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.”

   The CfAR men’s slow-pitch softball team “mercied” the defending town league’s champion, Schenck Fuels, 21-6 on Aug. 1 at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett.

    Eight-run outbursts by the insurgents in the bottom of the fifth and sixth innings did the Fuelmen in, making a seventh inning unnecessary.

    The surprising three-game sweep marked the first playoff championship for Ray Wojtusiak’s team under the CfAR banner, though the player-manager and his teammate Dick White won championships with Bistrian Gravel in 2004, ’05, and ’07, and were runners-up in ’08. Moreover, under the Indian Wells Tavern aegis they were runners-up in ’09, and, under the sponsorship of Stephen Hand’s Equipment (and with pretty much the same lineup), lost in four to Schenck’s in last year’s best-of-five final.

    In what proved to be the deciding game of this series, the Fuelmen, with Adam Gledhill and Vinnie Alversa getting the r.b.i., scored two runs in the top of the first inning, after which CfAR began to assert its rights in the bottom half. Singles by Diego Palomo, Tommy Thorsen, Joe Sullivan, and Bill Collins, the latter two driving in runs, and a sacrifice fly accounted for the scoring.

    The score was knotted at 5 after four innings, and in the top of the fifth the defending champs made it 6-5 before the floodgates opened.

    Wojtusiak singled to lead off CfAR’s fifth, and, after Palomo flied out, Thorsen doubled home Wojtusiak and Sullivan doubled in Thorsen. Bill Collins’s subsequent single scored Sullivan from second. Then Alex Tekulsky, one of three players Wojtusiak had picked up from the late lamented Independent’s team, launched a two-run home run into the parking lot. That made it 10-6, but CfAR wasn’t through: Andrew Foglia, the cleanup hitter, singled and moments later trotted around the bases when Chris Pfund homered. A solo shot by Nick Jarboe upped CfAR’s lead to 13-6.

    CfAR’s 56-year-old pitcher, Rob Nicoletti, who’s been in the league for 38 years — and who ended a brief retirement at Wojtusiak’s behest after the Independent announced its withdrawal from the league in April — shut Schenck’s formidable hitters down without a run in the top of the sixth, which furthered CfAR’s cause.

    Thorsen flied out in leading off CfAR’s sixth, but no matter, for the team was to bat around, bringing him up again.

    Following the flyout, Sullivan singled and Collins hit a two-run homer. Tekulsky singled, Foglia singled, and Pfund hit a three-run homer. Jarboe lined out to third, but Nicoletti singled and Wojtusiak tripled, driving in Nicoletti. A single by Palomo drove in Wojtusiak with the team’s 20th run. CfAR’s leadoff hitter advanced to second on a throwing error and then came all the way around on a single by Thorsen, sliding in under Vinnie Alversa’s tag with the run that ended the game and the series.

    Afterward, Wojtusiak said he wanted to “thank CfAR for letting us use their logo — we were happy to promote their cause. And we want to congratulate Schenck’s on their great season as well.”

    As for why the league, which Wojtusiak recalled as having once boasted 14 teams in two divisions, had shrunk to five — to four, given the Briar Patch Boys’ forfeits in the final two weeks — he said he found it hard to believe, despite various theories advanced as to the reasons why, that there wasn’t adequate support here for slow-pitch softball, “a common blue-collar American sport. I’ll be 40 soon, I’ve been playing in this league 21 years, and I’m having just as much fun as I did when I was 19. . . . I play in the Montauk league too. There are 9 or 10 teams there, though it’s more casual, not as competitive as the one in Amagansett. There are 15 teams in the Travis Field tournament . . . there’s got to be a way [to attract more teams]. Winning’s great, but more important, we want to keep this league going.”

   Amos Ryan, who first came to East Hampton as a teenager at the invitation of a pen pal whose sailboat he’d tended on Union Island in the Grenadines, and who was to attain educational and professional goals that some here doubted he would, now faces a serious challenge indeed inasmuch as his and his wife Canela’s 14-year-old daughter, Manijeh, has been diagnosed with brain cancer.

    “We lived just two blocks from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and had no financial problem, and yet, despite that, the stress was unbelievable,” Richard Plotkin, a part-time Amagansett resident, said Saturday evening at Luly Duke’s house before the Three Mile Harbor fireworks got under way.

   Plotkin was referring to the ordeal his and his son David’s families have undergone after David’s son, Max, was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer (B-cell lymphoma) the day before his 4th birthday. The 9-year-old is in remission now, his grandfather said.

   As a result, the Plotkins began the Max Cure Foundation to help families of limited means whose children were stricken with cancer and to raise as much money as they could to fund pediatric cancer research. In due course, the Plotkins formed a financial and familial alliance with the Stewarts — Jim, Brigid, Katy, and Robert — of Sag Harbor after it became known that Katy had been diagnosed in April 2009 with a rare form of liver cancer. She was to die, at the age of 12, in January 2011. Her parents, both educators here, have established a scholarship fund in her name.

   Just as was the case with the Stewarts, the Max Cure Foundation has included the Ryans, who live in Medford, among its Long Island beneficiaries. “We are providing them with a monthly stipend of $500, and we are also helping a family from Hampton Bays,” said the elder Plotkin, adding that Max Cure is extending its reach. “We’re registered as a not-for-profit organization in 40 states . . . we’re helping six families in California. . . .”

   Amos Ryan, who has been since 2005 a New York City police officer — he’s based at the 107th precinct in Queens — will probably best be remembered here for his basketball prowess. He was a raw talent when he arrived at East Hampton High in 1992, but Ed Petrie, the state’s winningest public high school coach, turned the thickset 6-foot-3-inch Union Islander into a strong inside player who went on to be ranked among the nation’s top rebounders when he played at Suffolk Community and Southampton Colleges.

    Ed Petrie said, “He was a terrific kid. He came from a very little island that I’d never heard of before and the day he came into the gym he was smiling from ear to ear. He had played basketball but not a whole lot. He was a powerful rebounder, 6-3, but he played much bigger. Other kids would just fall off him. In his senior year, we went 15 and 5 and Amos averaged 18 points and 12 rebounds a game. His attitude was terrific. He worked hard and he was the type of person who was a pleasure to be around, and of course we all feel for him and the situation with his daughter.”

    For seven years, Ryan, following his initial visit with the sailing couple, lived with Rein Griesmer, a retired school administrator here and in Southampton, and with Griesmer’s son, John, a teammate of his on Bonac’s basketball team in the early 1990s.

    Both Griesmers said during telephone conversations this week that they greatly admired Ryan’s drive.

    “He was pretty weak in reading when he came here,” said the elder Griesmer. “Some people thought he wouldn’t finish anything, but he proved them wrong. He graduated from East Hampton High School, he drove every day from here to Selden when he went to Suffolk Community, and he graduated there too. He did well at Southampton College also. Whenever I asked him what he’d like to be, he said he’d either like to be in the military or a policeman, and now he’s a police officer. We went to see him graduate from the Police Academy at Madison Square Garden. . . . He’s a success story, in spite of all the odds. He deserves whatever comes — he’s worked hard for everything he’s got.”

    Canela Ryan, who’s from Southampton, said their daughter had seizures when she was 3 years old, caused, as it turned out, by a brain tumor that initially was benign but which was found to have become cancerous in 2010. “They weren’t able to get it all. She’s had radiation and she’s still on chemotherapy [at the Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park] every other week. We’re there all day, from 10 in the morning to 6 or 7 at night. She’s about to go into ninth grade — she wants to stay in school. She’s had to miss some school, though her eighth-grade year was better. We’re hoping the chemo will shrink the tumor all the way.”

    As for the Max Cure Foundation’s monthly support, Manijeh’s mother, who lost her full-time position with the Bank of America’s Shirley branch and now works part time at the bank’s Lake Grove office, said, “It’s been a great help. It’s been going to pay for medication, our oil bills. . . . It’s taken a weight off so that we can focus on the medical part. The police department also had a fund-raiser for us last year.”

    If it weren’t for the Plotkins’ foundation, she said in parting, “we probably would have our lights shut off.”

   The scoreboard was working again and things were pretty much back to normal at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett Monday night as Schenck Fuels, the defending champion, whose hitters delivered four runs in the top of the seventh inning, ousted Round Swamp Farm from the playoffs and, by virtue of the 13-12 win, advanced to a best-of-five men’s final with CfAR that was to have begun last night.

    The Fuelmen won despite the fact that Round Swamp’s Jimmy Miller hit three home runs that night and Bryan Anderson, the team’s player-manager, hit two. Schenck’s trailed 12-9 going into the top of the seventh, but Andy Tuthill, after Vinnie Alversa had reached first base as the result of an infield error, poled a two-run homer and Brendan Fennell followed with a solo shot of his own, tying the score. The winning run was driven in soon after by the pitcher Doug Dickson’s bases-loaded sacrifice fly to center field.

    Dickson shut Round Swamp down in the bottom of the seventh to cap the two-game sweep — Schenck’s had won game one by a score of 19-16 — as three successive overanxious hitters lofted fly balls to outfielders who’d camped out under them.

    “They were slugging ’em — they’re a good team,” Rich Tuthill, Schenck’s manager, said afterward. “But they had some miscues in the field. That’s what made the difference.”

    A grand slam home run by Fennell during a nine-run sixth had made the difference in the first game, Tuthill added.

    Schenck’s and CfAR met in last year’s final as well, though Ray Wojtusiak’s team played under the Stephen Hand’s Equipment banner in 2011. The Fuelmen won the championship, the first in 12 years for Alversa’s roster, in four games.

    Playoffs in the East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch league were to have begun Tuesday night, with Grazina Orthodontics matched with Groundworks, and Men at Work versus P.B.A. The losers of those games are successively to play top-seeded Bostwick’s and the winners are to play a best-of-three semifinal to determine which teams are to contend in a best-of-three final.

    Though Bostwick’s, the perennial women’s champion — its core has won 16 championships in the past quarter-century — lost half a dozen players this season, including its ace pitcher, Susie Warner, and Jeanie Berkoski, a hard-hitting lefty, the team reloaded.

    One of the newcomers, Sami Krantz, an excellent shortstop, said following Bostwick’s 12-2 rout of P.B.A. last week that she had pitched four years at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass., that Jenna Kovar had led all field hockey scorers in the nation when she played that sport at Hofstra, and that Kenzie Maloney had played softball at Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C. All three, Krantz said, had been teammates on Hampton Bays’ girls softball team four years ago.

    Bostwick’s, whose starting lineup also comprises Mireille Sturmann, Kathy Amicucci, Virginia McGovern, Jeannie Bunce, Eileen Noonan, Erin Molloy, Jen Spellman, and Patricia Mulligan, is thus again the team to beat. It finished the season with a 7-1 record and is looking to win its seventh playoff title in a row.

    In other slow-pitch news, the Travis Field memorial tournament’s “bracket bash” is to be held tomorrow night from 7:30 to 10:30 at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett. Sixteen coed teams, including one recruited from the women’s slow-pitch league, are to vie in the tourney, which is to be contested at the Terry King ball field from next Thursday through Aug. 5.

   The I-Tri explosion was never more evident than at Sunday morning’s youth triathlon at Maidstone Park.

    Cheered on by a sizable crowd of parents, relatives, and coaches, including Theresa Roden, who several years ago founded the program, which has used triathlon training to transform teenage girls who would otherwise have been couch potatoes, about 80 young competitors, half from the Springs and Montauk Schools’ I-Tri groups, swam 300 yards in the bay, biked 7 miles through Maidstone Park’s environs in Springs, and finished with a mile-and-a-half run.

    Thomas Brierley, a 16-year-old ocean lifeguard at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett, and a star on East Hampton High’s boys swim team, was the winner, in 35 minutes and 40.77 seconds, with his training partner and fellow swim team mate, Teague Costello, 15, not far behind, in 36:38.05.

    Brierley and Costello were the first out of the water. Brierley was first in on the bike, though Costello, who’s a pool lifeguard at Sportime in Amagansett in the summer, was first out on the run, leaving Brierley to contend a bit longer with his shoelaces.

    “Maybe I should give a transition class next year,” said Annette MacNiven, a top Xterra age-group competitor who was making sure everyone got out of the bike transition area safely. MacNiven and Amanda Husslein helped the race director, Sharon McCobb, prepare the I-Tri girls for Sunday’s race.

    The winner among the female entrants was Nora Rosati, 16, a Montauk summer resident from California’s Bay Area, in 37:47.26. She was third over all, and right behind her, in 37:54.55, was 16-year-old Katrina Garry, a part-time Montauk resident who was a member of Friends Academy’s state-championship 4-by-800-meter relay team this spring. Rosati and Garry, whose elder sister, Kira, won this race outright in its first year and who now runs at Yale, train together, as well. The two are to take the ocean lifeguard certification test at Amagansett’s Indian Wells Beach on Aug. 6.

    But winning was not what the day was about: It was about finishing, persisting, and improving, not to mention camaraderie. An observer ventured to guess that if this year’s I-Tri times were compared to last year’s, improvement would be noted pretty much all down the line. Spirits were uniformly high at the finish line that morning; the glow that comes with accomplishment was palpable. Indeed, as Roden has said before, not only did these girls deserve to be viewed as athletes, but as triathletes.

    “She’s my star,” Roden said after Lizette Maurath had emerged from a tunnel of I-Tri well-wishers set up to greet the event’s participants at the finish line. “When we began in March it was the first time she’d been on a bike and she wasn’t that comfortable in the swim.”

    Ana Toledo, 13, the first of the I-Tri girls over the line, when asked how she’d done last year, replied, “Not very well. I improved a lot this year, though I still have to work on my running.” Headed for the high school in the fall, Ana said she would play soccer in the fall, after which she’d do winter track and spring track.

    Absent I-Tri, “I would have probably played soccer only,” said Ana, who agreed that I-Tri had, as had been the case with her teammates, expanded her horizons greatly. “It’s helped with my grades too.”

    “We help each other,” said Tali Friedman, who finished behind Toledo, and who knocked out the most push-ups when the girls were being evaluated at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter last winter. A gymnast as well, Tali said, I-Tri had “given me more confidence.”

    “Her grandfather inspires her,” John Hennings, Paige Rucano’s stepfather, said, referring to Pete Rucano, who, at 86, runs six miles a day.

    Paige’s mother, Michelle Rucano, said, “She was on Bill Herzog’s undefeated middle school track team. She did the 100, the 400, the hurdles. . . . I-Tri has definitely brought her out of her shell. Her self-esteem and confidence have soared.”

    “I was going to kick Abby’s derriere,” said Kattie Fragola, who crossed the line with Abby Roden, “but then she said, ‘Let’s run together,’ so I did.” They crossed the line together.

    On the subject of I-Tri, Roden, one of its leaders, said, “It’s been incredible how it’s taken off. We look at where it was and where it is now, and say, ‘Wow!’ ”

    Tara Mansir, Kattie’s mother, who’s been an integral part of the program since it began, said of her daughter, “She played tennis and that was about it. She didn’t do any track and field. . . . I-Tri’s raised their confidence level. Three of them never swam before this March. One had never been on a bike. And now they’re triathletes, they’re eating healthy food, and doing mind-body stuff . . . everything that’s so important.”

    Among those cheering the young triathletes on was Stacey Scarpone of Sea Cliff, the executive director of the Women’s Fund of Long Island, one of I-Tri’s growing list of supporters. “We provide grants to grassroots girls and women’s organizations focusing on leadership, economic stability, and social justice. It could be anything, not just athletics,” said Scarpone, a runner herself. “I love how I-Tri has exploded. These girls are recognized all over the place — it’s wonderful.”

    The age-group winners were Julia Brierley and Will Howard in the 10-and-under division; Maggie Purcell and Jack Wolf in the 11-to-12 division; Amanda Calabrese and Hudson Cooke in the 13-to-14 division, and Lucy Kohlhoff in the 15-to-17 division.

    Besides Thomas Brierley, Costello, Rosati, and Garry, the top 20 comprised Paige Duca, Ben Howard, Cooke, Wolf, Erik Engstrom, Calabrese, Kohlhoff, Purcell, Christian Brierley, Morgan German, Liana Paradiso, Chasen Dubs, Julia Brierley, Isabella Swanson, Grace Howard, and T.J. Calabrese.

   Year-round South Fork residents know well what it means when an otherwise nondescript vehicle appears in their rearview mirrors with a flashing green or blue light on the dash. Other drivers, particularly those passing through just for a day or weekend, may have no idea that the signals say, “Get out of the way — and fast!”

    Though police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances run with lights, accompanied by loud sirens and horns, the vehicles driven by volunteers can only carry a simple colored light — which is sometimes difficult to notice in bright sunshine or amid confusing summer traffic.

    For example, we heard recently from a member of the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association who said another driver did not yield, during a mutual-aid call, all the way to Bridgehampton.

    Seasonal visitors and day-trippers may not be aware that these modest signals may mean life or death, as they identify firefighters and ambulance personnel on their way to an emergency. The region’s hospitality industry, landlords, and public officials alike must do more to get the word out. Lives may depend on it.

Thursday, August 2

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field tournament begins, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 5:30 p.m.

BEACH VOLLEYBALL, games at Gurney’s Inn, Montauk, from 6 p.m.

Friday, August 3

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 5:30 p.m.

Saturday, August 4

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 8 a.m.

LIFEGUARDING, junior lifeguard tournament, Indian Wells beach, Amagansett, 9:30 a.m., also Sunday.

SOFTBALL, Wounded Warrior Amputee softball team vs. Hampton College Baseball League coaches, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 1:45 p.m.

Sunday, August 5

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 8 a.m.

TENNIS, Paul Annacone Management free clinics for adults and children, Montauk Yacht Club, Star Island Drive, 1-3 p.m.

Monday, August 6

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game four of best-of-five final, if needed, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, August 7

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs continue, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7 p.m.

Wednesday, August 8

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game five of best-of-five final, if needed, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7:30 p.m.

Artists-Writers

    Alec Baldwin, Christie Brinkley, Josh Charles, Mark Feuerstein, Anthony from WEHM, Eric Ernst, Ed Hollander, Countess LuAnn de Lesseps, Walter Bernard, Jean Reno, Gregg Bello, Bill Strong, and Lori Singer, among others, are hoping to paint a pretty picture and Ken Auletta, Mike Lupica, Giada de Laurentiis, George Stephanopoulos, Lawrence O’Donnell, Mort Zuckerman, Jim Leyritz, Rod Gilbert, Mark Weinstein, Rick Leventhal, Bill Collage, Mark Green, and Richard Wiese are anxious to put yet another win in the book at this year’s Artists and Writers Softball Game, which is to be played as a benefit for the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, Phoenix House of Long Island, East End Hospice, and the Retreat at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Aug. 18.

    The Artists, if you remember, lost 17-12 to the Writers last year, evening the series since 1988 at 11-11-1. The Writers still hold a commanding 25-18-1 lead in the modern era.

    Among the Game’s numerous sponsors are the Shana Alexander Foundation, Hollander Design, Ronnette Riley Architect, Walter Bernard Design, the Hamptons International Film Festival, the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, and the Bay Street Theatre.

Springs Boosters

    A Springs Booster Club headed by Mark Lappin, Janice Vaziri, Mary McPartland, Kristy and Pat Brabant, and Adam Wilson has been formed to help refund athletic programs that were cut in the school’s 2012-13 budget — a decision that affected “over 60 students.”

    “Our goal is to raise $35,000, the budget allocated last year to send our students on the bus to East Hampton every day after school all year long to participate in consolidated East Hampton teams,” a fund-raising letter says in part. “All funds will be submitted to the Springs P.T.A., our nonprofit parent-teacher community organization.”

Volleyball Standings

    Air & Speed remains in first place in the beach volleyball league, with a 13-1 record, going into this evening’s games at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk. The Beach Diplomats are second, at 12-2, and Dempsey’s is in third, at 11-1.

Dr. Berger Threepeats

    Dr. Bernard Berger of East Hampton recently was the 75-plus winner in the New York City Triathlon. It was the third year in a row that he has won his age group, his daughter, Emi, said in an e-mail. “He was the second-eldest competitor this year. Last year, he was the oldest. What a star!”

Polo at Two Trees

    In Monty Waterbury Cup games played last week at Two Trees Stables in Bridgehampton, Circa defeated Equuleus 14-6 and White Birch defeated Montauk 10-8. The semifinals are to be played Saturday, at 10:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The final is to be played Tuesday at 5 p.m.

    With the Giant Steps 5K having ended its run, the Old Montauk Athletic Club stepped into the breach with a race of its own at Fresh Pond, Amagansett, Sunday, though the turnout was light, perhaps given the fact that a number of others were running in a weekly Hamptons Marathon warm-up whose participants gather every Sunday morning at the Gubbins Running Ahead store in East Hampton Village.

    Mike Bahel was there, however, as were Paul Hamilton and Sharon McCobb, as well as a half dozen young runners — Erik Engstrom, Liana Paradiso, and Maggie Purcell among them — who have been among those working out with the race director, John Conner, at the East Hampton High School track every Monday and Wednesday evening.

    The race was a throwback of sorts inasmuch as numbered cards were handed out to the finishers as they crossed the line, and inasmuch as they were asked to remember what their time was as they passed by the clock on Conner’s truck bed. No computer printouts, no chips.

    McCobb and Hamilton, before Conner sent everyone out onto a hilly course that at one point skirted the South Fork Country Club’s golf course, paid a visit to a stand-up paddleboard race that was about to be launched nearby, though McCobb said she was more inclined to treat paddleboarding as “a leisure and fun thing. It’s walking on water — it’s not a racing sport for me.”

    With all of the sporting events this summer, “there’s no time to work,” said Hamilton.

    “The finish line would be over there in the woods, or in the inlet,” said Conner, pointing toward Fresh Pond’s comfort station, “if this were a full 5K. Kevin [Barry] measured it with his GPS. It’s a three-miler. Where he is,” he said, pointing to Engstrom, who was chalking in the finish line near the split-rail fence, “is where it ends.”

    “There are a number of good freshman runners coming up to the high school,” the septuagenarian running coach reported. “And that Liana [Paradiso], who’s 12,” he said, pointing again, “is a whiz.”

    His workouts — for adults as well as youngsters — were designed, Conner said, to get their hearts working more efficiently so that, ideally, given the extra blood and oxygen circulating throughout their systems after six months of training, they wouldn’t suffer the muscle fatigue brought on by lactic acid.

    “We begin by going twice around the par course, and then do ‘pickups,’ alternating about six to eight fast and slow 30-yard runs on the football field to get their heart rates up to 150 strokes a minute. We don’t sprint, we run fast, and then slow. A 120 pulse rate is conversational. At 150, you’re working. Contrary to what most people think, these pickups won’t slow you down: When the starting gun goes off, you’re ready to race.”

    “We do everything at a 6-minute-per-mile pace,” Conner went on. “We do two 200s at 45 seconds each, a quarter-mile at 90, a half-mile at 3 minutes. You get the idea? It’s been very rewarding. On any given day we have from 12 to 15 runners. We do an hour of speed work, beginning at 5:30. We’re never there later than 7.”

    As for that day’s course, “it’s basically uphill . . . it’s tough,” said Conner, who also had to tell the 20 or so entrants that, because of OMAC’s last-minute decision to have a race, the ribbons had yet to arrive. They would, he said, receive Miss Amelia’s Cottage race ribbons instead, which they could trade in at Miss Amelia’s two-miler in Amagansett on Aug. 12.

    “Miss Amelia’s is always on the second Sunday in August. This is the 35th year for Miss Amelia’s and the Great Bonac Foot Race [in Springs on Labor Day], which I started with Howard Lebwith and Ed Hults.”

    Bahel turned out to be the winner, in 18:32. Engstrom, who’s 14, was second, in 18:59, and Hamilton and McCobb followed them. Diane O’Donnell, who coaches East Hampton High’s girls cross-country team, but who said she’ll no longer coach spring track next year, placed sixth, in 27:04. Purcell and Paradiso came in together at the 29-minute mark.

    “Those fast little girls have yet to learn how to run up the hills,” O’Donnell said to an observer once over the line. “You’ve got to attack them, pumping your arms and leaning into them, and you’ve got to run over the top of them — you can’t rest. Then, once you’re over the top, you can rest a bit and let gravity take you. There were a lot of hills out there, and also I was familiar with the course. They’re young . . . they’ll learn.”

    “Don’t forget to mention Ellen’s Run [at Southampton Hospital] on Aug. 19,” said Howard Lebwith, who walked the course with Paul Fiondella and his wife Charla. Ellen’s Run, he said, would be on the day before his 82nd birthday.

    “It’s come a long way,” Lebwith added. “This race has been responsible for Southampton Hospital’s state-of-the-art breast center. Julie Ratner and her committee have raised millions of dollars for it. You know the committee made me an honorary woman five years ago. But that first year, at the high school, there were so many pre-race speeches that I remember one guy saying, ‘If you don’t start this race soon, I’ll be in the next age group when the gun goes off.’ ”

   Maidstone Market, the Yankees of East Hampton men’s soccer, advanced to last night’s spring-summer 7-on-7 final by shutting out Bateman Painting 2-0 at Herrick Park on July 25.

    Tortorella Pools earned the other finalist’s spot by upsetting 75 Main, the top seed, 2-1.

    Bateman played the Market toe-to-toe in the first half, which ended scoreless. But it shot itself in the foot in the second frame as the result of a yellow card handed out by the referee, Alex Ramirez, to Juan Zuluaga for entering the game without his permission.

    Owing to the yellow card — later Ramirez said it should have been a red given the fact that Zuluaga had received a card in the first half for taking Mario Olaya down from behind — Bateman had to play a man-down, and the Market, with a powerful lineup that included Gehider Garcia, Luis Correa, Antonio Padilla, Esteban Valverde, and Olaya, who led East Hampton High School’s team to its first-ever county championship last fall, took full advantage.

    Until the unraveling, Bateman’s Jon Pineda came closest to scoring with his hard header off the right post early in the second half.

    Soon after, Carlos Cardenas, who played excellently in Bateman’s goal despite being a backup, went down after he and Correa disputed a pass back to him that almost proved fatal. After a minute or two on the ground, he stayed in the game.

    Midway through the period, Bateman was presented with another great chance when, with Alex Meza, Maidstone’s goalie, caught out of position, Marco Bautista, who had camped out at the undefended left corner of the cage, slipped as a ground-hugging pass from Pineda arrived. And just before Zuluaga’s ejection, one of his teammates, Winston Reid, got off a nice low shot that went just wide right.

    After the carding, however, Bateman’s defenders could no longer hold Maidstone off. Matthew Romero, a defender, got the Market on the board with about 10 minutes remaining as, crouching low, he wheeled on the ball at close range and rocketed a shot by Bateman’s tall keeper into the left corner. Soon after, Olaya, who’s vying with Gehider Garcia for the league’s “golden boot” award, scored on a breakaway to clinch the big win.

    Going into the final, Olaya had seven goals and Garcia had six. Correa, who has frequently been the league’s high-scorer in the past, had four, as did 75 Main’s Cesar Galea.

    As for July 25th’s first game, between 75 Main and Tortorella, the latter, with two goals by Steven Orrego, proved to be the stronger team that night, although it had been defeated twice by 75 Main in the regular season.

    Orrego’s first score came in the first half after he’d received a pass from Eddie Lopez. Cesar Correa got 75 Main on the board before the halftime break, heading in a cross from Alfredo Negrete that beat Tortorella’s very able goalie, Craig Caiazza.

    “Correa’s goal gave 75 Main a lift,” Leslie Czeladko wrote on the league’s Web site, “but it didn’t last long as Tortorella continued to attack. Standing just inside the penalty box, Orrego, after receiving a pass from David Rodriguez, hit the ball softly toward the left corner as Olger Araya, 75 Main’s goalie, came rushing out. With everyone watching, the ball rolled slowly across the line into the goal.”

    The Restaurateurs applied a lot of pressure after that, but Caiazza proved up to it, though he received some significant help from Rene Gutierrez, who preserved the win by kicking away a goal-bound ball at the right post near game’s end.

    “It was nice to beat them finally,” Gutierrez said afterward.

    Maidstone Market, whose manager is John Romero, has won seven straight 7-on-7 championships. In the fall final, Romero’s team cruised to a 3-0 victory over Tuxpan, and last July the Market shut out Tortorella 2-0 in a hard-fought final, taking advantage of two defensive errors.