devon Brown and Gabbie McKay. Lily Goldman is a junior who’s done spring track but never winter track before, and Daisy Kelly is a junior who’s out for the first time.”

    Other juniors are Schuppe, who’s out for the first time, Elena Skerys, of Pierson, a distance runner, and Kathryn Wood, the team’s most promising jumper.

    Getting back to the boys, Reich said that the following turned in noteworthy performances at Monday’s crossover meet at Suffolk Community-Brentwood: Erik Engstrom, who ran a 5:05 in the 1,600; Dan Soto, who did a 44.31 in the 300; Addison Cook, who ran the 55 in 7.55; Alex Osborne, who ran the 600 in 1:39; Erik Perez, who did the 1,000 in 3:23; the 4-by-200 relay team of Osborne (28.2), Jack Link (27.0), Perez (29.5), and John Grogan (30.0), and the 4-by-400 team of Cook (63.2), Chjuvaughan Cameron (58.1), Maykell Guzman (63.5), and Paul King (62.6).

    Earlier in the season, Reich said he was very glad Cameron, Soto, both freshmen, and Guzman (a junior who spent last year in the Dominican Republic) had come out for the team. “Cameron and Dan have the potential to be in the top three among the county’s freshmen, in either the 55 or 300. Addison Cook, who has joined us from Sag Harbor, has been another pleasant surprise. He’s got great speed and hurdle form. He’ll be a great asset to the team, especially in the relays.”

    “Erik Engstrom, though only a freshman, is not too far behind Adam in the mile and 2-mile. He should definitely break five minutes in the mile this season. I ran him in the 300, 600, and 4-by-4 in a recent meet to inject some speed into his legs. His 400 split was a 64, which is great for a freshman. . . . He has the ability to be the fastest freshman in Suffolk County in either the mile or 2-mile.”

    “I’d love to see Jack Link break five minutes in the mile too,” Reich added, “and hopefully score points for us in the league meet’s 600, along with Alex Osborne.”

    At the beginning of the season, said Reich, the boys were treated to an intense hourlong workout at Ed Cashin’s Exceed Fitness gym on Plank Road, just north of the Ross School.

    “Ed introduced my team to the TRX body resistance straps, Bosu balls, and medicine balls, which should really help us throughout the season.”

   Agony and ecstasy met together at the Shoreham-East Hampton girls high school basketball game here last Thursday.

    A good-sized crowd had turned out to see Kaelyn Ward, who had already established herself as the highest-scoring female player in Bonac hoop history, score her 1,000th point. And, of course, the fans hoped too that their team would defeat Shoreham-Wading River.

    “Only Kaelyn should have been nervous — not all of them,” East Hampton’s coach, Howard Wood, said in the wake of the disappointing 64-35 loss.

    Aside from its star senior guard, no one on Bonac’s side put up a shot in the first five minutes until Courtney Dess, who was to finish with 15 points (and who was to come in for praise from Wood afterward), sank a 3-pointer, bringing the Bonackers to within seven, at 10-3.

    For a few moments thereafter, it looked as if the team had awakened: Ryann Ward drew a foul in putting up a shot, and made one of her two free throws, after which Ward stole the ball at the other end of the court and outraced Shoreham’s defenders on the way to her first basket of the night, drawing loud applause. Two subsequent foul shots by her again narrowed the gap to four in the final minute before a Bonac turnover that resulted in a fast-break layup and a buzzer-beating 3 extended the visitors’ margin to 17-8.

    The Wildcats, as they had in the first quarter, began the second period with a 10-0 run before Dess netted a baseline drive and Ward, assisted by Jenna Budd, collected her sixth point, leaving her just one shy of the magic number. When that moment came, with 1:48 left until the halftime break, following a steal by her and a nice move underneath that was greeted by delighted shouts, Ward — and not the 30-14 deficit — was all anyone was thinking about.

    One wished the center court ceremony — during which she was hugged by Wood, who had brought out a bouquet of flowers, was presented with a fine action photo of herself by the athletic director, Joe Vas, and was joined by her father, Steve, and her older sister, Tiffany, as well as by all of her teammates, for more photos — would have lasted longer. But, alas, there was still one more half to play.

    The next morning, Wood, while happy for Ward, insisted East Hampton ought not to have gone so gently into the previous night. “Shoreham’s not 30 points better than us. But you can’t play afraid. I could see it in their eyes before they even went out onto the court. Courtney had a great game, with 15 points and 10 rebounds, but other than her and Kaelyn, that was about it. We’re going to watch the entire film of that ugly game at practice today. They say you learn from your losses, and we’ve got some learning to do.”

    “What we need, first, is right here,” the coach said, putting his hand on his heart. “We need heart. Shoreham’s girls have it — they play with heart. We just gave up. Second, we’ve got to listen. It wasn’t as if they were doing anything complicated. They set picks to free up shooters in the corners, and if that didn’t work, the corner girl would do a V cut into the lane. They kept doing the same thing over and over. Louis [O’Neal, Wood’s assistant, who oversaw the team during the Christmas vacation while Wood was visiting his wife and children in Spain] would keep yelling, ‘Get on top!’ Get on top of the pick — it’s just a half-step you’ve got to take so the girl who’s trying to set it can’t pick you off.”

    “We tell them about it, and they seem to understand — we scrimmaged well with Southampton over the break, and Southampton could beat Shoreham any day — but. . . . We say to them in the huddles, ‘Do A or B, but don’t do C, and they’ll come out and do C, two times in a row.”

    “Shoreham wasn’t that great,” said Anthony Hayes, who had been listening in. “But you gotta play defense.”

    “We’ll watch the whole film at practice today, and tomorrow,” said Wood, “we’ll work on correcting what we were doing wrong. Heart is number-one, listening better is number-two.”

   Just a few East Hamptoners have played on collegiate national championship teams over the years; Brandon West is the latest.

    West and his Messiah College teammates of Mechanicsburg, Pa., went 23-0-2 this past season on their way to winning Division III’s men’s soccer championship. It was the eighth national title for the Falcons in the past 11 years.

    Messiah, with the 6-foot-2-inch West in the goal, swept through the N.C.A.A. tournament, defeating Loras, of Indiana, 1-0 in the semifinals before trouncing Ohio Northern (which had defeated Williams College in the other semifinal pairing) 5-1 in the national final, played in San Antonio, Tex.

    Though arguably Messiah faced its toughest challenge in a Sweet 16 clash with archrival York, a game in which the Falcons (thanks largely to West’s key stops) prevailed 4-2 in penalty kicks.

    A sophomore business administration major who’d like some day to play professionally, West started every game, setting a Messiah record — and tying him for the national D-III lead — with 17 shutouts. He saved 87 percent of the shots he faced, ranking him 12th nationally in that category.

    Postseason honors included all-tournament team, second team all-region, and all-conference honorable mention.

    During a telephone conversation this week, West, whose four siblings are also athletic, said that he’d begun playing goalie at the age of 9, inspired by the fact that his father, Ronald, who lives now in Illinois, had been the goalie on Kings College’s national-champion team.

    While he acknowledged that goalies often come to know the position by default, wishing they were up on the front line, the interviewee, who first played youth soccer for John Barrows, never has had second thoughts. He works out now with his younger stepbrother, Nick Tulp, who was the goalie on East Hampton High School’s county championship team this fall, and also with his younger brother, Nick West, who, though only a sophomore — as is Tulp — scored huge goals for the Bonackers throughout the course of the season.

    Asked if Messiah’s eventual success were evident from the beginning, West said, “Yeah, we were young but we had a lot of talent. I was told before the season began that I was starting, so that helped. We had a good back line and our attackers were incredible, amazing. [Messiah’s right wing was the tournament’s offensive M.V.P., and its center midfielder was the national player of the year.] We knew we’d make a run once we hit the postseason. Last year, we were the top seed and were 18-0-1 going into the tournament, but were upset in the first round in overtime. That was a devastating loss . . . it was a great motivator — we didn’t want that to happen again.”

    West said in reply to another question that he loved the college and his coach, Brad McCarty, who has led Messiah to three national titles in the past four years, having taken over from Dave Brandt, now at the U.S. Naval Academy, whose Messiah teams had won a half-dozen national crowns.

    While the former Bonac star acknowledged he had improved over the past few years, he appreciated the fact, he said, that his coach was “more interested in making me a better person than a better player.”

    His faith, said West, was one of the reasons he had chosen Messiah, a Christian school, over several others with strong soccer traditions he’d been thinking of.

    “He’s very disciplined,” Joan Tulp, West’s grandmother, said, as an aside, during an interview this week concerning her participation in the New Year’s Day plunge at Amagansett’s Atlantic Avenue Beach, “and I think his brothers have picked up on that.”

Thursday, January 17

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

BOYS SWIMMING, Harborfields vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Mount Sinai at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, January 18

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 6 p.m.

Saturday, January 19

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Mattituck tournament, 8 a.m.

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton girls at Art Mitchell meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 9 a.m.

Sunday, January 20

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton boys at Coaches meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 10 a.m.

Tuesday, January 22

BOWLING, East Hampton vs. Eastport-South Manor, Shirley Bowl, 4 p.m.

Wednesday, January 23

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

Coach on Goalie

    Brad McCarty, coach of the national champion Messiah College men’s soccer team, whose goalie is Brandon West, a former Bonac star, had this to say by way of e-mail: “One of the things that separates Brandon from everyone else is his work ethic, on and off the field.”

    “When it comes to goaltending, his strength and speed give him the athleticism to compete at a high level. Second, he has developed his footwork and technique in the last year and a half, allowing him to be more consistent, and, third, he has the aggressiveness and confidence necessary to play in the goal.”

    “I believe he certainly has the potential to play soccer after his collegiate career. It is extremely competitive at the next level, though Brandon brings with him a number of attributes that will transfer to the professional game.”

Girls Track

    Shani Cuesta, who coaches East Hampton High’s girls winter track team, in writing about the Jim Howard memorial meet of the past weekend, said her charges turned in 14 personal-best performances.

    First and foremost, Dana Cebulski was the small schools runner-up, and fourth over all, in the 1,500-meter race in a personal-best time of 5 minutes and 20/100ths of a second. Cebulski took third among the small school competitors in the 1,000, in 3:10.74.

    There were five personal bests in the 55-meter dash, Gabbie McKay’s 8.34 being the fastest of the Bonac times. Annie Schuppe’s throw of 26 feet, 2 inches in the shot-put was a “p.r.,” as was Alexa Berti’s 48.67 in the 300.

    The league championships are to be contested at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood on Jan. 26.