Nine decades of East Hampton High School sports were celebrated Saturday morning when 12 athletes (5 of them deceased), 2 coaches, 2 teams, and The Star’s sportswriter were inducted into the high school’s Hall of Fame, as its inaugural class, following a breakfast for 400 in the school’s large glassed-in cafeteria.

    “This is one of the great days in Bonac sports history,” said Jim Nicoletti, president of the 19-member committee that made the Hall’s first selections. He was overwhelmed, he said, by the reception the effort had received.

    Plaques of each of the inductees were later unveiled on a Wall of Fame in the school’s main corridor. Nicoletti said the wall had been paid for through donations from the Kendall Madison Foundation and the East Hampton Coaches Association. Richard Shilowich and Sheamus Gleeson, 1977 classmates, built it, and three of the school’s custodians — Anthony Hayes, L.C. Nelson, and Hector Aguirre — did the painting and finishing.

    The inductees include Ed Petrie, the state’s winningest public high school boys basketball coach, who said he wanted to share the award with his longtime assistants Tom Bubka and Billy McKee, “and with all the players”; Fran Kiernan, the 102-year-old former coach and athletic director who got the ball rolling here sportswise following World War II, and who in 1952 coached the only undefeated-untied football team in Bonac annals, and Ross Gload, a Major League first baseman, outfielder, and pinch-hitter who last played with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2011.

    Two former professional basketball-playing brothers, Howard and Kenny Wood; Ed Budd, who in 1983 became the first East Hampton student ever to be named to three all-county teams in the same school year; Leroy DeBoard, a four-sport athlete and holder for 23 years of the school’s 220-yard dash record (set on the grass of Herrick Park); Margaret Dunn, a four-sport athlete who would have earned 16 varsity letters had she not had to forgo sports in her senior year because of austerity, and Ellamae Gurney, who captained the 1994 field hockey, basketball, and softball teams. Ellen Cooper, Gurney’s former coach, reported the awardee as having said “the most exercise I get now is crawling after my 9-month-old daughter.”

    She spoke winningly at the ceremony. Her teammates, Gurney said at one point, “passed me the ball and I passed the ball to them, and that,” the vivacious redhead said, “is what it’s about.”

    Inducted posthumously were Rich Balnis Sr., whose physical therapy career here was devoted to keeping Bonackers, especially its athletes, on the go; Kendall Madison, a popular athlete and student here and at the University of Connecticut, whose death in 1995, at the age of 21, shocked East Hampton; William McDonald, who went on to captain Vanderbilt University’s football team after having been named a second-team high school all-American before embarking on a dental career in the Navy, and two 1930 classmates, Frank Jewels, the shortstop on the county-championship baseball team of 1929, who won a baseball scholarship to the University of Alabama and later played semi-pro ball before becoming a successful businessman here, and Walter (Bullet) Sheades, the first four-sport athlete, a feat he accomplished in 1928, ’29, and ’30.

    The teams inducted were the 1952 Kiernan-coached football team, a dozen of whose members have died over the years, and Cooper’s state-finalist 1989 field hockey team, which she said had sparked East Hampton’s female sports program, which has fared very well vis-a-vis its peers over the past quarter-century.

    The ’52 footballers — George Cafiso said later he had sore knees, not because he was old, “but from blocking for Fred Yardley” — recalled Coach Kiernan telling them as eighth graders that great things were in store, and that, on the eve of their championship season, if they got through it successfully they’d be able to do anything else they wanted to do.

    Brittany MacVittie, who is earning a master’s degree in social work now at Stony Brook University and who learned she had spina bifida when in the eighth grade, spoke movingly of the late Mr. Balnis. He had worked with her every day so that she could walk with her classmates to receive her East Hampton Middle School diploma, she said. “I had a dream and Mr. Balnis inspired me,” MacVittie said before his widow, Diane, was called up to accept the plaque.

    Mike Burns, a former athletic director and coach here, said he loved the late Kendall Madison “on and off the field. . . . Kendall represented this town better than any kid I’ve ever seen.”

    DeBoard, who’s 79 and lives in Patchogue now, said he’d been blessed to grow up in East Hampton. His family, he said, didn’t have much money, “but we were rich in many ways.”

    Later, he recalled the day Fran Kiernan had sought him out at the Marmador, where he was in the back washing dishes, and told him to pack his clothes because Benedict University in Columbia, S.C., had just awarded him a full football scholarship. Ralph Davis, the carter, he said, gave him a wardrobe trunk into which he could pack those clothes. DeBoard was inducted into Benedict’s Hall Of Fame in 1994.

    “If it weren’t for Fran Kiernan,” the honoree said on the occasion of that induction, “I might have wound up a bitter young man. I’ve often wondered about that.”

    “It means everything to a child for a parent to show up,” Ms. Dunn said in recognizing her mother, who had never missed a game.

    Other mothers, Marilyn Wood and Jeanie Gload in particular, came in for praise too. Mrs. Gload once said she had logged 15,000 or so miles one summer taking her son to and from baseball practices with the Bayside (Queens) Yankees. And, indeed, in all three cases that chauffeuring paid off.

    Gload, who attended the breakfast with his former ’94 county-championship teammates Jake (“Driver’s Ed student-of-the-year”) Katz, Henry Meyer, and Kevin Somers, said that he’d had a good run and was now happily spending time with his family in Charlotte, N.C. The former best pinch-hitter in pro baseball had his 3-year-old son, Greyson, in tow at the breakfast and at the homecoming football game, where the inductees were acknowledged before the game with Southampton began.

    Dave Cheney said his father, Robert (Pop) Cheney, East Hampton’s first football coach, had said the biggest asset of Walter Sheades, who later helped construct the lunar landing module at Grumman, was his humility.

    The 1976 and ’77 championship basketball teams on which Howard Wood, who now coaches East Hampton’s girls basketball team, played, went 42-2. In 1986, the former University of Tennesse and Spanish premier league star was named as one of the Island’s all-time top 25 high school players. His younger brother, Kenny, Suffolk’s player-of-the-year in 1988 and ’89, and the state’s player-of-the-year in ’89, held the state career scoring record for a number of years. He led East Hampton to a state championship in ’89, before going on to star at the University of Richmond.

    The brothers each said that Ed Petrie was the best basketball coach they’d ever had.

    “I wish all of you,” the elder Wood said to the audience, “could have one time in your lives to feel what I’m feeling here today.”

   Besides football, three other Bonac teams — field hockey, boys soccer, and girls volleyball — celebrated homecoming victories this past weekend.

    The boys soccer team, which is the defending county Class A champion, bested Miller Place 2-1 Saturday afternoon, a nice lead-in to the rout in football of Southampton. The girls volleyball team swept Rocky Point in three, and the field hockey team, in a Friday game whose second half was played under the lights, defeated Port Jefferson 2-1 thanks to a corner play goal by Amanda Calabrese in the final minutes.

    When Rich King, the boys soccer coach, was told by an observer that his charges seemed “relentless” in the second half, he agreed, but added that “we weren’t relentless in the first half. . . . We were lucky to come out of it with a scoreless tie.”

    Miller Place drew first blood, early in the second half, thanks to a defensive lapse in the goal mouth which allowed an unmarked player to tap in a cross from the right side, but the Bonackers came back — a 25-yard free kick by Nick West with 18 minutes left to play and a close-in blast by Donte Donegal six minutes later putting East Hampton over the top.

    With three minutes to go, a puzzling call by the referees resulted in a dropped ball inside of East Hampton’s penalty box, but disaster was avoided, and as Gary Zay was in the midst of his final 10-second countdown, Denis Espana lofted a long clearing kick down the field.

    Afterward, King, whose team recently played to a 1-1 tie with Jericho in a rematch of last year’s Long Island Class A championship game (from which Mario Olaya was absent owing to an erroneous red-carding), said that “any league win is very good, and the fact that it’s homecoming makes it all the nicer. I’m happy with our effort, and that we came from behind. These kids don’t like to lose — we’ve got a home winning streak going and that’s always on their minds.”

    King lost six starters to graduation in June, and has only two seniors — J.C. Barrientos and Alex Serna — starting now. The rest are juniors and sophomores.

    What we’ve got to do now,” the coach said, “is play the entire game the way we played today in the second half.”

    As is the case with boys soccer, East Hampton’s field hockey team is quick and skilled, though as of Monday it was 2-2, the losses having come to Shoreham-Wading River and (a surprise) to Riverhead.

    “We were right in the Shoreham game to the end,” said Becky Schwartz, the coach. “We had the ball in their circle for the entire final 10 minutes, one of our shots bounced off the post. I don’t know what happened against Riverhead — we were like a deer in headlights.”

    Schwartz’s charges, with the former longtime coach Ellen Cooper and several of her 1989 Hall Of Fame field hockey players looking on, had 12 shots on Port Jeff’s goal in the first half — with Annie Kiley making good on one of them — and had eight corner plays to the visitors’ one.

    Tammy Serabian, Port Jeff’s agile goalie, was the main reason the Bonackers didn’t score more.

    Sophia DePasquale, a tall sophomore, was credited with assists on Kiley and Calabrese’s goals.

    Schwartz and her assistant, Kalie Peters, only have three seniors on the squad. The rest are juniors and sophomores. Besides Kiley, Calabrese, and DePasquale, Katherine Wood, Alyssa Bahel, and Shannon McCaffrey were also notable that evening.

    As East Hampton High School’s inaugural Hall of Fame class was being inducted in the school’s auditorium Saturday morning, the girls volleyball team, coached by Kathy McGeehan, was sweeping Rocky Point in the gym next door, 25-23, 25-22, 25-12.

    Melanie Mackin and the setter, Raya O’Neal, led the way with 14 and 11 kills. O’Neal had 19 assists and Lydia Budd had 12. Those with the top serving percentages were Budd, Mackin, and O’Neal. Budd had nine digs, and Katie Brierley had eight.

    As of Monday, East Hampton was in second place (as was Rocky Point) in League VI with a 2-1 record, behind Elwood-John Glenn, which was undefeated. Glenn recently swept the Bonackers, but McGeehan said her charges are looking forward to the rematch.

   Ryan Pilla, “the Car Doctor,” won both ends of a national sports car doubleheader at Watkins Glen over the course of a recent weekend, setting the track’s speed record for Mazdas in the process.

    “I’ve been racing all summer long, and I’ve always been in the top five,” Pilla said on his return, “though this is my biggest achievement — the Sports Car Club of America’s Mazda series has been contested since 1990, almost 23 years.”

    Watkins Glen, he said in answer to a question, was “similar to the old Bridgehampton track, though there’s significant elevation, it being upstate.”

    The opener, said Pilla, was “on the long [3.4-mile] track. I had the pole position; there were 60 entries in the field. I went from first to third to fifth and back to second with two minutes left in the 40-minute race. I was able to outbrake the car that was in first going into a high-speed turn at about 135 miles per hour, and was able to take the lead again with two laps remaining and took the checkered flag.”

    Pilla and his Car Doctor Motorsports crew, which had built “a brand new” Mazda for the weekend, then went to work preparing the car for the second race the following day over the short (2.451-mile) course. “This track,” said Pilla, “is known as the Nascar track because Nascar runs its sprint series races on it. I qualified second out of 60 and was thus one position shy of the pole.”

    “My goal was to be in the top five,” he continued, “but I moved into first place after the third lap and stayed in first place for the entire race.”

    “As the front pack reached the 35th minute of the 40-minute race, lap traffic started to play an interesting role. We had to keep our composure vis-a-vis each other while trying to get past the lap traffic at the same time. The top three were all within a car length of each other, with fourth through eighth not far behind. It was anyone’s race. . . . It was a door, nose, to tail photo finish. Coming out of the last turn before the final straightaway, I was able to hold on and cross the finish line a half-car length ahead of the second-place guy, who almost, through drafting, was able to slingshot by me. What a race!”

    “The spectators said it was one of the best racing events they’d seen in years. But it wasn’t over for me yet: I had to go to the scales to make sure that my car was legal, which it was. Then I learned from the chief steward that I had turned a new track record. . . . It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Thursday, September 27

GOLF, East Hampton vs. Center Moriches, Maidstone Club, 4 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

CROSS-COUNTRY, Westhampton boys vs. East Hampton, 4 p.m., and Elwood-John Glenn girls vs. East Hampton, 4:30, Indian Island County Park, Riverhead.

Friday, September 28

GIRLS TENNIS, West Islip at East Hampton, nonleague, 4 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Elwood-John Glenn at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS SWIMMING, Sayville-Bayport vs. East Hampton, nonleague, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Westhampton at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

Saturday, September 29

HAMPTONS MARATHON, marathon, half-marathon, and 5K, Springs School, from 8 a.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Harborfields tournament, 8:30 a.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Westhampton, 10 a.m.

FOOTBALL, Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 2 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, East Hampton at Greenport, 2 p.m.

Monday, October 1

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Sachem East at East Hampton, nonleague, 5 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, East Hampton at Amityville, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, October 2

GOLF, Ross vs. East Hampton, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 4 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, Rocky Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, Sayville at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton vs. Westhampton, Indian Island County Park, Riverhead, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton vs. Miller Place, Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, October 3

BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton at invitational meet, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx, 9 a.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

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

GIRLS TENNIS, East Hampton at Westhampton, 4 p.m.

   Saturday’s homecoming will mark the return of one of the oldest high school football rivalries on Long Island, the one between East Hampton and Southampton that dates to 1923, and will feature as well the induction of East Hampton High School’s first Hall of Fame class.

    The honorees will include Fran Kiernan, the 102-year-old former athletic director who coached football, basketball, and baseball here from 1945 to 1960 and served as the A.D. from 1952 until the late 1960s, and Ed Petrie Sr., who over a 52-year career oversaw numerous championship boys basketball teams and became the winningest public high school boys basketball coach in New York State.

    Kiernan is credited with “shaping the future of East Hampton’s athletic program.” He celebrated his 102nd birthday at the end of last month, and wrote from Florida, where he lives, that “the trip north is a bit much for me.” His son, F.J. Kiernan, will stand in for him.

    Among the athletes to be feted will be the basketball stars Howard and Kenny Wood; Ross Gload, the professional baseball player, who won the Carl Yastrzemski award in 1994; LeRoy DeBoard, a 1951 graduate who was a four-sport athlete (football, basketball, baseball, and track) and was named to Benedict College’s Hall of Fame in 1994; Ed Budd, a 1983 graduate who was the first East Hampton High athlete to be named to all-county teams in three sports (football, wrestling, and baseball); Margaret Dunn, a 1979 graduate who was a four-sport athlete (field hockey, basketball, volleyball, and softball) and held the career scoring record in girls basketball, and Ellamae Gurney, a 1994 graduate and all-around athlete (field hockey, basketball, and softball) who played on the county championship field hockey team of 1993 and went on to play varsity softball at Brown University.

    In addition, there will be five posthumous inductees — Walter Sheades, Frank Jewels, William McDonald, Kendall Madison, and Richard Balnis Sr. — as well as two teams, the 1952 undefeated, untied football team coached by Kiernan, and the 1989 state-finalist field hockey team coached by Ellen Cooper.

    It’s been said of the late Walter Sheades, a member of the class of 1930, that “he was a standout athlete who never quit and often inspired his teammates with motivational speeches when needed; he played quarterback and fullback for East Hampton football teams in the late 1920s.”

    Frank Jewels, a classmate of Sheades’s, “lettered in baseball, basketball, and track, and was a standout shortstop for the 1929 Class A champions. He went on to attend the University of Alabama on a baseball scholarship, and played semi-professionally.”

    Richard Balnis Sr. (1963) “was known for his passion to be the best on and off the field. His sports were football, basketball, and track. He played football at New Mexico State and co-founded the East Hampton Youth Football organization. As a physical therapist, he dedicated his life to helping other athletes play the sports they loved.”

    Bill McDonald (1966) “was a standout athlete in football and wrestling at East Hampton High School. A second-team all-American football player in 1965, he went on to captain Vanderbilt University’s football team. He was named to the all-Southeast Conference team as a sophomore.”

    Kendall Madison (1991), whose untimely death at the age of 21 in January 1995 shocked East Hamptoners, was an outstanding three-sport athlete and honor roll student here before winning a full athletic scholarship to the University of Connecticut, where he was the strong safety on its football team and majored in economics. The Kendall Madison Foundation was formed shortly after his death to keep his joyous, confident spirit alive. It gives out four-year college scholarships each year to East Hampton High seniors, who, in turn, are required to act as mentors to younger children here.

    The 1952 football team members were Scott Bennett, Don Bovie, Frank Cafiso, Dave Cheney, Louis Cicero, Jim Clark, Frank Dragotta, Charles Gould, Russell Peele, Richard Sage, Daniel Shields, John Tilley, Fred Yardley, Robert Yardley, John Astorr, Edward Conklin, Richard Cooper, William DeBoard, Charles Gould, Joe Green, Steve Kaiser, Charles Kaiser, Dave Kerstisin, Robert Lynch, Francis Orr, Kennel Schenck, Robert Taylor, and Joe Embro.

    The 1989 state-finalist field hockey team comprised Shana Menu Altschuler, Megan Barnett Anderson, Diane Brubaker, Dawn DaCostafaro, Nicole Ficeto, Danielle Ficeto, Danielle Bateman Gaines, Michelle Hammer Hill, Meredith Diefendorf Hinz, Bridget McSweeney Keane, Diana Lys, Renee Grau McCormack, Jennifer Vish Palmer, Paula Hatch Rubley, Carolina Vargas Schaefer, Rebecca Libath Stryker, and Andrea Wyche Wilson.

    A number of East Hampton’s varsity teams are to be playing Saturday, beginning with girls soccer versus Harborfields and boys volleyball versus Half Hollow Hills at 10 a.m., followed by girls tennis versus the Ross School at 10:30, girls volleyball versus Rocky Point at 11:30, and boys soccer versus Miller Place at 4.

    A carnival is to be held on the high school’s front lawn at 2 p.m., there is to be a bonfire at 6:30, and the Hampton Cup football game is to begin at 7. The Hall of Fame inductees are to be honored at halftime.

   Bill Barbour Jr., head coach of the East Hampton High School football team, and an assistant, Jason Menu, remember what it was like the last time an East Hampton team defeated a Southampton one.

    “It was a great feeling,” Barbour, who was the center in that game of 25 years ago, said following a recent preseason practice.

    “It was a low-scoring mudfest,” said Menu, who played a guard position. “It was fantastic.”

    The Southampton-East Hampton rivalry is one of the oldest on Long Island, dating to 1923, and the fact that the Mariners have won many more of these contests than East Hampton perhaps makes it all the more memorable here when the Bonackers triumph. Saturday’s homecoming clash under the lights will be the 50th in the series, which Southampton leads 34-13-3.

    Charlie Whitmore, who played on the late Gary Golden’s 1967 team that, while a huge underdog, defeated its South Fork rival 18-13, remembers the entire town turning out to greet the victorious Bonackers. “Everything shut down. People were in the streets, they were kissing and hugging the players. East Hampton hadn’t beaten Southampton in 10 or so years. . . .”

    The story, written by the late Howard Swanson, ran on the front page of this newspaper:

    “. . . East Hampton trailed 13-12 going into the final four minutes. South­ampton covered Rocky Claxton’s onside kick and had every intention of running out the clock, but Bob Peters stole the ball from Joe Shannon, giving East Hampton possession on its 40-yard line. Leon Overton then went to the air and connected with Keith McMahon for a first down on Southampton’s 45.”

    “Then Kent Metz rolled for seven, and another Overton-to-McMahon aerial put the ball on the Mariners’ 29. Overton was pressed on the next play, but managed to get a pass off to William Myrick in the left flat where he made a spectacular catch of the sinking ball and raced over three tacklers to give East Hampton the win.”

    To honor the ancient rivalry, Bridgehampton National Bank in 1982 began presenting the winner with a handsome silver Hampton Cup that was to be retained for a year by the school that won. Saturday’s game will be only the third such in the past 20 years, Southampton having won 14-8 in 1993 and 28-13 in 2006, the last time, until now, that the Cup was contested, the year before Barbour took over the coaching reins from David MacGarva.

    The ’87 game was played in South­ampton “in nigh-gale-like conditions, with intermittent rain and cold winds gusting the length of the field up to 40 miles per hour. Punts either traveled 15 to 25 yards or 40 to 50. . . . Mauricio Castillo’s 70-yard quick kick midway through the fourth quarter, which rolled dead on the Mariners’ 8-yard line, was the longest of the day.”

    The only touchdown East Hampton needed came late in the first quarter. “With second-and-goal from the Mariners’ 6-yard line, Jamie Grubb passed into the end zone. Michael Sarlo, the tight end, leapt for it near the goal line, but the ball skipped through his hands . . . and into the arms of his teammate Jeff LaCarrubba, who had preceded him. Hank Benzenberg kicked the extra point, which proved to be crucial in the 7-6 win.”

    “. . . The decisive defensive play was turned in by Anthony Miller, who, with about one minute left to play, intercepted Bobby Sendlenski on the Mariner 35.”

    “When the clock ran out, East Hampton’s bench cleared, and the team’s captain and senior right tackle, David Di­Sunno, was hoisted aloft to display the game’s trophy, the Hampton Cup.”

    A blowup of The Star’s page one photo of joyous Bonackers, the Cup above them and Walter Casiel in the foreground, was put up in East Hampton’s weight room by Menu last spring.

    “The kids didn’t know what the Cup was,” said Barbour. “All of them were asking questions. They know now. You could tell by the way they played in the scrimmage with Southampton the other day. It’s a natural rivalry. The kids are buying into it.”

   Michelle Del Giorno is a world champion in karate, hooked since her first tournament at the age of 16, but she said on Monday that despite what some may think, self-defense is not all about kicking, punching, blocking, and throwing. At her dojo in Sag Harbor, Epic Martial Arts East, the curriculum teaches kindness, respect, tolerance, focus, discipline, confidence, and self-control.

    Her students earn stripes on their belts through group acts of kindness. Community service projects have included preparing care packages to be sent to troops overseas with Jordan’s Initiative, collecting gently used children’s clothing for the Retreat, and raising $6,000 for Team Tarlow and Hand, which donates money to Swim Across America’s cancer research efforts. Beach and park cleanups are considered a form of self-defense too, she said, because they help protect the environment, which we all depend on. Students’ projects are recorded in a portfolio for later use in job and college applications.

    “It makes kids feel good about themselves,” she said, adding that self-confidence helps kids deflect bullying and become leaders, not followers, things they learn from their sensai through role play, too. Along with improved behavior, many students also get better grades.

    “It’s about deflecting what is around you without being confrontational,” Del Giorno said. Her students become more physically fit, but they also learn how to take care of their health in other ways — good nutrition, for example.

    The dojo’s competition team, called Storm, or Select Team of Role Models, is comprised of students with orange belts or higher. “The kids love it,” she said of competing in tournaments. The group of 7 to 12-year-olds also performs demonstrations, such as the one on Saturday on Long Wharf during HarborFest.

    She encourages parents to stay in class to hear the messages she’s sharing with students, and they have been very supportive, she said. Her students hail from East Hampton and Southampton, as well as Sag Harbor, where she said she teaches practically the entire third grade.

    A parent of four boys, Del Giorno has taught martial arts for about 25 years. She offered kickboxing and karate classes at the Sag Harbor Gym for many years, until they grew too large and she knew it was time to open her own dojo, where she now teaches karate to children, teens, and adults, as well as jujitsu and tai chi. She has taught karate and kickboxing at the Ross School for eight years, and teaches horseback riding, too, at the school’s summer pony camp at the Topping Riding Club in Saga­ponack.

    Riding, like martial arts, has been a part of her life since childhood. Both are individual sports, which Del Giorno said she has always preferred. “I like to challenge myself.”

    Locals who cursed the presence of New Jerseyites here this summer can take a measure of revenge in the dispatching of the Montclair, N.J., Rugby Club back whence they came Saturday, courtesy of the Montauk Sharks by a 17-14 tally at Herrick Park in East Hampton.

    Still, “a 3-point game in rugby is a pretty close game,” the Sharks’ coach, Rich Brierley, said Monday. And Montclair is a team that just moved up to the Empire Union’s Division 2, which, taken together, could signal rough waters ahead.

    The Sharks finished the season last year ranked sixth nationally after a successful run into the Sweet Sixteen of the championship tournament in Pittsburgh. “Last year we were 8-0, which will be difficult to repeat. . . . Teams are gunning for us; we’re going to see their best games.” What’s more, “We’re depleted, numbers-wise. We’ve had some minor injuries. And people like to get married in September,” Brierley added, laughing.

    “Most teams have 30 guys, and we’re in the mid to low 20s. It’s the same core, but that core of guys is getting older. It’s difficult when you get into your 30s playing this game. That’s why the numbers are so important — you can give your players a week off, especially the bigger guys. . . . We’re always recruiting.” Practices, by the way, are twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

    But back to Saturday’s action. The Sharks’ first two tries were scored by the forwards Nick Lawler and Jim Abran “in consecutive phases of play,” Brierley said. “You get in close to punch it over.” The third was by Conor Miller. “He took a nice setup from Mike Bunce and made a 25-to-30-yard run to score.”

    The seven-game season is young yet. The Sharks’ 2-0 record means they’re in a four-way tie for first place in the Empire Union. “The top 6 of the 12 teams make the playoffs,” the coach said. “That’s our goal.”

    The Sharks’ next home game is on Oct. 6 at 1 p.m. But first, on Saturday, they’re set to tangle with more Jersey boys, which means a trip into the dark heart of Bayonne.

September 10, 1987

    John Kenney of New York and Shelter Island, who nine days before had won a 5K here, continued the string by leading some 200 runners across the line in Monday’s Great Bonac 10K race in Springs.

    Kenney, a 31-year-old IBM systems engineer, covered the 6.2-mile course in 31 minutes and 41 seconds. Kevin Barry, also of Shelter Island, who won this race last year and in 1985, was third in 33:04.

    While the winner made a wrong turn between miles four and five, following the lead patrol car, which had erred, thus gaining some yardage, the runner-up, Paul Capolino of Port Jefferson, did not press the issue.

    Later, Kenney, who finished almost a minute ahead of Capolino, said he was pretty confident he would have won in any event.

    . . . To keep the leader on course hereafter, the race director, Howard Lebwith, said that beginning next year directional placards will be put at every turn. Kenney’s sub-32 appears to be the best time in recent years, if not for the entire 10-year history of the race.

September 17, 1987

    Martina Navratilova became a triple-crown winner at the U.S. Open Monday — the first such since Margaret Court did it in 1970 — at Paul Annacone’s expense. Navratilova and her partner, Emilio Sanchez of Spain, barely edged the East Hampton-reared professional and his partner, Betsy Nagelsen, 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 to win the mixed doubles title. The third-set tiebreaker went to 14-12.

    Navratilova also won the singles championship, defeating Steffi Graf, and the women’s doubles, with Pam Shriver, over Kathy Jordan and Elizabeth Smylie.

    . . . It was the first tournament that Nagelsen and Annacone have played together, and the first U.S. Open final for Annacone.

    While the Mighty Hamptons triathletes were competing in “tinman” distances Saturday, Tom Ruhle, 29, of Montauk, a Democratic candidate for town councilman, was swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112, and running 26.2 in the Bud Light Endurance Triathlon at Cape Cod.

    “The bike was the roughest, and I’m a good biker,” said Ruhle. “The wind was in our face on the return leg, from Provincetown to Hyannis. I was ready to throw my bike in the weeds after 90 miles.”

    Gene Colleary narrowly defeated George Eichhorn recently in a 36-hole final to win the men’s golf championship at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett.

    Sailboarders at Napeague Harbor are girding their loins in the wake of a Long Island State Parks and Recreation Commission edict banning sailboard launching at the accustomed Lazy Point road-end.

    . . . The sailboarders say that Napeague Harbor is a perfect spot to pursue their sport and that the road-end beach is the perfect spot for launching the boards. A few ill-founded complaints by Lazy Point residents accustomed to gazing across unpeopled waters had brought on the controversy, they maintain.

September 24, 1987

    Word has it that the East Hampton High School football team, which has acquitted itself well scrimmaging recently with William Floyd, Centereach, Newfield, Port Jefferson, and Westhampton Beach, in descending order of school size, has the edge in League Seven’s title race.

    “I hope it’s not the kiss of death,” said East Hampton’s coach, Ted Meyer.

    . . . Bob Burns, The Long Island Traveler-Watchman’s sportswriter, who covers East End high school sports, said in last Thursday’s column that “talking with the coaches one gathers the group as a whole figures it will be East Hampton and Southampton battling it out for the crown.”

    East Hampton and Southampton boys and girls between the ages of 4 1/2 and 12 are being sought to join a Southampton-based ice hockey club, the Southampton Sharks, whose head coach is Gerry Hart, one of the original New York Islanders.

    . . . “If they can stand up and want to play, we’ll do the rest,” said Hart, a Canadian who played defense for the Islanders in the early 1970s.

Thursday, September 20

GIRLS SOCCER, Rocky Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GOLF, Westhampton Beach vs. East Hampton, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 4 p.m.

Friday, September 21

FIELD HOCKEY, Port Jefferson at East Hampton, 6 p.m.

Saturday, September 22

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Half Hollow Hills at East Hampton, 10 a.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, Harborfields at East Hampton, 10 a.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, Ross School at East Hampton, 10:30 a.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Rocky Point at East Hampton, 11:30 a.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Miller Place at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

FOOTBALL, Southampton at East Hampton, 7 p.m.

Monday, September 24

GIRLS SWIMMING, East Hampton at Ward Melville, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, Comsewogue at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, East Hampton at Bay Shore, nonleague, 4 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 5 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, September 25

GOLF, East Hampton vs. Pierson, Noyac Golf and Country Club, 3:30 p.m.