Paddle Relay Race

    Despite southwest winds that made paddling in Gardiner’s Bay difficult, the three-person, three-mile stand-up paddleboard relay race overseen by Paddlers for Humanity went on as scheduled Sunday with 13 teams participating.

    The race, which benefited the Retreat, was won in 35 minutes and 24 seconds by the Main Beach Surf and Sport team (Lars Svanberg, Ari Weller, and Evelyn O’Doherty), the first coed team to win this competition. The runners-up (and winners of the men’s division) were John Doyle, Jonathan Shlafer, and Michael Williams, in 36:57. Team Paddle Diva (Shari Hymes, Jessica Bellofatto, and Mary Scheerer) was the women’s division winner, in 39:35.

    Paddlers for Humanity’s 18-mile stand-up paddle from Montauk to Block Island will be on Sept. 15. The East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, the Montauk Playhouse Community Center, and the Children’s Dental Health Program are to be among the beneficiaries.

Bonac 10K/5K

    The Great Bonac 10K and 5K road races are to be held Monday at the Springs Fire Department on Fort Pond Boulevard. The 10K is to start at 9 a.m., the 5K at 9:20. In their 35th year, the races benefit the Springs Fire Department’s scholarship fund and the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s grants program.

Quigley Fund

    A barbecue fund-raiser for the injured 17-year-old East Hampton Town lifeguard, Doris Quigley, is to be held at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett on Sept. 8 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. According to a flier, donations made out to the HLA/Quigley Fund can be sent to John Ryan at 7 Meadow Way, East Hampton. Admission to the barbecue will cost $20. There will be a 50/50 raffle and other prizes.

   Shanette Barth Cohen, the Hampton Classic’s executive director, who used to face a wall, has a corner office now, with a window, a door through which she can escape, and a low-slung guardian lapdog named Jackson, but she won’t feel entirely secure until Opening Day has come and gone without incident.

    Last year, if you remember, forewarnings of Hurricane Irene’s arrival impelled the Classic’s staff to lower the 100 tents that had been raised to house the hunter-jumper show’s 1,600 horses, and to put them up again once the storm, which brought with it gusts of up to 70 miles per hour, had passed through.

    During a conversation the other day, Barth Cohen said she’d been quite proud of the 36-hour-straight effort everyone had put in. “I got to drive a tractor, one of the show secretaries operated a fork lift, Marty [Bauman, the show’s press officer] was raking . . . I still can’t believe our crew of 60 or 70 did all that, and then Cablevision, LIPA, and the town were very helpful in getting the power back on.”

    As a result, the weeklong show was shortened by three days, beginning on Wednesday, though there were no scratches when it came to the competitions.

    While she didn’t go to the Olympics, Barth Cohen watched the show jumping on a Webcast. The United States’ team, which included McLain Ward, a perennial winner at the Classic, and Beezie Madden, who’s also showing here next week, finished sixth. “It was a hard act to follow — the U.S. won the team gold at Hong Kong and Athens. . . . The last round was very tough with challenges all over the place.”

    Guilherme Jorge, the Classic’s Brazilian-born course designer, had been, she added, a member of the technical committee.

    Three Olympians, then — Ward, Madden, and Rodrigo Pessoa, a Brazilian — will be among the professional riders showing here.

    The Olympics were probably the number-one equestrian event, Barth Cohen said, in answer to a question, with the World Equestrian Games, which, like the Olympics, are contested every four years, and the World Cup Final, which is held annually, rounding out the top three. Asked where the Classic might fit in, she said, “We’re a World Cup qualifier — we’re an important event.”

    As for what was new this year, she said, “We’ll have a $50,000 hunter class in the Grand Prix ring on Opening Day [this Sunday, following the opening ceremony at 1:30] sponsored by the United States Hunter Jumper Association. . . . We have 40 entries so far, there will be pros and amateurs.”

    “It will be a nice flowing course designed by Steve Stephens. It’s supposed to simulate a hunt field, and it’s the horses who are judged — how beautifully and smoothly they go. There’ll be two rounds with the top 12 advancing. The jumps will be 3 feet 6 inches and riders will have the option of trying 3-9 and 4-0 jumps for bonus points.”

    The leadline classes judged by the Olympian Joe Fargis, an Opening Day fixture for many years, are to be held on the morning of Grand Prix Sunday in the Hunter-1 ring that is to be renamed in memory of the late Anne Aspinall, who won the Classic’s sportsmanship award in 2007 and who was for a long time a member of the Classic’s board of directors, a competitor in the show’s hunter classes, and who, with her sister, Emily, taught at the Topping Riding Club in Sagaponack. Hunter Ring 1 will be renamed the Anne Aspinall Ring at a ceremony on Opening Day at 7:45 a.m.

    The $20,000 Nicolock time challenge class, which offers spectators their first chance to see the pros in action, is to be held this Sunday, as it has been in the past, though the class is to get under way at 8 a.m. “We’ve got 30 signed up so far, though that number will probably go up,” Barth Cohen said.

    There would be “lots of things for kids” throughout the coming week, she added, “not just on Optimum Kids Day [Saturday, Sept. 1] with its free pony rides, circus performers, and the Laughing Pizza Band. . . . The Wildlife Center of the Hamptons will bring with them birds of prey, the Riverhead Marine Research organization will be here every day, Stony Brook University’s Children’s Hospital will put on a show called ‘Mission Nutrition,’ the A.S.P.C.A. on Monday will have dogs, cats, pot-bellied pigs, and horses up for adoption. . . . “

    “Our entries are as full as they’ve ever been,” she said in reply to a question about the economy, “and our corporate sponsorship has become more robust, though there has been some belt-tightening among our personal sponsors.”

    Twenty dollars will still get a carload of spectators into the grounds, off Snake Hollow Road in Bridgehampton. “And people can now buy grandstand tickets for Grand Prix Sunday online, at $25 for the bench seats and $35 for the bucket seats.”

    Asked, in parting, what the weather report was, Barth Cohen smiled and said, “I don’t know . . . I heard it was going to be beautiful.”

   Luis Mancilla, 21, a Springs resident who is better known locally as a Golden Gloves boxer, won Ellen’s Run in Southampton Sunday in a speedy time of 16 minutes and 39 seconds.

    After crossing the line, Mancilla, a 132-pounder who trains in Westbury, and who runs on his own, was told he’d undoubtedly be welcomed at John Conner’s track workouts on Monday and Wednesday evenings at East Hampton High School.

    Asked about that morning’s 3.1-mile race, he said he thought he’d put some distance between him and the runner-up, 18-year-old Robert Beit of New York City, but Beit challenged him in the yards leading up to the finish line at the rear entrance to Southampton Hospital, with Mancilla winning out by two seconds.

    “I raced here two years ago,” said the winner, who is a new face on the running scene here, “but I arrived late and never was able to catch up.”

    Concerning his boxing ambitions — he was a Golden Gloves finalist in the 132-pound novice class in 2011, and was a quarterfinalist this year — Mancilla said, “Absolutely, I’m still boxing. I’m looking to win. I’m giving myself one more year in the Golden Gloves, and then maybe I’ll turn pro.”

    He’s not the only one in his family who boxes. Mancilla’s 22-year-old brother, Juan, who also was a Golden Gloves quarterfinalist this year, and who has won a club show, fights at 152 pounds. When they train here, Mancilla said, they train at Gurney’s Inn and at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter.

    Tara Farrell, 33, of East Quogue, was the women’s winner, and seventh over all, in 17:48. Amar Kuchinad, a 38-year-old New Yorker, and former Harvard miler, who won several summer races here last summer, ran with Farrell the whole way. When told he and she had been this writer’s picks to win, he demurred insofar as he was concerned. “Tara pushed me the whole way,” he said. “She’s terrific.”

    Ed Stern, the 47-year-old third-place finisher, who was standing nearby, said, with a smile, “I’m old — I won this race, but I don’t remember what year.”

    Jessie van Binsbergen, 27, of East Hampton, was the second female finisher, and 11th over all, in 18:33.

    Presumably, Barbara Borsack’s group of participants from East Hampton, numbering around 60 this year, was the largest contingent of contestants, for the fourth straight year.

    The first breast cancer survivor was Leslie Bender of Townsend, Md., in 27:05.

    Before the race started, Tony Venesina, 69, of Sag Harbor, said he was running in memory of the late Andy Neidnig, a great half-miler, miler, and two-miler when at Manhattan College (he’s in its Hall of Fame) and a great marathoner later in life. “He’s gone,” Venesina said sadly, “Andy’s gone. . . . I’m running for him.”

    Among the 790 finishers were the following age-group place-winners from East Hampton:

    Olivia Boccia, 10, first among the 11-and-under girls; Evan Boccia, 8, third among the 11-and-under boys; Liana Paradiso, 12, first among the 12-to-15 girls; Jorge Naula, 13, 10th among the 12-to-15-year-old boys; Skye Marigold, 17, seventh among the 16-to-19 girls.

    Daniel Marrow, 19, sixth among the 16-to-19 boys; Mauricio Solares, 23, third among the 20-24 males; Jessie van Binsbergen, 27, first among the 25-to-29 women; Jeanette Caputo, 33, fifth, and Ava Locascio, 32, seventh, among the 30-to-34 women; Mareki Janota, 33, sixth among the 30-34 men; Heather Caputo, 35, first among the 35-to-39 women; Stephanie Brabant, 36, third, Allison Ceraso, 36, sixth, and Kathryn Millica, 36, ninth, among the 35-39 women.

    Dermot Quinn, 43, fourth among the 40-44 men; Leonard Boccia, 45, sixth among the 45-49 men; Sophie French, 50, seventh, Dominique Cummings, 51, eighth, and Emily Rose, 53, 10th, among the 50-54 women; Laura van Binsbergen, 56, second among the 55-to-59 women; Terry Smith, 59, fourth, Joel Zychick, 58, eighth, and Robert Chaloner, 55, ninth, among the 55-59 men.

    Terry Levin Davgin, 63, seventh, and Anne Cantwell, 64, ninth among the 60-to-64 women; Paul Maidment, 61, second among the 60-64 men; Marlene Berman, 69, second among the 65-69 women; Arthur Nealon, 65, fourth among the 65-69 men; Pat Mercer, 71, fifth among the 70-74 women; Michael Epner, 71, fourth among the 70-74 men; Maureen Goldberg, 77, third among the 75-79 women; Doug Mercer, 76, third among the 75-79 men, and Howard Lebwith, 81 (who turned 82 on Monday), first among the 80-and-over men.

   With two of its collegiate contributors absent, having gone back for the fall semester, Groundworks Landscaping nevertheless swept perennial-champion Bostwick’s last week to win the East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch league’s playoff championship.

    Bostwick’s (nee Cangiolosi’s) was looking for an unprecedented seventh straight trophy, but Groundworks dug deep for the win, its first ever in slow-pitch play.

    Groundworks, whose manager, Andy Silich, was absent also inasmuch as he was driving his daughter, Erika, to High Point University in North Carolina, took a 2-1 lead in the first inning of what proved to be the deciding game, played at the Terry King ball field on Aug. 14. An opposite-field double by Kim Hren accounted for Groundworks’ runs.

    The Restaurateurs evened the score in the top of the second. Connie Mabry, the Landscapers’ pitcher, walked the first batter to face her, Bostwick’s pitcher Eileen Noonan, after which Jen Spellman, the eighth hitter in the lineup, bounced a single over the first base bag, sending Noonan to third.

    A subsequent slow roller hit  by Emma Woodward got by Mabry, allowing Noonan to cross the plate, and Kathryn Hess, about whom more later, missed tagging Spellman as she came into second.

Following a flyout to Erin Abran in left field, Jenna Kovar drew a walk to load the bases for Mireille Sturmann, but Mabry came up big this time, spearing Sturmann’s hot line drive at her shoe tops. She then caused Kathy Amicucci to fly out to Hren in center to end the inning.

   In Bostwick’s third, after Virginia McGovern had grounded out short-to-first, Jeannie Bunce laced a double into the left-center field gap. She was stranded there, however, as Emma Beudert, following much to and fro, caught Kenzie Maloney’s fly in left-center and Hess gathered in a popup hit toward short by Sami Krantz.

   Groundworks went up 4-2 in the bottom of the third. Abran ripped a single up the middle to lead it off. An infield grounder by Hess forced Abran, but Krantz’s high, wide relay to Spellman allowed the speedy Hess to advance to second. A single by Hren sent Hess to go to third, and a subsequent sinking line drive by Randi Cherill that McGovern one-hopped in shallow left-center made it 3-2. One out later, Michelle Grant’s single to third tacked on another run.

   Bostwick’s again tied the score in the top of the fourth, the result of two-out, two-on basehits by Kovar and Sturmann. Woodward was thrown out at the plate as she tried to score from second on Sturmann’s hit.

    Hess, who was to have left for the University of Dayton Friday — where she’ll play varsity softball — won the game and the series for Groundworks with a two-out, three-run homer in the bottom of the fourth that scored Kelly Remkus and Beudert ahead of her and treated the Landscapers to what proved to be an insurmountable 7-4 lead.

    Meanwhile, Mabry plowed ahead, shutting Bostwick’s down in each of the last three innings. Noonan flied out to Hren with the bases loaded and two out in the top of the fifth; Sturmann grounded into a force play at second with runners at first and second and two out in the sixth, and Mabry induced Maloney to fly out with two gone and a runner on first in the seventh.

   Thomas Brierley, a 16-year-old lifeguard who, as a sophomore, helped lead the East Hampton High School boys swimming team to its first winning season last winter, won the main event, the 2-miler, in Saturday’s East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad swims in choppy Gardiner’s Bay.

    In describing the race the next day, Thomas’s father, Craig, said his son had “led the whole way, but it was close. It was an isosceles triangle course, with a short leg out to the first buoy, a long leg down toward the chimney, and another long leg back along the beach. The 1-milers did one loop, the 2-milers two.”

    “Thomas was leading when they began heading out onto the second leg, but there was a sweep and he arced out to the left on the way to the buoy while the guys behind him tracked straight and reeled him in. They came in toward the last turn with the sweep. Thomas was two body lengths ahead of the guy [Mike Petrzia] behind him. They sprinted up the beach, about 20 to 25 yards, I’d say, and the other guy just missed beating him. It was a hell of an ending to a 2-mile race.”

    When told that his son had given his time as 41 minutes (the Ocean Rescue Squad’s Web site gave Brierley and Petrzia’s times as 39:30 each), the elder Brierley, who helps coach the high school’s swim team, was impressed, especially given the conditions.

    Hailed just before he left for lifeguard duty, Thomas said, “It was really choppy, but warm. I did the first loop in 20 minutes, the second in 21. Yeah, it was a good time.”

    Asked if he were a junior or senior, he said, “A senior . . . no, a junior.” He’s to do cross-country in the fall.

    When it comes to swimming, he’s extremely versatile. Jeff Thompson, East Hampton’s coach, said following last season that even though he hadn’t focused on the backstroke last winter, he missed qualifying for the state meet in that event by one second. Often he would follow up the 500 with the 200 freestyle relay, the 100 backstroke, the 100 breaststroke, and the 400 free relay.

    One of the numerous volunteers at Saturday’s event, Tim Treadwell, was told he was owed an apology by this writer for having reported incorrectly that Annette MacNiven coached masters swimmers at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter. In asking that the error be corrected, MacNiven said she was “not the masters coach. Tim Treadwell is. He’s an amazing coach. I’m one of his students.”

    Treadwell took the slight in stride, and, when this writer said he might like to join up but, because of his advanced age and inexperience, was hesitant, Treadwell said, “There’s a lane for everybody . . . people shouldn’t be intimidated.”

    Once the fall season at the Y gets under way next month, he said, there will be masters swim sessions Monday through Friday from 6 to 7:30 a.m.; Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings from 9:30 to 11, and Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7:30 to 8:45.

Volleyball Finals

    Semifinal and final beach volleyball league matches are to be contested this evening at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk. Top-seeded Air and Speed is to play Shelter Island in one semifinal, while the second-seeded Beach Diplomats are to play Team Dempsey in the other.

    The semis are to begin at 6, and the final is to follow. There will be a barbecue for players and spectators at Gurney’s beach bar next to the center court.

Artists-Writers Game

    The Artists and Writers Softball Game, which was rained out on Saturday — only the second time in the modern era dating to 1967 that the Game has been rained out — is to be played this Saturday at East Hampton’s Herrick Park. Batting practice is to begin at noon; the game is to begin at 2 p.m. The event is a fund-raiser for the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, Phoenix House of Long Island, East End Hospice, and the Retreat.

Hall of Famers Here

    Tennis Hall of Famers Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, and Mats Wilander are to make appearances at clubs here this week. Evert and Patrick McEnroe are to play in a pro-am at the East Hampton Indoor-Outdoor Club in Wainscott this afternoon, a tournament that is not open to the public. Wilander is to give clinics tomorrow at the Montauk Racquet Club off West Lake Drive from 3 to 6 p.m. The clinics, said Kirk Edwards, who manages the club, “are open to the public.” There will be a dinner afterward at Moby Dick’s restaurant on East Lake Drive, Edwards added. Navratilova is to play Saturday at John Graham’s Hampton Racquet Club off Buckskill Road in East Hampton.

Thursday, August 23

BEACH VOLLEYBALL, semifinal and final matches, followed by awards ceremony and barbecue, Gurney’s Inn, Montauk, from 6 p.m.

Friday, August 24

TENNIS, clinics by Hall of Famer Mats Wilander, Montauk Racquet Club, West Lake Drive, 3-6 p.m., followed by dinner at Moby Dick’s restaurant.

Saturday, August 25

ARTISTS-WRITERS GAME, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 2 p.m., preceded by batting practice from noon.

Sunday, August 26

HAMPTON CLASSIC, Opening Day, events in all five rings, with $20,000 Nicolock Time Challenge class from 8 a.m., opening day ceremonies at 1:30, and $50,000 U.S.H.J.A. hunter derby in the Grand Prix ring, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Monday, August 27

HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS, fall practice begins at local schools.

HAMPTON CLASSIC, classes for riders with disabilities, Jumper Ring-2, from 10 a.m., and A.S.P.C.A. Adoption Day, Anne Aspinall Ring, from 11 a.m., Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton showgrounds.

Tuesday, August 28

HAMPTON CLASSIC, jumper events in two rings, hunter events in three, from 8 a.m., Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Wednesday, August 29

HAMPTON CLASSIC, jumper, hunter, and short stirrup classes, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

   Gina Bradley, a city kid who took to the water once she’d graduated from the University of Vermont, said during a conversation the other day at her Paddle Diva office at the Shagwong Marina that she liked it that in a 90-minute lesson she would make the water completely accessible to women who otherwise might never venture forth.

    Stand-up paddleboarding, which she’s teaching now — though she began her waterborne career soon after college as a scuba diving instructor in the Caribbean — was easy, said the lively, intrepid Bradley, who incorporates what she’s learned over the years as a diving instructor, sailor, sailboarder, and swimmer — in short, all that she’s learned about the water and winds — into her classes.

    She came here to boardsail at Lazy Point, Napeague, about a dozen years ago, having returned from Cozumel and the Cayman Islands to New York City, where she’d grown up, to get “a real job” as a marketer of Web site designs to corporations “just when the Web began to get hot.”

    Soon, though, Napeague Harbor and its surroundings exerted more of a pull than moneymaking. “I fell in love with this place. . . . In 2000, I bought two cottages very close to Lazy Point, renovated them, lived in one, and rented out the other. . . .”

    That was also the year, she said, in which she was persuaded by one of her friends to take a surfing lesson at Ditch Plain from Scott Bradley — she knew more about the sport than she let on — a lover of the water also, who’d grown up clamming and surfing in Sayville, and who was to become her husband.

    “I knew right away that everything about him was 100 percent right. . . . By day, he’s in a suit and tie, driving a Prius, handling the insurance plans of medium to large-size businesses in the tristate region, by night he’s the most amazing father of two [Emma, 9, and James, 6] and husband to me, and on the weekends you can find him teaching water safety to the kids in the junior lifeguard program. He’s also a member of East Hampton’s Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad, and, with his best friend, Lars Svanberg, and Fred Doss and Eddie Cashin, he founded Paddlers 4 Humanity. . . . He’s not not worked a day in his life. This man works. And he’s a caregiver, a volunteer, an open ocean paddleboarder . . . he’s amazing.”

    Back to paddleboarding, Bradley, who wears her blond hair in braids, and who, when she teaches, is upbeat and encouraging, said she didn’t like it initially, which is to say about seven years ago when her husband and his triathletic training partner, Svanberg, brought some of the first boards out here.

    “I didn’t get it,” she said. “I hadn’t had the proper instruction. So, I began watching videos and went onto the Internet, and I picked up the correct techniques and began seeing the benefits. I was getting stronger and yet it seemed effortless . . . it’s very good for your core. . . . I’d say if you do it two to three days a week for a month you’ll begin to see the results.”

    Women, she said, were more apt pupils than men. Asked why, she replied, with a smile, “They’re better listeners.”

    What she learned Bradley passed on to her friends — Diane Engstrom, Anita Hodgens, and Jennifer Ford among them. And soon, after she’d taken them out into Gardiner’s Bay, she realized she wanted to teach the sport and, as a spinoff, to familiarize more and more women with the stresses the oceans and inland waters were undergoing.

    She’s been teaching stand-up paddleboarding for the past three years — her favorite spots being Three Mile Harbor, Accabonac Harbor, and Sagg Pond. The following morning, she said, she would lead women students on an eight-mile paddle from Landing Lane in Accabonac Harbor to Lazy Point, where one of her instructors, Rob Grinnel, would pick them up and drive them back to the marina.

    She had begun with seven boards and a pickup truck, and now has 30. Shari Hymes, a kayaker, adventure racer, and mountain climber, had helped her develop the business, she said.

    Because of the sport’s rapidly increasing popularity, Bradley’s at the marina seven days a week, so there’s rarely a chance when she and her husband can get out on the water by themselves in the summer. Just the night before, he’d come over at the end of the day and, after relaying the news that the nanny had taken the kids to the movies, said, “Let’s go!”

    She could only smile and roll her eyes.

   “You got a stop watch?” John Conner asked Bill Herzog at the starting line of the Miss Amelia’s Cottage 2-mile road race in Amagansett Sunday morning.

    When Herzog nodded, Conner said, “Can I use it?” Yes, he could, said Herzog, who was there to see how some of the young runners he coaches fared. “I hope it works,” he said to an observer. “I got it 25 years ago at Radio Shack.”

    This 2-mile race, about half of which is down Town Lane, is a favorite of kids, and of adults whose fast twitch fibers remain intact.

    Before it began, near the Amagansett railroad station, Conner recalled the year in which the train held up about half the field near the finish at Windmill Lane before swinging into their final kicks. On Sunday, the train arrived at the station a few minutes before the small but plucky group of runners took off up Old Stone Highway.

    Amid the blasts of the train’s horn, Conner called out to the some 30 participants, “It’s left, at Side Hill Lane, left, onto Town Lane, left, at Windmill Lane, and a sharp downhill left, onto the Amagansett Historical Society’s grounds.”

    Herzog had hoped Ashley West, who’s soon to be a freshman at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, and Dana Cebulski, who competed in the state cross-country meet last fall and who is to attend a running camp in Liberty, N.Y., this week, would be there, along, perhaps with Dana’s brother, Adam. But they were all no-shows. “Dana’s tired,” Herzog said, rolling his eyes. “And Ashley . . . I don’t know where she is. Maybe she’ll get out of a car at the last minute.”

    It was learned later that West had to go to work at 10 and had to run 11 miles that day as part of Susquehanna’s cross-country training regimen.

    Herzog said he wished Erik Eng­strom, who has been a regular attendee at all the summer races, and who has done well in them, would add some weight. “He’s almost transparent,” the veteran coach said as Engstrom, an incoming East Hampton High School freshman, who was walking by, smiled.

    This fall’s boys cross-country team would be quite good, Herzog predicted, “what with all these ninth graders — Erik, Jackson Rafferty, Randy Santiago, if he’s still in the district, T.J. Paradiso, and Leo Panish — mixed in with the kids Kevin Barry’s already got.”

    However, things could well go south for a number of high school sports, he added, if Springs School seventh and eighth graders were no longer able to be on East Hampton Middle School teams in cross-country, track, football, wrest­ling, lacrosse, and tennis.

    A group of Springs parents are engaged in trying to raise by month’s end the $35,000 the Springs School Board cut from its budget last spring that would have enabled the athletic alliance to continue.

    A 39-year-old, Justin Kulchinsky, wound up winning the 2-miler, as he had last year, in 10 minutes and 52 seconds. James Consiglio, 51, who won it in 2009, was the runner-up, in 11:33, outkicking the 14-year-old Engstrom (11:37) in the final yards. Sharon McCobb won among the women, and was fifth over all, in 13:26.

    Among the other front-runners were Craig Brierley, who had come with his young daughter, Julia, and Dan Kulchinsky, 62, Justin’s father, who was seventh in 13:49.

    The younger Kulchinsky, who owns the Mayfair Rocks jewelry store in East Hampton Village, was a top triathlete here some years ago, and still remains competitive despite breaks in training. His father had argued on the eve of the Montauk Sprint triathlon, which Mayfair Rocks sponsored, that he had to do it, and so he did, said Kulchinsky, finishing a credible 13th “racing against guys who’ve been doing this for 20 years. . . . Two years ago was the first time I’d done it [the Lighthouse Sprint] in 16 years — I was eighth. Then I got engaged, and then I got married.”

    He had clocked his first mile that day, he said, in 5:16. “I was pretty much racing against my heart rate.”

    Mayfair Rocks, he added, was among the stores that had donated gift certificates to the Springs Booster Club’s fund-raising effort.

    “I’m very impressed by the kids running in this race,” said Paul Fiondella, who laid out the Hamptons marathon and half-marathon courses. “It would be a shame if they can’t raise the money to recombine sports, but if they can’t, they should start running clubs.”

    “You know, people come out here in the summer for two reasons,” he continued. “One is to drink, which they do in Montauk, and two, because this is a nice, beautiful place where you can exercise. I do a 10-mile run twice a week, and I’m seeing many more runners out on the roads than I ever have.”

    “And more bikers too — more than ever,” interjected McCobb.

    “Exercise is one of the prime reasons people come out here — the town needs to get that into its head,” Fiondella said.

    Conner put in a plug for Mike Bahel’s “Pump And Run” competition, which was to have been held yesterday afternoon at Atlantic Avenue Beach.

    Competitors were to do as many bench presses as they could, he said, before setting out on a run along Bluff Road spanning the Atlantic Avenue and Indian Wells beaches. The bench press reps, valued at so many seconds per, were to be subtracted from one’s run time, he added. “You see some of the best athletes in town there, big guys, but often the smaller, quicker ones win out. It’s a lot of fun.”

    Asked if it were an open competition, Conner said that weigh-ins before the competition began leveled the playing field.

    “You’re embarrassed first,” quipped Beth Jordan.

   Annette MacNiven was heading toward a mountain bike triathlon in New Hampshire the other day with a light heart, for she knew she’d already won the regional championship in the 55-to-59-year-old age division, for the sixth or seventh year in a row.

    “The last 10 years I’ve been doing these off-road triathlons,” she said. “They’re going to be in the Olympics for the first time in 2016.”

    Recently, in the International Triathlon Union’s World Cross championships in the Appalachian foothills outside Birmingham, Ala., MacNiven exceeded her expectations, defeating a Californian and a Tennessean whom she had never beaten before, on the way to a runner-up finish, her best ever.

    “I used to be 30 minutes behind these girls, so I was very happy.” One of those whom she left in the dust was Barbara Peterson, a many-time national and world champion.

    “When I got there, and checked out the names, it looked like I was headed for fourth, and I didn’t want to be fourth!” MacNiven said, adding that it was the first time she’d met her rivals on “an East Coast type of course with a roller-coaster single-track bike leg with rocks and roots rather than the straight up, straight down kind you find in the mountains of Utah, say.”

    On such mountain bike courses, she said, “you use very light gears, not the heavy ones, and you develop good leg speed . . . you’re not grinding gears. Finally, I got them on my turf.”

    MacNiven’s husband, Tom, with whom she travels to races in an Airstream trailer, saw the fire in his wife’s eyes at various way stations along the Olympic-distance course, which comprised a .93-mile lake swim, an 18-mile mountain bike leg, and a 6.2-mile trail run.

    She liked the technical challenges mountain bike courses presented, MacNiven said. “I like it too that they’re all so different, and while you might hit a root, I’d rather that that happen than be hit by a car.”

    Leading into the world championships, MacNiven won her age group in two mountain bike triathlons, one of which was in Louisiana, on a course very similar to the one in Alabama. Not only did she top her age group in the Louisiana race, but she placed third over all. Also, the fact that East Hampton’s winter had been mild had been a great help in preparing her for the race season, which is to end soon.

    “I trained outside all winter — I’d just head out my backdoor and ride the trails in Bridgehampton. I didn’t have to go all the way out to Montauk.”

    The year before, because of all the snow, which forced her to remain inside, “I didn’t feel in racing shape when I went to the world championships in Spain. This time I was in shape and confident.”

    MacNiven has been a personal trainer here since 1998. She also works with the girls in the I-Tri program, coaches masters and Hurricane swimmers at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, and works out with John Conner’s running group at East Hampton High’s track on Monday and Wednesday evenings. “I haven’t been on a track in 10 years,” she said. “I want to keep it up, even if I have to do it alone, but it’s so much better to train with others.”

    Masters swimmers, she added, in answer to a question, could avail themselves of the Y’s pool not only at 6 a.m., but also on certain days of the week at 9:30 a.m. and at 7:30 p.m.

    Having grown up in New Mexico, “I was always a runner — I was in my first national cross-country championship when I was 9 years old. I’ll never be a great swimmer, but I’m good enough. It’s taken me 20 years to change from a runner’s physique with tight ankles and heavy legs to a triathlon physique.”

    When it comes to triathloning, “I’m good at everything, though I’m not great at one thing.”

    “The Xterra Worlds are in October, but I can’t go. I.T.U.’s world championships will be in the Netherlands next July. . . . I’m hoping for another mild winter.”