Thursday, July 19

LIFEGUARDING, Main Beach, East Hampton, invitational tournament, from 5:30 p.m.

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

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, games at Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 7 p.m.

Friday, July 20

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, either game three of Schenck Fuels-Round Swamp Farm semifinal series or game one of best-of-five final with CfAR, 7:15 p.m., Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Saturday, July 21

POLO, 20-goal season opener, Two Trees Stable, Hayground Road, Bridgehampton, 4 p.m.

Sunday, July 22

YOUTH TRIATHLON, 300-yard bay swim, 7-mile bike, and 1.5-mile run, Maidstone Park, Springs, 8 a.m.

Monday, July 23

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, final series, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7:15 p.m.

Tuesday, July 24

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

Wednesday, July 25

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 league semifinal games, 75 Main vs. fourth seed, 6:30 p.m., and Maidstone Market vs. third seed, 7:40, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7:15 p.m.

    Sixteen of the best professional women squash players in the world — from Australia, England, Canada, and the United States — mixed deep lobs with whacks down the rail and nicks up front before appreciative audiences at the Elmaleh-Stanton courts at the Southampton Recreation Center this past weekend.

    The cavernous doubles court at S.Y.S., as it is colloquially known, is one of the few in this country accessible to the public, and Victor Elmaleh and Wally Glennon’s intent to popularize the rapid four-wall racket sport’s singles and doubles versions drew the attention recently of Narelle Krizek, who five years ago founded the 40-strong women’s doubles pro tour.

    It was the first time that the Women’s Doubles Squash Tour had contested an event here. Usually, it makes its stops in cities, as it did this year in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. Vero Beach, Fla., is to be added next year.

    Southampton Squash Inc., “a program targeted at bringing squash to members of the local community who are unable to afford to play squash,” was the beneficiary of the event, which, besides the $20,000 Wilson Cup pro-pro tourney, included two pro-ams.

    Krizek, a native of Brisbane, Australia, who now runs the squash program at the Lawrenceville preparatory school in New Jersey, teamed with the English-born Suzie Pierrepont to edge Krizek’s sister, Natarsha McElhinny, and the tour’s top-ranked player, Stephanie Hewitt, a Canadian, in the final, winning the deciding fifth game. The scores were 13-16, 15-8, 18-17, 11-15, 15-11. The winners took home $2,000, and the runners-up $1,400. Southampton Squash received $3,000.

    That a number of the women seen dashing about the court, chasing down lobs and stretching to retrieve reverse angles and three-wall boasts, were mothers of two or three children made their efforts all the more arresting.

    Krizek, who has two children, and her sister, who has three, won the United States national doubles championship last year.

    “It’s good for the kids, boys especially, to see their moms competing at such a high level,” said Krizek.

    Asked about the game, which is played with a hard ball — singles has since the 1980s used a soft ball — she said, “It would be impossible to play with the soft ball. . . . It’s lob-shoot, lob-shoot. You want to get them out of position and, when there’s an opening, finish them off with a side wall-front wall reverse angle or with a side wall-front wall-side wall boast. You try to stretch them. The men’s game is attack, attack. The women’s game is more finesse.”

    When Krizek turned to Bryan Fitzpatrick, who was to go on to win the Talmage pro-am with McElhinny, and asked him if he preferred playing doubles with women, he readily replied, “Absolutely.”

    “And we’re cuter too,” Krizek said with a smile.

    With four people exchanging shots in such a relatively small area, you would think let calls would be frequent, but, at least in the pro game, they are rare. “We don’t get hit,” said Krizek, alluding to a rule that awards a point to the ball striker should he or she hit an opponent blocking their way to the front wall. “We’re not taking it for the team.”

    In the final, Pierrepont, who lives in Connecticut now, and who has a long reach, and McElhinny, who lives in Las Vegas and is small and quick, played the left wall, while Krizek, the tour’s third-ranked player at the moment, though she has been number-one, and Hewitt played the right.

    “Often, the player with the stronger backhand plays the left wall,” Joyce Davenport, a Philadelphia pro, said as she watched a pro-am Saturday afternoon that paired Amy Milanek and Emily Stieff against Victoria Simmonds and Nadia Jihad. “But in this case, the amateurs [Stieff and Jihad] chose the left.”

    Elmaleh, a former national men’s doubles champion, whose gift enabled the four singles and one doubles court to be built at S.Y.S., was one of Saturday’s spectators. When asked how old he was now, he answered, “Ninety-three and a half.” He had yet, he added, to be defeated in the half-court game he’s devised.

    When S.Y.S.’s pro, the Egyptian-born Sayed Selim, said, “The last time we played he beat me 2-1,” Elmaleh, with a twinkle in his eye, corrected him. “Two-love.”

    Taking up where Rusty Red Lacrosse left off, Zach Brenneman, the former two-time collegiate all-American midfielder who starred for the East Hampton High School team before going to Notre Dame, oversaw a well-attended camp for kids at East Hampton’s Stephen Hand’s Path fields this past week.

    The campers, who ranged in age from 6 to 12 years old, had fun while learning the game’s fundamentals.

    One of Brenneman’s assistants was his former Bonac coach, Ralph Naglieri, whose two sons, Jack, 9, and Danny, 8, were among the 77 attendees.

    Naglieri, who started East Hampton’s program in 1999, remarked appreciatively on the fact that young men he’d once coached — including Jared Bowe, Mark Simmons, and Tyler Maguire, whom Brenneman had asked to help out as well — were now coaching his own children.

    Interestingly, none of the above began learning the game as early as their charges. “I didn’t know what lacrosse was until my sophomore year in high school,” said Bowe, a solid defender now on the University of Delaware’s team.

    Brenneman and Simmons, who’s the starting goalie at Wesleyan, a Division III school that he’s very happy he went to, picked up sticks when they were in seventh grade. The next year, Naglieri brought Brenneman up to the varsity. “Zach’s first game was with North Babylon,” the former coach recalled. “I remember it well — it was a bloodbath.”

    Brenneman himself, who is in his second year as a pro — last year with the Long Island Lizards and this one with a barnstorming pro tour in California — told the campers last Thursday that if they wanted to improve they must work hard.

    “I was the second all-American in East Hampton’s history. I was highly recruited, but when I got to Notre Dame I was at the bottom of the roster. And though I played all four years there, and worked hard, there were 50 guys on my team and I wasn’t the best — I still have a terrible right hand.”

    His 100-mile-per-hour left-handed shot — deadly from 15 or so yards out — has served him well, however: In 2010’s N.C.A.A. Final Four Brenneman scored six goals — three in the semifinal and three in the final with Duke, which Notre Dame lost in overtime. This year, Notre Dame lost 7-5 to the eventual champion, Loyola, in the semifinal. Tyler Brenneman, Zach’s younger brother, who is spending the summer at the London School of Economics, was one of Notre Dame’s midfielders in that game.

    Simmons, the first goalie Naglieri had ever started as a ninth grader, told the kids they shouldn’t just think of going to D-1 schools like Duke, Maryland, or Notre Dame inasmuch as there were many D-II and III institutions that had strong lacrosse programs. He had wanted to go to an Ivy League school, he said, Brown in particular. “It was between me and another guy, and the other guy got the scholarship. I was hurt at first, but I ended up going to Wesleyan, a fine Division III school, and I’m playing there. The moral of the story is that when one door closes another opens. You can’t stay mad, you’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to keep hustling.”

    “I’m so proud to be able to work with Zach,” said Bowe, an English major with a minor in journalism who has two more years of eligibility at Delaware. “It’s great that he’s spreading the word way out here.”

    Likewise, Simmons has two more years of eligibility. He said in a separate conversation that the goalie who played ahead of him this season “had a 75-percent save rate, the highest in all of college lacrosse. At least it was at one time. Anything over 60 percent is good. He was the captain too.”

    When Simmons, in his talk to the campers, said he had a 65-percent save rate when in high school, his best friend, Brenneman, said, with a smile, “Forty-two.” He had also scored a goal, Simmons told the kids, in a game with Islip. He’d run up the field, no one picked him up, and he fired the shot in from about six yards out.

    As for playing goalie, Simmons, a film studies major, said, “It’s definitely an interesting position. Having an older brother probably helped. You have to be aware you’re going to get hurt . . . you have a split second to react well or poorly.”

    Brenneman’s father, Tim, who also helped out at the camp, said, “We were very thrilled with the turnout. Next year, maybe we’ll have girls and boys. This year, Zach just wanted to start out with what he knew.”

    The younger Brenneman, who when he’s not playing or giving camps or private lessons is a sales representative for Adrenaline, a lacrosse equipment company, said in parting that he would help out his friend and former Notre Dame midfielder, David Earl, with a camp the latter is running at the Westminster School in Simsbury, Conn., this coming week, after which he’ll return to California. He would continue to play professionally as long as he could, he said.

    Asked to sum up the week, he said, “The kids had fun and learned the fundamentals.”

   Babylon Bike Shop co-workers Tom Eickelberg, 23, and Ryan Siebert, 21, who are also sponsored by PowerBar and Western Beef Racing, placed first and fourth in Sunday’s sprint triathlon that ended at the foot of the Montauk Lighthouse, where the exceedingly well-informed M.C., Terry Bisogno, greeted them.

    It was a repeat for Eickelberg, who won this race last year too.

    The winner’s time was 1 hour, 3 minutes, and 43 seconds. He arrived about a half-minute late to the swim at Gin Beach, and had to work his way through the field, dodging splashing feet. He said afterward that he preferred the longer Olympic distances to the sprint ones.

    “I have beaten him,” said Siebert, though not on that day. Siebert, who lives in Patchogue — Eickelberg lives in Babylon — will compete next in the national age-group championships in Burlington, Vt., on Aug. 18. His mother, Denise, won the female 55-to-59 division that morning, in 1:27:46.

    Michele Henschel, 29, of Long Beach, a former pro who frequently trains with Eickelberg and Siebert, was the women’s winner, and 18th over all, in 1:13:09. “I’ve been out camping at Hither Hills — I love it out here,” she said. “It’s my fourth time. I’ve always been second — this is the first time I’ve been first. I feel vindicated!”

    The swim had been tough, the current had been choppy, she said. As for her swimming, biking, and running, Henschel said she thought she was “about equally strong in all of them.”

    Rod McClave, of New York City and Water Mill, who recently won, as usual, the three-mile Swim Across America race in Gardiner’s Bay, scorched the swim, exiting the water in 9:58, but did not proceed farther, having sustained gluteus muscle pulls. “It was my fifth race in the past two weeks,” he said at the foot of the hill leading up to the finish line. “Obviously, I overdid.”

    David Powers, of New York City and Wainscott, who won this race in 2007 and ’09, was hampered too, by recent bike crashes — the first at the Robert Aaron memorial triathlon in Montauk in June and the second after hitting a pothole along the Napeague strip. The first one had banged up his left side, the second one his right.

    “But even at my peak,” said the 45-year-old Full Throttle Team competitor, “I wouldn’t have been able to beat Tom.”

    He had, said Powers, been debating whether to do the race at all, “but it’s so beautiful out here.” Despite his aches, which apparently slowed him particularly on the 3.1-mile trail run, he placed third, in 1:06:00.

    An amputee, 29-year-old Tom Koehler of Hampton Bays, a New York City police officer who lost a leg as the result of being shot in 1998, placed 37th. “I don’t swim with my legs, just with my arms,” said Koehler, who used an aerodynamic cycling leg on the 14-mile bike. Questioned further, Koehler said he swam three times a week, and ran and biked twice a week. “I hope to qualify,” he said, “for the world paratriathletic championships in London next year. . . . They don’t call us disabled athletes anymore — they call us paratriathletes.”

    Among the other top finishers were Justin Kulchinsky, 39, of East Hampton, whose Mayfair Rocks was one of the major sponsors. He finished 13th, in 1:11:26. Jim MacWhinnie, a 40-year-old Southamptoner who almost died a few years ago when a fuel oil tank he and his father were moving out of the basement fell on him, was right behind Kulchinsky, in 1:11:31. Tom McGlade, 48, of Amagansett, was 20th, in 1:13:24, and Bill Garry, 53, of Montauk, was 23rd, in 1:13:57.

    East Hampton High School was well represented by Thomas Brierley, 16, and Dana Cebulski, 15, who topped the 19-and-under age groups.

    Thomas’s father, Craig, said his son, who placed 21st over all, in 1:13:46, “did really well. Aside from the elites, he was faster than all the age groups. And he was on a cruddy bike.”

    Other young local triathletes there were Teague Costello, Amanda Calabrese, and Abby Roden, among others. Costello had to run the last two miles of the bike leg, one of his tires having flatted.

    The elder Brierley, who said at the finish line that “after 45 it’s a matter of survival — at least in my case,” is one of those who helps Sharon McCobb (the winner in the 45-to-49 female division, in 1:25:53) coach the I-Tri girls, a group of teenage triathletes from the Springs and Montauk Schools who, had it not been for the program, begun several years ago by Theresa Roden, would have been couch potatoes.

    That program has spawned McCobb’s Youth Triathlon, which is to be held Sunday morning at Maidstone Park in Springs. Brierley said a run-through, open to all kids who plan to do the race, will be held at Maidstone this evening at 5. The distances are a 300-yard swim, a 7-mile bike, and a 1.5-mile run.

    “It’s tough, it’s tough when you push it — and I pushed it today,” said Rafael Ruiz, one of a number of athletes who train under John Conner at the high school track on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Brierley agreed.

    “Because the distances are shorter, it’s harder. There’s nowhere to rest . . . which is fun.”

    Air & Speed, whose roster includes Summer Foley, Kim Valverde, Jon Jamet, and Dan Weaver, took over first place last Thursday in the 10-team beach volleyball league at Gurney’s Inn with a 9-1 record.

    Organized beach volleyball has been a rarity here in the past 20 years, and the 4-on-4 games Kathy McGeehan has been overseeing at Gurney’s have proved popular indeed.

    “It’s a good way of getting the kids to train without knowing it,” McGeehan, who coaches East Hampton High School’s girls volleyball team, said when questioned later in the week. “They think of it as a pleasant evening on the beach, and this coach is happy that they do, for beach volleyball is a great way to train for the indoor game. You get to play all the positions, you improve your vertical leap, your agility. . . . Going from sand to indoors has great benefits. The Shelter Island coaches and I agree on this.”

    The aforementioned S.I. coaches, Cindy Belt and Karen Gibbs, have entered two teams in the league, and though Kelsey McGayhey, apparently the sole Shelter Island High School female ever to be all-county in two sports (volleyball and basketball) is not among them, Belt reported that McGayhey is to play the sport at Springfield College in Massachusetts come the fall.

    “She’s a lefty, so she’ll probably be used as a right side hitter,” said Belt, who’s in her 10th year of coaching Shelter Island’s girls varsity, and who add­ed that despite McGayhey’s absence, “we’ve got some great kids [five girls and three boys] here.”

    Shelter Island had lost a very close match to the eventual Class D state champion in a regional final last fall, Belt said.

    Gibbs said, when asked to compare the beach and indoor versions, “If you’re quick on the court, you’ll be slow on the sand. Playing on the beach makes you a better all-around player.”

    One of the league’s sponsors is Diplomatico Rum of Venezuela. “Rum in Venezuela is like cigars in Cuba,” said Chris Carney, owner of the Railroad Avenue Fitness Studio, who’s the privately owned company’s “Hamptons ambassador.”

    “It’s very big in South America and Europe — it’s won all sorts of awards, in Madrid, in New Orleans . . . but it’s just beginning to be introduced here,” said Carney, a former Montauk Rugby Club player who is known more widely for his cross-country bicycle trips on behalf of the Wounded Warrior Project.

    Carney suggested that McGeehan form a league, under Diplomatico’s sponsorship (Gurney’s and Smartwater are the other sponsors), and McGeehan, who retired from teaching this year but who is continuing to coach girls volleyball here, took him up on it.

    Every Thursday night, beginning at 6, the 4-on-4 games are played on three courts at the foot of the inn. Spectators can avail themselves of a beachside bar, where Diplomatico’s offerings, including its smooth 12-year Reserva Exclusiva, are also on display.

    Going into last Thursday’s competition, Sloppy Tuna, a team of Montauk lifeguards — Marta Johann, Peter Johann, Andrew Foglia, Garner Minetree, Trevor Shea, and David Carman among them — had been in first, at 6-0, but finished the evening tied for second, with Carney’s team, the Beach Diplomats, at 8-2. These teams are to open this evening’s action.

    Carney’s team has on it a former Olympian, Kofi Sekyiamah of Ghana, who represented that country in the decathlon in the 1988 Games.

    Sekyiamah said, with a smile, in between matches, “We’re the team to beat — we have a target on our back.”

    Asked how he liked East Hampton, he said, “I love it out here.” As for the league, it was “a great idea. . . . My objective is to teach the young people here, the 9-through-16-year-olds, how to improve their health through nutrition and exercise. I’m for any activity that gets them off the couch, anything that will get them outdoors.”

    Sekyiamah added that he was looking forward to the Olympics’ 2-on-2 beach volleyball competition. “The U.S. should do well,” he said.

    Summer Foley, who rooted her mother on at the Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon Sunday morning, said she missed playing 2-on-2, which she and McGeehan had done in Newport, R.I., and at Cedar Beach last summer. For her part, McGeehan said she was tempted to do the triathlon, as she has in the past — “we live on East Lake Drive, near where it started” — but thought better of it inasmuch as she’s still recovering from meniscus surgery.

    Valverde, an honorable mention all-American when she was East Hampton High’s libero, is to play at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Fla., this year, beginning soon.

    “It’s a pipeline for Division I schools in Florida,” McGeehan said. “I’m excited for her.”

   As “defiant” as he had been as a teenager, Kofi Sekyiamah said with a smile during a conversation at The Star the other day, the all-boys Presbyterian school in England his Ghanian parents had sent him to had, with its strict rules and regulations, “made me stay in line,” and that toeing of the line combined with his innate love of sport had given him “real direction.”

    The former Olympic decathlete, who represented his native country in the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea, and who, in his first summer here, is training clients at Chris Carney’s Railroad Avenue Fitness Center and is playing for Carney’s Beach Diplomats team in the beach volleyball league at Gurney’s Inn, was reared in Accra, Ghana’s capital city.

    “I started as a soccer player, but I had a natural ability in track and field . . . the high jump, long jump, 100 meters, 400 meters, pole vault, hurdles . . . all the events. From the ages of 14 to 18, when I was in secondary school, I trained four to six hours a day. My coach, Charles Denton, who was from England and saw my ability, trained and groomed me every single day toward my highest potential. From 16 to 18 I traveled to meets around the country. So, when I went to England, I had a well-developed talent.”

    “That school in England that my parents sent me to [his father was Ghana’s  minister to the U.N.] was an international one. There were students there from England, France, Germany . . . a very good school. Very good in math and science. From there, I won a full scholarship to Cambridge University, where I studied economics and foreign affairs. I aspired to work with the U.N. as my father did. But,” the interviewee said with another broad smile, “I quickly realized that my passion lay more in athletics.”

    Asked how he had done at the Seoul Games, Sekyiamah said, “I did well — I did not medal, but did well and enjoyed the experience. After competing, I came to the U.S. and worked with the U.S. Olympic Committee as a strength coach in Colorado Springs. Two years later, I came to New York and worked as a coach for the New York Sports Club and with the Equinox Fitness Center. Then, in 1995, I discovered a fitness center called La Palestra, whose mission is to improve the quality of people’s lives, through exercise, education, and community.”

    “I’ve been working with them for 15 years now. It’s almost like a university. Before you even begin, you are evaluated fully by medical, nutritional, behavioral, and fitness professionals. Your goals are discussed and the obstacles you may have in reaching them — your doubts, your fears, your self-imposed limitations. . . . If we understand what makes us who we are we can then break through and become who we want to be.”

    His experience with La Palestra, he said, had led him to think the same thing could be done here. “My goal,” said Sekyiamah, “is to introduce a program in the Hamptons for young people which would encompass all of these integrated services that La Palestra has. You know there is an epidemic of obesity among young people in this country. Nutrition would be a very important component. An education in health and fitness would help them to become healthy adults and would give them the tools to become as healthy as they can be.”

    “At the same time, it would be fun. Sporting activities . . . beach volleyball, baseball, soccer, basketball . . . would be integrated with all the rest of the activities. They’d feel like they were playing yet they would be getting exercise and learning and understanding all these elements that can help them become better in life.”

    Such a program, said Sekyiamah, “would teach discipline, work ethic, teamwork, leadership, accountability. . . . All of these things would be pulled together to develop a real conscious young person who would understand that rewards will come from his or her effort, that it just doesn’t happen. And what they learn they would be able to teach others. That’s where leadership comes in. Whatever you’re strongest at you can teach to others, and they, in turn, can teach whatever they’re strongest at to you, which is what you need for the future. It’s an ideal social paradigm — it’s bigger than fitness.”

    “If I see that my vision is viable — my purpose, by the way, is not to build elite athletes, but to create an environment in which anyone of any ability can improve and learn and enjoy and gain from the experience — I’m more than willing to set up residence here, though I will always maintain a connection with La Palestra.”

    Asked about the coming Olympics, Sekyiamah said, “I’m looking forward to them. They should be spectacular. I’m especially looking forward to the opening ceremonies, which will be a spectacular representation and display of unity.”

    He was looking forward, as well, to the track and field events, and to beach volleyball. “They play 2-on-2 in the Olympics, which is what I play in Central Park, on the stadium sand court just east of the Sheep Meadow off 67th Street. It’s the perfect setting — there are the sunbathers on the Sheep Meadow who are also watching, the rollerbladers, the music, concessions, the carousel for children. . . . The 2-on-2 game is the true form because you have to possess all the different skills. There’s only you and one partner to cover a very large area. You have to defend, hit, set . . . you have to come to play. The city is a real mecca for the sport. We get visitors from all over the country and the world, from Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Cambodia, Russia, and, of course, Ghana. . . . It’s a United Nations of volleyball!”

    “We go to tournaments in Long Beach, New Jersey, Coney Island . . . there’s prize money, but we play for the pride of competing, not for the money. For bragging rights.”

    Asked about the logo on his shirt, Sekyiamah said, “It’s the Marseilles Football Club’s jersey. That’s where my wife, Sabine, is from. . . . She’s a dancer, a true artist . . . a painter, writer, musician, a true artiste. She’s the artist, I’m the athlete, and we learn from each other.”

Waterborne Events

    There will be two waterborne events supported by the East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad this weekend — ocean swims of one-half, one, and two miles in Montauk that are to benefit the Montauk Playhouse’s aquatics center on Saturday, and a stand-up paddleboard race benefiting the Retreat at Fresh Pond Landing on Sunday.

    The two-mile ocean swim is to start at Kirk Park beach at 7:30 a.m.; the one-miler is to begin at Atlantic Terrace, “after the two-mile swimmers pass,” and the one-half miler is to begin at Ditch Plains, “after all other racers pass.”

    Sunday’s paddleboard event, presented by Main Beach Surf and Sport, will be “a paddling event for the entire family . . . open to men, women, and children of all ages.” Racer check-in is at 8 a.m.

    A release has said, “There will be no day-of-race registration. Participants should register in advance at Main Beach Surf and Sport at 352 Montauk Highway, Wainscott, or online at mainbeach.com.”

Road Race Too

    Also on Sunday there will be a 5K road race at Fresh Pond Park sponsored by the Old Montauk Athletic Club and the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter. Registration will be from 8 a.m.; the starting time is 9. The 5K is to benefit OMAC’s athletic grants program.

Friday, July 27

TRAVIS FIELD TOURNEY, “Bracket Bash,” American Legion Hall, Amagansett, 7:30-10:30 p.m.

Saturday, July 28

OCEAN SWIMS, benefit Montauk Playhouse aquatics center, Kirk Park beach, Atlantic Terrace, and Ditch Plain, from 7:30 a.m.

Sunday, July 29

PADDLEBOARDING, Main Beach Surf and Sport races to benefit the Retreat, Fresh Pond Landing, Gardiner’s Bay, Amagansett, 8 a.m.

RUNNING, Old Montauk Athletic Club 5K to benefit O.M.A.C.’s athletic grant program, Fresh Pond, Amagansett, 9 a.m., registration from 8.

Monday, July 30

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game two of best-of-five playoff final, Schenck Fuels vs. CfAR, 7:15 p.m., Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Tuesday, July 31

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH,, playoffs, games at 7:15 and 8:30, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Wednesday, August 1

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 league final, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 6:30 p.m.

    Shawn Pollard, a graduate student in physics at the State University at Stony Brook, won Sunday’s Firecracker 8K (4.97-mile) road race in Southampton in 27 minutes and 51.1 seconds, a time that probably would have been quicker, the winner said later, had he not attended a bachelor party the night before.

    Pollard’s pace that pretty — though hot — morning was 5:37 per mile. On a flat track, he said, in reply to a question, he could run “a 4:30-something.”

    The 27-year-old winner, a native of Oregon who lives in Port Jefferson Station, and who had stayed up until 4 a.m., dueled with Richard Temerian, 53, the eventual runner-up, through the first half of the race, but began to pull away thereafter. He’s looking to do a marathon, and his prospects are good inasmuch as he’s run a half-marathon in 1:10.47.

    The discovery of the Higgs boson, he said, in parting, had been very exciting. “I have friends who have been working on that . . . . Hopefully, it’s just the beginning.”

    Tara Farrell, 33, of East Quogue, who works at a Gubbins Running Ahead store in Southampton, and who looked very fit, was the women’s winner — and sixth over all — in 30:49.4. The mother of a 3-year-old son and a 19-month-old daughter, Farrell said she’d been hoping to beat 30 minutes, “but it was hot.” The absence of Caroline Birnbaum, a frequent winner of Southampton races — “sometimes outright,” she said  — opened the way for her.

    Asked how she would have fared had Barbara Gubbins — who was working — been at the starting line that morning, Farrell demurred. “She’s my boss,” she said with a laugh.

    Not far behind Farrell — in 13th place in 33:07.8, a 6:41 pace — was 14-year-old Erik Engstrom of Springs, from whom Kevin Barry, East Hampton High School’s boys cross-country coach, expects great things come the fall, even though he’ll only be a freshman.

    It was Engstrom’s first time at the Firecracker 8K, and while he liked it that the course was fast and flat, the heat bothered him a bit.

    He’s been training with about a dozen others every Monday and Wednesday evenings at the high school track with John Conner, a former top national age-group competitor in the half-mile and mile.

    His son, who easily topped the boys 10-to-14 division that day, had begun running as a way of training for motocross races, Erik’s father, Gerard, who also races motocross bikes, said. “He was always really fast, and he never got tired!”

    “He still races at Yaphank,” the elder Engstrom said. “In fact his bike’s on the back of the car. We’re going to Yaphank after this.”

    Paul Maidment, of East Hampton, who placed 46th in 37:50.0 and was third in the men’s 60-to-64 group, said the heat had gotten to him too. “I’m a typical European — I don’t like it,” he said. “There’s not much shade on the course and the sun can be damning.”

    His time, he said, in answer to a question, was “okay . . . heat-adjusted, I’m satisfied.”

    There were 315 finishers. Among the top age-group placewinners were Jason Hancock, a 38-year-old Southamptoner who teaches at the Amagansett School, who topped the men’s 35-39 division with his 30:28.3, good for fifth over all;

Arthur Nealon (42:13.5), who won the 65-69 division; Blaire Stauffer, 79, who led the 70-79s with his 46:16.2, and Julie Ratner, 65, of East Hampton, the founder of Ellen’s Run, who placed second in the women’s 65-69 group in 1:11:31.28.

   Before Monday night’s clash between the East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league’s top two teams, the defending-champion Schenck Fuels and CfAR, a team without a sponsor that has adopted the Citizens for Access Rights logo, about 15 minutes was spent filling in a deep hole in shallow center field so that fielders would not risk injury.

    That bit of deferred maintenance — it took three or four full buckets of dirt from the woods abutting the field to fill it — could serve as an apt metaphor for this season: The slow-pitch league, which once numbered 14 teams in two divisions, has fallen on hard times.

    There are only five teams now, and one, as aforesaid, has anted up what a sponsor normally would pay; the scoreboard — or its control board — doesn’t work; the game had to be stopped in the top of the fourth inning until some softballs, fouled off either onto Abraham’s Path or into the woods off the right-field line, could be hunted down, and nobody knows quite why this decline in what used to be a buoyant local pastime has occurred.

    “Be sure to say we want more teams,” Ray Wojtusiak, CfAR’s player-manager, said at the end of the game, which his team had won 12-11, thus clinching the pennant and the top seed in the playoffs, which are to begin at the Terry King ball field tomorrow night.

    “Five teams — horrible,” the Fuelmen’s manager, Rich Tuthill, said before the game began. “I’ve never seen it like this. . . . I don’t know what it is.”

    Rich Schneider, the league’s longtime spokesman and one of its umpires, said he didn’t know the cause, either. An aging population? More enthusiasm on the part of young people for lacrosse, soccer, surfing? Less leisure time because of the demands of summer work? Rising fees, the result of costs passed on by a bud­get-paring town government? Or all of the above.

    At any rate, onto the game, which was, as slow-pitch softball goes, a good one, not a blowout.

    CfAR, the visitors that night, jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first on a bases-loaded two-out, two-run single by Brian Pfund, the team’s sixth hitter. Schenck’s got one back in the bottom of the second, which Jerry Uribe led off with a triple to right. The next batter, Beau Lawler, drove him in with a hot shot up the middle that almost took the pitcher Rob Nicoletti’s foot off.

    A two-out, two-run home run well over the right-field fence by Vinnie Alversa made it 3-2 Schenck’s in the bottom of the third, but CfAR wrested the lead back, at 4-3, with a two-run shot over the left-field fence by Chris Pfund in the top of the fourth.

    An unearned run traced to an error by Andy Tuthill, who was playing short in place of Adam Gledhill that night, treated CfAR to a 5-3 lead in the top of the fifth, but the defending champions once again went up by one in their half of the inning thanks to a two-run single by Tuthill and a sacrifice fly by Brendan Fennel that made it 6-5 Schenck’s.

    Neither team scored in the sixth, but CfAR made tracks with seven runs — all unearned — in the top of the seventh. Doug Dickson, the Fuelmen’s veteran pitcher, bobbled a soft comebacker hit his way by Nick Jarboe to begin the denouement, and after Marco Serra lined out to Lawler at third, Schenck’s third baseman threw wide of second base in going for a forceout there after fielding a grounder by Nicoletti.

    Then the floodgates opened. Wojtusiak tied the score with a line single to left, Diego Palomo drove in two more with a base hit up the middle, Bill Collins followed with a scorching r.b.i. single off Lawler’s glove, and Andrew Foglia, the cleanup batter, whom Dickson had held in check till then, striking him out in the first, inducing him to pop out to short in the third, and getting him to hit into a force play at second in the fifth, poled a monster three-run shot into the parking lot behind the left-field fence for a 12-6 CfAR lead.

    It seemed as if Schenck’s was finished, but they came back with five runs of their own in their last at-bat — the big hits being a bases-loaded run-scoring single by Alversa, a three-run triple by Fennel that got by Palomo in right-center, and a two-out r.b.i. single by Lawler — falling just short at 12-11, as aforesaid.

    The big win improved Wojtusiak’s team to 10-1 with one game to play in the regular season, and dropped Schenck Fuels to 8-3, also with one game left.

    CfAR had defeated the Fuelmen 18-13 in their first meeting, on May 30. Schenck’s evened the series on June 20, stonewalling the Access Rightists 22-11. Monday’s was the rubber game.

    All five teams are to participate in the double-elimination playoffs, which are to begin tomorrow with the second seed versus the fifth seed, and with the third seed versus the fourth seed. The winners are to play a best-of-three semifinal series beginning Monday. In the lower bracket, the top seed, which is to receive a first-round bye, will play the upper bracket’s lower-seeded loser Monday and the higher-seeded loser Wednesday. Should the top seed be upset in either of its lower-bracket contests, a semifinal game would be played Friday, July 20.

    A best-of-five final will determine the playoff championship. The same playoff format, said Schneider, will be used by the women’s league.