The Montauk Rugby Club, which went undefeated in league play last fall, is looking to repeat, although, according to Rich Brierley, the format has been changed so as to include upstate sides in the mix.

    “There will be four three-team divisions in the Empire Union,” Brierley said during a conversation this week. “We’ll play each side in our division twice and then one crossover game. Ours is with Syracuse, but they’ll have to come to us.”

    When it comes to the playoffs, “the top four in the league will qualify, with the top two getting byes. Theoretically, long away games may affect outcomes, depending on the seedings, but we’ll worry about that when and if we come to it. Meanwhile, our aim is to win all of our games.”

    Brierley said he thought the Sharks are as strong as they were in 2011, with many of their young players continuing to be available — his son Matt, his nephew Erik, Mike Bunce, and Conor Miller among them. Gordon Trotter, the team’s New Zealand-born inside center, “will be back to lead the charge,” said Brierley.

    In addition, he said, “Teddy Grabowski is coaching a development team, which gives guys who may have been sitting on the fence when it comes to learning a new sport a chance to ease into it, to see whether they want to make their way up or not. . . . Oh yeah, they’ll be playing games, after the first side plays.”

    Montauk opens the season with Rockaway at East Hampton’s Herrick Park at 1 p.m. Saturday. Montclair is to play here Sept. 15, also at 1. The Sharks are to play at Bayonne, N.J., on Sept. 22. Lansdowne, a New York City side, is to play here Sept. 29. Montauk is to play at Rockaway on Oct. 6. Syracuse is to play here on Oct. 13, and Bayonne is to play here on Oct. 20.

Triathlon

    The 31st Mighty Hamptons Triathlon (.93-mile bay swim, 23.8-mile bike, and 6.2-mile run) is to be held at Long Beach, Sag Harbor, on Sunday beginning at 6:40 a.m.

    Tom Eickelberg, a 23-year-old pro from Babylon, was last year’s winner, in 1 hour, 57 minutes, and 18 seconds. It was his first time at this race. At the time, Eickelberg said he didn’t think he’d been beaten on Long Island in the past couple of years. The women’s winner, and seventh over all, was Amy Bevilacqua, 37, of Wilton, Conn., in 2:07:32.

Hall of Fame

    Joe Vas, School District Number One’s athletic director, has said that tickets to the Sept. 22 breakfast at which East Hampton High’s first Hall of Fame class is to be inducted are available to the public at $10 per ticket. Those who want to attend should make reservations with the high school’s athletic office (329-4143) by Sept. 15, he said.

    The Hall of Fame inductees, Vas added, are to be honored at the 9 a.m. breakfast and at halftime of that night’s homecoming football game with Southampton.

Thursday, September 6

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Southampton, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Friday, September 7

BOYS SOCCER, Mattituck at East Hampton, nonleague, 4 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Hampton Bays, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

FOOTBALL, East Hampton at Babylon, season opener, 6 p.m.

Saturday, September 8

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Smithtown East invitational, 8:30 a.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton vs. Pierson, nonleague, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 10 a.m.

RUGBY, league opener, Rockaway vs. Montauk, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 1 p.m.

Sunday, September 9

MIGHTY HAMPTONS, triathlon, .93-mile swim, 23.8-mile bike, and 6.2-mile run, Long Beach, Sag Harbor, 6:40 a.m.

Monday, September 10

GIRLS TENNIS, East Hampton at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, 4 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Sayville at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, East Hampton at Sachem East, nonleague, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, September 11

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

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

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Miller Place at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY, John Glenn vs. East Hampton, Indian Island County Park, Riverhead, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton vs. Mount Sinai, Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park, 4 p.m.

Wednesday, September 12

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

   No longer a comedy of errors, the Artists-Writers annual softball game has become discomfitingly well played in recent years, this past Saturday’s mano-a-mano struggle in East Hampton’s Herrick Park being no exception.

    In the end, the Writers’ egos were spared serious bruising as they emerged from the dogfight as 12-11 victors in 10 innings, thus taking a 26-18-1 lead in modern times, and going up 12-11-1 in the post-modern era.

    More likely than the Writers to treat victory and defeat as the imposters they are, the Artists took the loss philosophically. “It’s still fun, though we gave it to them,” Billy Strong said, with a smile, as he left the field, his bat and mitt slung over his shoulder.

    He was referring to an unaccountably unclaimed two-out pop fly to center field in the top of the third that led to three Writer runs, and to a leadoff ground rule double under the center-field fence in the 10th that “should have been caught.”

    Its author, David Baer, who had initially thought it was a homer, scored soon after with the tiebreaking run, and the Writers, again with two outs, appended two more, including the game-winner, sandwiched around a huge round of applause and the wonderment that greeted the arrival of a most famous spectator, former President Bill Clinton, who helped umpire the 1988 Game when he was governor of Arkansas.

    The Writers jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the top of the first, two coming home on a two-out double by Bill Collage (whose name, you’d think, would automatically qualify him as an Artist).

    Thanks to a booming three-run home run into the tennis courts by Eddie McCarthy, bearing this writer ceaselessly back into the past as he recalled the mighty clouts over the nets by Marty Lyons, it was tied in the bottom half.

    Dan Rattiner, infamous for his high strike calls made from behind the pitcher’s mound, was yanked in the second in favor of Judge Richard Lowe, who it was thought would be more judicious, but perhaps it was only right that his honor too was high-minded, causing both dugouts to exclaim periodically.

    But what would an Artists-Writers Game be without controversy? In this regard there were several dugout-emptying debates — one in the Artists’ fifth when Lee Minetree, the Writers’ catcher at the time, grabbed Geoff Prisco’s bases-loaded nubber near the top of the box (the line had been rubbed out) and stamped on home plate for the third out, and one in the bottom of the 10th when a bone-jarring collision at the plate involving Minetree and the gritty landscape architect Eddie Hollander resulted in the ball being dislodged and in Hollander’s scoring the Artists’ 11th run.

    Alas, the Paletteers could come no closer as, with one out and Eric Ernst on second, Mark Feuerstein and John Longmire, the second and third batters in the lineup, successively were retired on popouts caught by Baer, the best shortstop this side of the minor leagues.

    Baer, 23, a former intern at this newspaper who now writes for TV, was the Game’s M.V.P. last year. This year, that honor was bestowed by the winning pitcher, Mike Lupica, upon Jay DiPietro, the Writers’ cleanup hitter, who, with two outs and the score tied at 9-9 in the bottom of the eighth, reached back over the fence in left-center to rob McCarthy of what would have been another three-run homer.

    “That was a game-saving catch,” said Lupica, who in the top of the third smashed to smithereens a painted grapefruit Joe Sopiak tossed his way, thus carrying on a tradition that dates to the 64-year-old Game’s earliest days.

    A pleasant sea breeze caressed the horses and riders and spectators as the 37th Hampton Classic opened Sunday — in stark, and welcome, contrast to the tropical storm that caused the weeklong hunter-jumper show to be foreshortened last year.

    Opening Day, whose featured Grand Prix Ring classes were the $50,000 United States Hunter Jumper Association International Hunter Derby presented by MeadowView Farms and the $20,000 Nicolock Time Challenge, began at 7:45 a.m. with a ceremony in which Hunter Ring 1 was renamed in memory of Anne Aspinall, who died of cancer this past year.

    As her sister, Emily, cut the ribbon dedicating the Anne Aspinall Ring, the some 40 attendees were told that “Anne played a key role in getting the Classic off the ground back in 1976 and served on the Classic’s board of directors ever since. . . . Everyone connected with the horse show world, and everyone who has ever enjoyed even a single day at the Hampton Classic over the last 36 years, owes Anne a tremendous debt of gratitude.”

    “A leading figure at the Topping Riding Club in Sagaponack, she was one of the most respected hunter-jumper trainers on Long Island, helping to produce countless champions. . . . Anne Aspinall is someone who can never be replaced and someone who will be missed greatly by all of us.”

    With the sun barely over the horizon, “local day” riders, as well as the pros, were seen to be warming up in numbers for classes in all five of the Classic’s rings.

    At the Annex Ring, in which adult equitation classes were held, one could hear trainers at the rail calling out to their charges, “A little bit brighter. . . . Lower your heels, lower your heels, Renee. . . . Push those heels down, arch more. . . . Lower your hands now. . . . ”

    Arguably, the horse that turned the most heads that day was Sam, a 4-year-old Clydesdale owned and ridden by Mike Gaynor, who, with his wife, Kerry, sponsored that day’s adult equitation classes.

    “He’s 2,100 pounds — twice the size of the other horses at the show — and he’s 18 and a half hands, so I’m not surprised that he’s noticed,” said Gaynor, who when asked how he and Sam had done in that day’s adult eq B section, said, with a laugh, “I stayed on.”

    The Gaynors keep three Clydesdales at Wolffer Stables not far from the Classic’s Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds — Sam, Ike, and Mike. The latter two 7-year-olds have been inseparable buddies since birth. “They’ve never been more than 30 feet away from each other.”

    A fourth, Kyle, died recently. The Gaynors have established an adult equitation trophy in his name, the Kyle’s Courage trophy, which goes to the class’s champion.

    “I became interested in Clydesdales about six years ago when I saw volunteer rangers — Shanette [Barth Cohen, the Classic’s executive director] used to be one, though she’s not anymore — riding them in Central Park. It’s an 860-acre park, and there are many areas that aren’t accessible to a vehicle. I’m one of the volunteers now, I do at least two patrols a month.”

    Shane Sweetnam, who grew up in County Cork, Ireland, and who now lives in Wellington, Fla., won with Cyklon 1083 the $20,000 speed class, even though they had a rail down on the penultimate jump.

    The 11-year-old stallion owned by Spy Coast Farm had “won a lot of money . . . in Switzerland, Canada . . . everywhere,” Sweetnam said afterward. Of the class, he said, “it was very competitive, especially the top six. . . . We won by two seconds.”

    The Irish-born rider has been competing professionally since he was 20. “It’s my passion,” he said. “I’m lucky that it’s my job every day.”

    As for the Grand Prix, the $250,000 class that ends the week, “I was in the top six two years ago . . . I’ve never won it. I hope to get closer this year.”

    Sweetnam, aboard Spy Coast Farm’s Esquina Van Klapscheut, also placed fifth in the Time Challenge. Others in the top six were G&C LeRoy, ridden by Carolina Mirabal and owned by Gustavo Mirabal, Cyrina Z, ridden by the Irish-born Darragh Kenny and owned by North Star, Lincourt Gino, ridden by Peter Leone and owned by Monica Carrera, and Udento Vol, ridden by Kenny and owned by Lauren Tyree.

    Kennzo, ridden by Molly Ashe-Cawley and owned by Kristen Abbatiello-Neff, was the $50,000 Hunter Derby champion. Inclusive, ridden by 14-year-old Victoria Colvin and owned by Betsee Parker, was the reserve. The winner received $15,000, the runner-up $10,000.

    Today’s events are to include the $10,000 Sam Edelman Equitation Championship in the Grand Prix Ring at 1:30 p.m., the $5,000 Junior Jumper Classic, from 8 a.m., and the $5,000 Strong’s Marine Amateur-Owner Jump­er Classic in Jumper Ring 2, as well as the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Adult Amateur Hunter Classic in the Hunter 2 Ring at 1:30 p.m.

    The main event tomorrow is the $50,000 Spy Coast Farm/Young Horse Show Series Grand Prix Qualifier in the Grand Prix Ring at 1 p.m.

    On Kids Day, Saturday, the featured events will include the $30,000 Split Rock Farm 6-Year-Old Young Jumper Championship, the $30,000 Pilatus Cup, and the $20,000 SHF Enterprises 5-Year-Old Young Jumper Championship in the Grand Prix Ring.

    On Sunday, the show’s final day, the $250,000 FTI Grand Prix and F.E.I. World Cup Qualifier at 2 p.m. will be preceded by the $30,000 7 and 8-Year-Old Young Jumper Championship Finals and the $25,000 David Yurman Show Jumping Derby in the Grand Prix Ring. The latter class is part of a Show Jumping Hall of Fame series overseen by the Classic’s press officer and Hall of Fame executive director Mary Bauman.

    Also on Sunday, beginning at 8 a.m., there will be leadline classes for 2-to-4-year-old and 5-to-7-year-old riders in the Anne Aspinall Ring.

   The Beach Diplomats, a team got together by Chris Carney whose roster included a former Olympic decathlete from Ghana, Kofi Sekyiamah, wound up winning the Gurney’s Inn beach volleyball league’s finals last Thursday, coming back to best top-seeded Air and Speed 17-21, 21-16, 21-14.

    “It was great volleyball,” said Kathy McGeehan, the league’s founder and girls volleyball coach at East Hampton High School, who in the summertime works as a fitness instructor at Gurney’s Spa in Montauk.

    As for the 10-team 4-on-4 league, co-sponsored by Diplomatico Rum of Venezuela and Gurney’s, the first organized beach volleyball here apparently in 25 years, McGeehan (who played then with the Blender Beach Bombers at Amagansett’s Atlantic Avenue Beach) said that “for the first year it went really well.”

    Dr. George Dempsey, whose team was swept by the Beach Diplomats in one of that evening’s semifinals — Air and Speed cruised to a 2-0 win over Shelter Island in the other — said that Air and Speed and the Beach Diplomats were “the two dominant teams here this summer.”

    The former University of California at San Diego player, who is a general practitioner in East Hampton and whose son, Pierre, and daughter, Mariah, played with him on Team Dempsey, said, in answer to a question, that he thought he was the eldest competitor in the league, “and, unfortunately, I play like it.”

    The final was, as aforesaid, hard-fought, for Air and Speed had on it Dan Weaver, who has coached East Hampton’s boys volleyball team in recent years, and his successor, Josh Brussell, and two former high school players, Summer Foley and Jon Jamet. Besides Sekyiamah, the Diplomats numbered Jessie Libath, a former Bonac star, Beth Crowley, and Jack Behan.

    Weaver and Brussell served out Air and Speed’s win in the first game, with Behan erring several times going down to the wire. The Diplomats broke a 16-16 tie in the second, winning the final five points.

    After Foley had served an ace to Crowley, Behan got the ball back for the Diplomats when his shot hit the line, a sideout that put the ball into the hands of Libath, who served out the set.

    “It was pretty much Kofi setting Jessie [for thunderous kills] in the middle in the last game,” McGeehan said. “Air and Speed missed some crucial serves, and once he was moved into the middle Jessie overpowered them.”

    Earlier in the season, Sekyiamah said the Diplomats were “the team to beat,” and while they finished the regular season as the runner-up to Air and Speed, he was proved right.

    Air and Speed’s chances would undoubtedly have been greater had Kim Valverde, an All-American honorable mention libero when she played at East Hampton High School, not had to go back to college. She’s playing at Hillsborough Junior College in Tampa, Fla., this year, though McGeehan said she was out for the moment, following a concussion she’d suffered in a collision.

   Among the Local Day ribbon winners from Alvin and Patsy Topping’s Swan Creek Farms in Bridgehampton were: Practical Magic, owned by Samantha Rudin Earls and ridden by Jagger Topping, champion, local professionals; Spring Fling, owned and ridden by Yvetta Rechler-Newman of Southampton, champion, local amateur owners; Red Drum, owned by Charlotte Maerov of East Hampton and ridden by Amanda Topping, first and fourth in local professionals.

    Brando, owned and ridden by Chloe Hase of Southampton, ribbons in junior hunters; PlayBoy, owned by Julie Marder of Bridgehampton and ridden by Olivia Meihoffer of Bridgehampton, third and fourth in local junior hunters; Monopoly, owned by Amanda and Jagger Topping and ridden by Hannah Junk of Sag Harbor, fourth and ninth in local junior hunters; Timeless, owned and ridden by Yvette Rechler-Newman, fourth, fifth, and fifth in local amateur owners and, with Jagger Topping riding, third and third in local professional hunters, and Secret, owned by Amanda and Jagger Topping and ridden by Julie Stone of Sag Harbor, first and fourth in local non-professional hunters.

    The race to raise the $35,000 needed so that about 40 Springs School seventh and eighth graders may continue to be combined with the middle school in certain sports has apparently been won.

    Mark Lappin, one of a half-dozen parents who, under the Springs Sports Booster Club aegis, began soliciting donations from businesses and individuals scarcely a month ago in the run-up to a Sept. 1 deadline, said during a conversation Sunday evening, “It’s definitely a go.”

    “We’ve got $33,205 in hand at the moment, and we fully expect to reach our goal in the coming days,” Lappin said. He had received donations from 75 of the more than 200 businesses he’d solicited, though there had been complaints about the Springs district’s “high taxes,” he added, and skepticism as to whether the money for the continuation of combined Springs-East Hampton Middle School football, cross-country, tennis, wrestling, swimming, track, and lacrosse teams couldn’t be found in the budget.

    The overarching fact, he said, however, was that the school board, in the budget proposal approved by Springs voters last spring, had axed the combined sports funds. Thus there had been no alternative for the parents of the affected children but to launch the fund-raising drive. “The parents really should start paying attention to these budgets,” said Lappin.

    A lot of the donations had been anonymous, he said, “though the Old Montauk Athletic Club gave $6,480, and Henrika Conner gave $1,000 on her own, the East Hampton Indoor Tennis Club gave $1,000. . . . Dom Mucci, Springs’ superintendent, really went to bat for us, and he contributed personally. . . .”

    In a recent mailing, the Booster Club, whose organizers besides Lappin included Mary McPartland, Jen Charron, Janice Vaziri, Adam Wilson, and David Swickard, said in part that the self-discipline athletes learned on the field often was translated into greater academic success. “Sports unify kids from all kinds of backgrounds . . . and demonstrate the rewards of persistence in the face of adversity.”

    On the subject, Bill Herzog, a veteran cross-country and track coach at East Hampton High School and at the middle school, recently predicted that the level of the high school’s sports teams would inevitably decline if Springs and the middle school’s athletic alliance were discontinued.

    Caroline Cashin, with 120 pumps, which took the pressure off her in the subsequent run that spanned the Atlantic and Indian Wells Beaches in Amagansett, was the runner-up to Neil Falkenhan and set a record for women in the Body Tech and Old Montauk Athletic Club’s “Pump and Run” competition on Aug. 22.

    This year, “thanks to my workouts at [her husband Ed’s] Exceed Fitness studio” on Plank Road, Cashin chest-pressed the bar 120 times, 22 more repetitions than she did at the same event in 2011.

    “The great part about this race,” the 36-year-old Cashin said, “is that you don’t have to be a fast runner to do well. Two years ago Mike [Bahel] beat me by three seconds — this year I beat him by three.”

    “I stopped spinning this year,” she continued, “and focused more on functional classes, and really noticed a difference. Not only was my lower body more toned, I was more fit in general. I know athletes who train at Exceed Fitness and they get results, but Ed’s classes aren’t just for athletic people — they’re open to everyone of all fitness levels.”

    Falkenhan, who’s 28, did 71 reps of 60 percent of his body weight and ran the 1.7-mile stretch in 9:58. Given his chest-press credits, which were translated into seconds and then deducted from his run time, he netted a 6:25.

    Caroline Cashin’s net time for the run was 7:22. Behind her in the standings were Bahel, 46, at 7:25; Erik Engstrom, 14, at 8:51, and Mike Bunce, 26, at 9:32. There were 20 competitors in all.

    Henrika Conner of the Old Montauk Athletic Club said later that “without Mike this event wouldn’t happen. He provided the weights, the T-shirts, water, food, and prizes. Billy O’Donnell brought a bench and more. The club provided the clock.”   

Thursday, August 30

HAMPTON CLASSIC, hunter and jumper classes in all five rings, with featured events to include the $5,000 Junior Jumper Classic and the $5,000 Strong’s Marine A-O Jumper Classic in Jumper Ring 2, the $10,000 Sam Edelman Equitation Championship in the Grand Prix Ring at 1:30 p.m., and the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Adult Amateur Hunter Classic in the Hunter 2 Ring at 1:30, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Friday, August 31

HAMPTON CLASSIC, hunter and jumper classes in all five rings with featured events to include the $10,000 Junior/Amateur-Owner Welcome Stake, the $15,000 Speed Derby, and the $50,000 Spy Coast Farm/Young Horse Show Series Grand Prix Qualifier in the Grand Prix Ring, at 1 p.m., in the Grand Prix Ring, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Saturday, September 1

HAMPTON CLASSIC, Kids Day, hunter and jumper classes in four rings with featured events to include the $20,000 SHF Enterprises 5-Year-Old Young Jumper Championship, the $30,000 Split Rock Farm 6-Year-Old Young Jumper Championship, and the $30,000 Pilatus Cup in the Grand Prix Ring, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Sunday, September 2

HAMPTON CLASSIC, Final Day, featured events to include leadline classes from 8 a.m. and the $10,000 Hermes Hunter Classic at noon in the Anne Aspinall Ring, and, in the Grand Prix Ring, the $250,000 FTI Grand Prix and F.E.I. World Cup Qualifier, at 2, preceded by the $30,000 7 and 8-Year-Old Young Jumper Championships from 8 a.m., the $25,000 David Yurman Show Jumping Derby, the A-O Jumper Championship, and the Junior Jumper Championship, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Monday, September 3

RUNNING, Great Bonac 10K and 5K races, Springs Fire Department, Fort Pond Boulevard, 9 and 9:20 a.m., benefit Springs Fire Department scholarship fund and the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s grants program.