“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.

   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.

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.

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.

   Two events at Fresh Pond in Amagansett — one on land, one on the water — coincided Sunday, and in terms of numbers the paddleboarders, who raced three and six-mile triangular courses in Gardiner’s Bay that morning, outnumbered those who ran in the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s 5K on the roads nearby.

    Competitors came from near and far to vie in the stand-up paddleboard races put on by Lars Svanberg’s Main Beach Surf & Sport and Paddlers 4 Humanity as a benefit for the Retreat, a nonprofit organization that has provided shelter, counseling, and supportive services for victims of domestic violence here since 1987.

    Jeffrey Friedman, the Retreat’s executive director, said, as the racers, some from as far away as Martha’s Vineyard and Gloucester, Mass., prepared to launch their boards into the bay, that “our phones have been ringing off the hook since the economic downturn began. . . . Lars came to us, and we, of course, were pleased he did. Events like this — we’re also going to be one of the beneficiaries of the Artists-Writers Softball Game this year — help us to meet the rising demand for our services.”

    Just before racetime the weather on the bay looked a bit daunting, with a stiff wind out of the northeast, cloudy skies, and a strong chop. Tom O’Donoghue, who has been training for a year with Ed Cashin, was a first-timer, but willing, though he thought the conditions would “stretch the field a bit.”

    “We’ll see how [the six-miler] goes,” he said. “I’ll have to put all this training to use.”

    It had been an interesting year for him, O’Donoghue, a self-confessed former couch potato, continued. “I did the Hyner Challenge [a brutal mountain race in Pennsylvania, near Lycoming College, Cashin’s alma mater] and I’m going to do two marathons. . . .”

    “Today?” said Jonathan Shlafer, who was listening in and who hadn’t far to travel, living, as he does, about 50 yards from the Fresh Pond road-end, “in a tiny, shitty little house with a hell of a backyard.”

    One of the farthest-flung competitors, if not the farthest-flung, was the six-mile winner-to-be, Patrick Broemmel, who removed himself 20 years ago from California’s San Joaquin Valley to Oak Bluffs on the Vineyard, where he works as a carpenter and contractor and builds his own carbon fiber paddleboards.

    “I love The Vineyard Gazette,” he said in answer to a question. “I love its great big wide pages and the fact that it’s still black and white. If I want color, I can get it on the Internet.”

    As for stand-up paddleboarding, he had been doing it “since 2003,” said Broemmel, adding that racing has come just recently to New England — lagging well behind Florida, California, and Hawaii in that respect. Asked how he’d been doing, he said, “I win some and lose some. . . . I raced in Maine yesterday, though I didn’t do very well.”

    After finishing in the van of the six-mile fleet, just ahead of one of his traveling companions, Will Rich of Gloucester, he said, “It was challenging . . . all on the right going down toward that chimney, and the waves were coming across the beam, which puts you in the hardest position. On the second leg we went into the wind, which stabilizes the board, though it’s much more work, and coming in we had the wind at our backs.”

    Svanberg, who placed third, said he wasn’t all that bothered by having been bettered by two ringers from Massachusetts. “They’re probably half my age,” said the 51-year-old triathlete and paddler, adding that “over all, it was a perfect day after the wind laid down.”

    Sean T. Kellershon, 25, of Northport won the three-miler, even though, as he said, he put his knee through his board after the fin caught on the bottom at the start.

    Several people fell as the six-milers got under way, among them Roxane Robinson, a SUP teacher, who, when the accident happened, was projecting herself for third place. “It’s the first time I’ve fallen since last summer . . . well, there’s another race in two weeks.”

    Robinson was referring to the Paddle for Pink races on North Haven that are to benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation Aug. 11.

    A co-chair of that event, Maria Baum, the owner of the Tutto il Giorno restaurants in Sag Harbor and Southampton, who was among the three-mile competitors that day, said stand-up paddling had played a significant part in helping her get through breast-cancer chemo­therapy last summer.

    Paddling, she said, wasn’t a spin class. “You’re out on the most beautiful bays and inlets in the entire world — it’s overwhelming. You’re exhausted at the end, but you’ve done something so good for your body, and for your mind. You haven’t given a thought to how hard you’ve been working. . . . It’s overwhelming.”

    The sport, said Svanberg, “is the fastest growing water sport in the world. People have come here today from Maine, New Jersey, Massachusetts. . . .” Not to mention Northport (Kellershon), Bellport (Meaghan Shannon), and Mastic Beach, from which the 55-year-old Steven Hat hails. “I’m looking to paddle until I’m 80,” he said. “I do it five to six days a week. You know, they call us ‘the Gusu people.’ Gusu,” he added, “stands for Get Up, Stand Up.”

    Asked what was next for him, Broemmel said, “A long drive back to Cape Cod.”

Thursday, August 9

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game one of best-of-three final, Groundworks-P.B.A. winner vs. Bostwick’s, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7:15 p.m.

Saturday, August 11

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 tournament, Fiske Field, Shelter Island, 8 a.m.-noon.

PADDLEBOARDING, races to benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, home of Lisa and Richard Perry, North Haven, 4 p.m., registration from 3.

SPINNING, B-East Roar, benefit Max Cure Foundation, Amagansett Square, 4-7 p.m.

POLO, Monty Waterbury Cup semifinals, 10:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., Two Trees Stables, Hayground Road, Bridgehampton.

Sunday, August 12

RUNNING, Miss Amelia’s Cottage 2-miler, Amagansett Railroad Station, 9 a.m.

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 tournament, Fiske Field, Shelter Island, 8 a.m.-noon.

Tuesday, August 14

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game two of best-of-three final, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7:15 p.m.

    Fifteen teams duked it out in the double-elimination Travis Field memorial softball tournament at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett over the weekend, and the Mighty Midgetts, Brian Midgett’s team, came out on top.

    The Midgetts prevailed over Uihlein’s 17-12 in a key semifinal matchup of theretofore undefeated teams in the winners bracket, clinching the championship for last year’s runners-up. Uihlein’s placed second, the Bad News Bubs, last year’s champion, third, and the Pink Panthers, a team managed by Brian Anderson, one of the tournament’s founders, fourth.

    “It was great to see so many teams this year, though we’re still shooting for more,” Anderson said Tuesday morning. “We’d like this tournament to grow. If we do get 16 or more teams, we may have to add another day or use two fields. People came from as far away as the city to play. Some of the guys on the Mighty Midgetts are from Riverhead and the North Fork. We’re happy to have them come here and have fun.”

    Last year’s tourney had raised “just shy of $11,000,” said Anderson, who added that Travis Field scholarships had gone this year to Ryan Joudeh, Dana Dragone, Tanae Walker, and Nicole Miksinski. The scholarship awards are to go to East Hampton High School senior athletes who “display great leadership in sports, love their school and community, and show kindness to others.”

    It was the fifth year for the tourney, which was begun in 2008 by Anderson, Andy Tuthill, Mike Graham, Austin Bahns, and David Samot Jr. in memory of their friend, Travis Field, who died in a car accident that May at the age of 20.

    Members of the Springs Booster Club, who hope to raise $35,000 by the end of this month so that an estimated 40 to 45 Springs School seventh and eighth graders can continue to participate on East Hampton Middle School teams, met last Thursday with the East Hampton School District’s athletic director, Joe Vas, who encouraged them in their endeavor.

    “I would love it if these combined sports can continue, but the community will have to come up with the money,” Vas said Tuesday morning. The funding for combined sports had been cut from the budget Springs School taxpayers approved in the spring. The meeting’s attendees also included Bill Barbour, who coaches East Hampton High’s varsity football team, John Krupp, who coaches the middle school’s football team, the Springs superintendent, Dominic Mucci, and its principal, Eric Casale.

    Mary McPartland, one of the Booster Club members, said over the weekend that the East Hampton Indoor Tennis Club had donated $1,000, and that six doctors had donated $500 each. “So we’ve got a lot of optimism,” she said, “but we only have 30 more days.”

    Asked if the entire amount had to be in hand by early September, Vas said school lawyers were studying that question. Meanwhile, he’s preparing the initial paperwork, he said, having to do with the applications of two Springs eighth graders — Diana Winthrop and Andrew Wilson — who want to participate on high school teams. Winthrop wants to join the girls swimming squad, and Wilson wants to play junior varsity soccer.

    McPartland said, and Vas agreed, that the affected combined sports were middle school football, coed cross-country, girls tennis, wrestling, boys lacrosse, girls lacrosse, and coed track and field.

    McPartland said the Springs School Parent Teacher Association, a nonprofit organization, is handling the donations. They can be sent to the Springs PTA, Springs School, School Street, East Hampton 11937.

    The weekend of Aug. 18-19 will sport two popular events here — the Artists and Writers Softball Game at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Saturday, the 18th, and Ellen’s Run the next morning in Southampton.

    It’s the 64th year for the Artists-Writers Game, according to its impresario, Leif Hope, and it’s the 17th year for Ellen’s Run, which has underwritten Southampton Hospital’s state-of-the-art breast cancer center, named after Julie Ratner’s late sister, Ellen P. Hermanson.

    Ratner, Ellen’s Run’s founder, said during a conversation Friday that “we’ve given well over a million dollars to the hospital. Our goal was to have a facility with the rigor of a teaching hospital, but with the warmth of a community, and that’s what we’ve achieved.”

    The Artists-Writers Game, which has been a dead heat record-wise in the post-modern era, which is to say since 1988 (though the Writers are ahead 28-15-1 since the Game began to be played as a benefit in 1967), will benefit the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, Phoenix House of Long Island, East End Hospice, and the Retreat.

    Hope said Monday that he plans this year to have a former member of the Wounded Warriors amputee touring softball team, William (Spanky) Gibson, pitch the first three innings for the Artists.

    The Wounded Warriors amputee team, which tours the country, played in — and won — a slow-pitch softball game at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Saturday, impressing Hope, who was one of the spectators, immensely. “They hit the hell out of the ball,” he said. “It was remarkable to watch these guys. I would have loved it if they could have played in our game, but they’re booked. Maybe next year. They’re playing next in Panama City, Fla.”

    Hope said he would also present plaques before the Game begins to the widows of Roy Scheider, Barney Rosset, and Bert Sugar, longtime participants. Scheider always kept the Artists’ hopes alive with his pitching, Rosset, whose Grove Press broke new ground in American publishing, also was a groundbreaker softball-wise inasmuch as he was the first literary type to play in what had begun as an annual madcap artists’ romp. Sugar, the colorful boxing commentator and writer, announced the Game in recent years and was a flawless scorekeeper, no mean feat given the teams’ frequent brouhahas and juggled lineups.

    Ratner said she always worried about the turnouts — the race is now based at Southampton Hospital — though invariably they have been huge. “There’s a great spirit among the volunteers, the participants, and the spectators — everyone’s so supportive,” she said. “It’s a beautiful course, with two water stops, one overseen by the Boy Scouts and one overseen by the Shinnecock Reservation.”

    As far as getting to Southampton from East Hampton on a Sunday morning — initially seen as an impediment — “everyone’s asleep,” she said.

    The battle against breast cancer has been frustrating, she continued. Despite the advances in research and in targeted treatments, “the numbers haven’t changed that much over all. Well over 200,000 will be diagnosed in this calendar year, and probably 40,000 women will die. Even 20,000 would be too many. We have to stop this rampage.”

    Ratner said she expected Representative Tim Bishop and State Senator Ken LaValle would be there, though she would ask them to “just speak a word or two — not too much. The runners are all looking at their watches and are ready to push off from the starting line.” Once the gun sounded, she said, she would “walk quickly back to the finish line, hoping that I’ll make it before the first runner comes in.”

    Hope said that the Artists, despite their post-modern breakthrough, were less discomfited by losing than the Writers. It was a nine-inning game, he reminded when asked if it were seven, the usual length of a slow-pitch game. Then he added, “If the Writers are winning, it’s seven — if they’re losing, it’s nine.”

   Maidstone Market continued its undefeated string of championships in the 7-on-7 men’s soccer league here, defeating Tortorella Pools 3-1 in the playoff final on Aug. 1.

    Tortorella, the tournament’s fourth seed, had upset top-seeded 75 Main 2-1 in one of the semifinals while Maidstone, the dominant men’s soccer team locally in the past four years, had shut out Bateman Painting 2-0 in the other semi.

    Thus the Market, whose manager is John Romero, finished the regular and post seasons with a 9-1-2 record, its sole loss, by a score of 2-1, coming at the hands, as it were, of 75 Main on July 11. Romero said it was the eighth straight 7-on-7 championship for Maidstone — the league plays a fall and spring season each year — though given the fact that the string began in July of 2008, it may have been the ninth straight.

    With a lineup that includes the league’s top three scorers, Mario Olaya, Gehider Garcia, and Luis Correa, not to mention the league’s best goalie, Alex Meza, and other strong players — Esteban Valverde, Antonio Padilla, Gerber Garcia, Carlos Torres, and John and Matthew Romero among them — it is hard to imagine any other team keeping up with Maidstone, at least when it is at full strength, as it was for the final contested at East Hampton’s Herrick Park.

    Afterward, the elder Romero, who because of the death of his father in Colombia this summer had not entered an 11-man team in a semipro Sunday league up the Island, told his players that they were to be commended for continuing to play with such passion despite their accustomed success.

Tortorella, which finished the regular season with a losing record, at 4-5-1, did not by any means go gently that night. A jaw-dropping 40-yard sizzler off the foot of Rene Gutierrez that sailed high over a leaping Meza into the right corner of Maidstone’s nets at the end of the first half sent the teams into break tied at 1-1.

    Maidstone took the field with Correa, Gehider Garcia, and John Romero on the front line, and with Padilla, Gerber Garcia, and Torres on defense, and with Meza in the goal.

   Tortorella’s starting forwards were David Rodriguez, Steven Orrego, and Eddie Lopez, with Rodolfo Marin, Christian Munoz, and Gutierrez defending. Craig Caiazza minded Tortorella’s nets.

    Maidstone took it to Tortorella for most of the first half, though wasn’t able to cash in until, with about 12 minutes gone in the 30-minute period, Gehider Garcia beat Caiazza to the left corner from in close after Padilla had chipped the ball up to him.

   Several minutes later, Tortorella came close as Rodriguez’s one-touch of a cross from Marin went just wide, and despite the entry into the game at that point of Olaya, the “golden boot” award winner, Tortorella seized the momentum. Before Gutierrez’s jaw-dropper, which was launched  from midfield, Munoz, Lopez, and Orrego were presented with four or five scoring opportunities much closer to Maidstone’s goal.

    Valverde joined Correa and Gehider Garcia on Maidstone’s front line when the second half began, and immediately made his presence known, rocketing a shot off the right post.

    Soon after, Correa alertly deposited a behind-the-back pass from Valverde past Caiazza from about 8 yards out for a 2-1 lead. Though a victory wasn’t guaranteed: moments later, Gehider Garcia was yellow-carded after pushing Lopez to the turf, which forced Maidstone to play a man-down for several minutes, though the champs withstood Tortorella’s attacks, and even countered with a couple of their own before the sides were all even again.

    Maidstone clinched the victory in the final minutes as Olaya, who was unmarked at the right post, tapped in the rebound of a shot taken by Gehider Garcia. Munoz and Gutierrez, who had come up to challenge Maidstone’s best ball-handler, could only look back over their shoulders as the ball went over the line.

    When it was noted afterward that the Market had been without its imposing center midfielder, Diego Marles, this season, the man who has customarily orchestrated the team’s offense, John Romero said, “Yes, no Diego, but even so these guys always find a way.”