East Hampton High School’s basketball teams were to have played big games with their Bayport-Blue Point peers Tuesday.

    Meanwile, in recent action, the boys, on Jan. 8, parlayed an energetic second half into a 53-47 win over Elwood-John Glenn before losing 73-57 on Friday at Amityville, the odds-on favorite to win the league championship. That same night, the girls, following lopsided losses to Shoreham-Wading River and John Glenn, rebounded behind Jackie Messemer’s breakout 21-point performance to defeat their Amityville peers 49-36.

    “We want Jackie to be a little more selfish,” Howard Wood, the girls’ coach, said during a conversation Monday morning. “We want her to know you can score and be a team player at the same time.”

    A “light went off,” said Wood, when Messemer took a hard foul going for the basket at one point in the second half. “She looked up as if to say, ‘I can do this.’ You’ve got to expect to get hit, you can’t play scared. Blockers need space. If you take it to them, if you initiate contact, chances are you’ll be going to the line.”

    Messemer scored 15 of her 21 in the first half, by the end of which the Bonackers led 34-15.

    “But we didn’t finish them off in the early part of the third, which we should have done,” said Wood. “You don’t want teams to think they can come back on you. They pulled to within 11 or 12 before we got it back together again.”

    “We ended up by 13, and some of the kids were disappointed that they didn’t get in, but they’ve got to get used to that. It’s hard to get all 13 kids into games. Sometimes the situation calls for a certain substitution, sometimes it doesn’t. I rode the bench at times — the main thing is to work hard. . . . Amityville was a physical team, athletic, quick, though not as talented as they have been in the past. Our girls were a little sore the next day, but that was fine.”

    Going into Tuesday’s game at Bayport, “a very well-coached team,” in Wood’s opinion, East Hampton was 3-2 in league play, needing to win three of its final seven regular season games to make the playoffs.

    As for the boys, they started desultorily versus John Glenn, but finished strong, much to Bill McKee and his assistant, Bob Vacca’s, delight.

    Having trailed by as many as 11 points in the second quarter, the Bonackers stepped it up a couple of notches defensively and offensively thereafter, turning the tables on the visitors in the second half.

    Two big 3-pointers, by Brandon Neff and Thomas King, pulled the home team to within 1 point midway through the third, and soon after, a technical foul called on Glenn resulted in Rolando Garces tying the score at 30-30, after which East Hampton inbounded the ball. King then drew a foul, made both of his free throws, and McKee’s crew never trailed after that.

    The consensus M.V.P. was Thomas Nelson, who in 12 or so minutes in the second half corralled nine rebounds. He finished with 10 boards. Neff went 4-for-6 from the 3-point line, “a terrific percentage,” said Vacca, who in the late 1960s and early ’70s was every bit as deadly from the outside — before the 3-point line was introduced into basketball.

    Neff led East Hampton’s scoring with 12 points, followed by Danny McKee and Garces, each with 11, and Thomas King, the poised point guard, with 10. King also had 10 rebounds and 8 assists.

    “You changed the game, Thomas,” Joey McKee, East Hampton’s junior varsity coach, said as Nelson left the locker room.

    “Better late than never,” said Vacca, concerning the team’s performance. “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” he said, with a smile.

    Concerning the game at Amityville, McKee said during Biddy basketball practice at the John M. Marshall Elementary School Saturday morning that “to win against a team like Amityville you’ve got to play a very good game. It was a 2-point game at the half, and a 10-point game with four minutes to go, but we couldn’t get any closer. . . . We didn’t shoot well, we were 3-for-18 from the 3-point line, though that had something to do with Amityville’s defense. They were tall and athletic.”

    Still, said the coach, “there were some good things. We had four kids in double figures. Thomas Nelson had 11 rebounds and 13 points. He’s starting to show what he’s capable of. Thomas King had 16 points, Rolando had 15, and Danny [McKee’s son] had 12. But to beat a team like that you’ve got to shoot well and limit your turnovers.”

    In parting, McKee said that King was “hit in the mouth by an elbow in taking a charge. He may not be able to play Tuesday.”

    Mount Sinai is to play here tonight at 6:15.

   Twenty-four members of the Y.M.C.A.’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, coached by Tom Cohill, competed this past weekend in a large regional meet at the University of Maryland.

The group, which left by bus from the Y at 6:30 a.m. Friday and returned late Sunday night, comprised Georgie Bogetti, Thomas, Christian, and Julia Brierley, Trevor Mott, Alex Astilean, Olivia Brabant, Teague Costello, Noelle Capone, Cecilia de Havenon, Chasen Dubs, Jack and Ryan Duryea, Madison Jones, Skye Marigold, Darcy McFarland, Lilah Minetree, Caroline Oakland, Liana Paradiso, Evelyn and Maggie Purcell, Marikate Ryan, and Isabela and Sophia Swanson.

   “Our kids ranged in age from 10 to 17, and everybody p.r.’d at some point during the weekend,” said Cohill. “There was a lot of tough competition — it was a fast, fast meet.”

Bogetti, he said, had qualified for the Y nationals in the 500 freestyle with a time of 5 minutes and 4 seconds. Mott’s 4:53 was a personal best in that event, as was Thomas Brierley’s 4:54.

“We’ve got eight to 10 weeks now before the Y state meet in Ithaca,” said Cohill, who added that a collection taken up on the bus before heading home had enabled Marikate Ryan, who had become ill, to fly home from Baltimore Monday morning.   

   Doug and Kathryn de Groot, who own the Buckskill Tennis Club here, which is turned over to skating in the winter, are making a big push for the young set.

    “We’re putting an emphasis on kids with our after-school and weekend junior hockey, figure skating, and regular skating offerings,” Kathryn de Groot said Saturday morning as 20-plus youngsters, under Tim Luzadre’s direction, were doing hockey drills and scrimmaging on Buckskill’s rink, which overlies about six Har-Tru tennis courts.

    Chris Doran, an East Hampton High School senior who played high school hockey in New Jersey the past two years before moving here, said he was happy indeed that Buckskill’s hockey program is growing. “I’m here almost every day,”  said Doran, who hopes to play (and take F.B.I. preparatory courses) at New Haven College.

    Tim Garneau, whose sons, Henry, 10, and Barton, 9, play every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the club’s intramural ice hockey, said, “I’m hoping they’ll play on a high school hockey team here some day. The last two winters I’ve taken them to the Rinx in Hauppauge. They have the only youth league in the county, but it’s an hour and 20-minute drive. So I’m much happier that they can come here and get two hours of ice time.” The program for seventh through 12th-grade boys and girls welcomes students from the Bridgehampton, Southampton, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Ross schools.

    “We want everybody to come,” Kathryn de Groot said, “which is why the fee for the after-school program is modest, and why, if some parents can’t afford it, scholarships are available.”

    She and her husband said that they hope the intramural ice hockey program under way will lead eventually — perhaps in two years’ time — to an interscholastic travel team made up of South Fork high school students.

    “The team could practice here and play games here as well as up the Island, where they have an interscholastic hockey league,” said Doug de Groot.

    The club’s Web site is buckskillwinterclub.com.

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.

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.

   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.”

   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.”

   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.”

   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!”

   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.”