The Stony Hill Stables Foundation’s fund-raiser Saturday exceeded its $20,000 goal, Maureen Bluedorn was happy to report Tuesday morning before children’s pony and horse camps began.

    Thus the foundation is on its way toward awarding eight riding scholarships — apparently a “first” here — to promising applicants with a desire to improve their skills.

    The first scholarship award, worth about $5,000 when instruction and leasing are taken into account, was announced at the fund-raiser. It went to 10-year-old Lara Lowlicht, an East Hampton fifth grader, “who met all of our criteria,” said Bluedorn. “She’s a straight-A student, plays lacrosse, sings in the school choir, has some riding ability, and has the desire and the need.”

    Thus Lara, who had been taking one lesson a week during the past month, is now to be taught every day throughout the summer on her “favorite pony,” Wizard, whom the scholarship enables her to lease.

    Moreover, the Tack Shop in Amagansett has, according to Bluedorn, donated “a complete outfit for her when she shows.”

    During a brief conversation Tuesday morning before taking Wizard out of the stable into the short-stirrup ring for an evaluation by Stony Hill’s office manager, Roiya Doyle, Lara said she’d “like to be an equestrian, like Wick,” referring to Stony Hill’s owner, Wick Hotchkiss, a dressage silver and bronze medalist, who is happy to have her and her mother’s dream of offering riding scholarships realized.

    To fully fund eight scholarships — two each in the stables’ four levels, ranging from short stirrup to dressage — around $100,000 will be needed, said Bluedorn, though the initial fund-raising success, she added, has spurred the foundation board’s hopes.

    Aisha Ali-Duyck, a full-time trainer at Stony Hill who also shows in dressage competitions, and who as a former working student at Stony Hill knows how valuable these scholarships can be, said in an article on these pages last week, “I’m hoping the children who get involved with the foundation have that same experience I had.”

    Dahlia Aman, who recently swept through the Empire State Games senior division in tennis without losing a game, qualifying for next summer’s national tournament in Cleveland, played volleyball when growing up in the Philippines and didn’t begin playing tennis until she moved to the United States in 1973.

    “I wish I had learned when I was younger,” said the 5-foot-1-inch dynamo, with a laugh. “I would have been traveling.”

    Chances are she would have indeed, for Aman, whose husband, George, is a life master bridge player, and a frequent hitting partner, has won myriad matches over the years, in United States Tennis Association and club tournaments, since taking the game up. There are, she said, trophies “in the garage . . . inside, all over the place . . . medals too.”

    Moreover, she had learned on her own, “by reading Tennis Magazine and watching people play,” starting off in Syracuse, where she met her husband, who, from 1984 until his recent retirement, administered schools in Riverhead, Longwood, Amagansett, and East Hampton (The Ross School). He is soon to become the president of the East Hampton School Board.

    “I was looking for volleyball in Syracuse,” she said, “but I didn’t find it.”

    She did, however, find her primary avocation and her husband — on indoor tennis courts there. Asked if they had hit it off from the start, the interviewee, who was wearing a dark black print dress and a jaunty red cap, said, with another laugh, “Oh no, I didn’t like him! But I’m glad he persisted — I almost missed the opportunity. He courted me for six years. It was a good thing that it wasn’t love at first sight; I wanted to know him very well, and I wanted him to know me very well. We have been together now for 28 years.”

    Did she play bridge? “Oh no, I don’t play bridge — tennis is enough. . . . He teaches people every day, including members of the Devon Yacht Club. He’s been there for 13 years.”

    When asked about Aman’s tennis game, one of her hitting partners, Barbara Mueller, said, “She’s incredibly disciplined, focused, and smart on the court. . . . She gets everything! She’s one of those people who, when she decides to do something, does it 100 percent.”

    Aman (pronounced Ahmin) found no tennis in Riverhead either, though she did find it at what used to be the Hamptons Athletic Club — now Sportime — in Quogue. “I took no lessons — I just played. After I won a championship, they threw me in the pool. I didn’t know how to swim. My husband had to jump in and save me. I won five [women’s A] tournaments there in a row, and 12 in a row at Westhampton Beach Tennis and Sport. Then I got pregnant. Then I won again. And then I stopped because people started hating me. You can tell — they get really tired of you.”

    On moving here, when Dr. Aman was named the Amagansett School’s superintendent, she won numerous tournaments at Green Hollow, Buckskill, Sag Harbor, on the North Fork, and at the East Hampton Indoor-Outdoor Tennis Club, where her elder son, Dennis Ferrando, whom she started off at the age of 6, is a teaching pro.

    While she used to play in 10 tourneys a summer and was at one time the top-ranked player in the eastern region, competing in U.S.T.A. events all over Long Island and upstate, she has let up a bit in recent years, playing three times a week and competing in two to three tournaments in the summer.

    When cramps forced her to withdraw from a tournament at E.H.I.T., she promised herself, she said, that she would stop whenever that happened again. “It took me two weeks to recover that time . . . I wasn’t even losing when it happened.”

    The heat, she said, had forced her to withdraw from the national senior division tournament in Louisville, Ky., six years ago, and from the nationals in Houston, Tex., last year. “At Louis­ville, I won the first set 6-0, but I had to stop in the second set because of cramps — it was 98 degrees and very humid. In Houston, I got to the final, but I couldn’t play because of the heat. I made a good showing though, even though I didn’t win it.”

    Tennis, she has said, is her sport, not her life. She spends much time fund-raising for Filipino-American groups — one of which, the Phil-Am Social Club of the Hamptons, she founded in 2005 — that have helped tsunami victims and donate regularly to such organizations as Doctors Without Borders, Ronald McDonald House, and the United Service Organization, Inc., the U.S.O.

    She supplements her tennis with workouts at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter and at the East Hampton Gym, and does Pilates core-strengthening exercises and yoga at home. “I walk every day also. . . . I don’t run on treadmills — I don’t want to hurt my knees.”

    Asked if there was any area of her game that needed improving, she said, “No, I don’t think so.”

    She has her rackets strung loosely, at 45 pounds, which enables her to hit with power, “though I play with control too. . . . I’m thinking all the time, but not too much! I’ll lob, work you around. If you give me a short ball, I can hit it for a winner. I know I’m known for getting everything back, but I’m more of an offensive player now.”

    As for surfaces, “I like Har-Tru the most, then grass, then hard courts. We played on hard courts at Cortland, but I didn’t find them troublesome.”

    There is no national tournament this year; they’re played every two years. “Winning at the Empire State Games qualified me to play in Cleveland next summer. I want to win that, and then stop. That’s my goal.”

    The 9-10-year-old East Hampton traveling all-star baseball team’s playoff run came to an end with a 10-6 loss at Patchogue Saturday morning. Thus the Bonackers finished the District 36 Little League tournament with a 3-2 record.

    Following Friday’s 13-0 mercy-rule shutout of Sag Harbor at the Pantigo Fields here, Tim Garneau and Adam Wilson, one of Garneau’s assistants, told the boys that three more wins stood between them and the district title.

    “This is the first 9-and-10-year-old traveling team we’ve had in a while,” said Garneau during a conversation Monday, “and we showed that we can play with any team in the tournament. At Westhampton we blew a 6-4 lead in the bottom of the sixth — we gave it away with a couple of errors and walks. Westhampton won that one 7-6. In the fifth inning of Saturday’s game at Patchogue, we had four runs in and the bases loaded with two outs and our best hitter [Lou Britton] at the plate. Unfortunately he bounced out to the pitcher.”

    “You should have seen Patchogue’s complex,” he continued. “Nine fields, scoreboards, and signs that said ‘District Champions ’08 and ’09.’ Our kids said they wanted one of those.”

    The last time East Hampton fielded traveling all-star teams to be reckoned with in district tournaments dates to the late 1980s and early ’90s. The 11-and-12-year-old team of 1991, on which Brendan Fennell, Tommy McGintee, Robbie Peters, Will Collins, Jason LaMonda, R.J. Etzel, Jonathan Bowe, and Adam Crandall, among others, played, won district and county championships that year — both “firsts” in Bonac annals. That team lost 14-7 to Massapequa in a Long Island semifinal played in Great River.

    Alex Walter, who coached those Little Leaguers, along with Bill McGintee, said at the time that his 1988 and ’89 teams had been district finalists.

    When reminded of East Hampton’s former glory, Garneau said, “I’m trying to build it back up to that point. We want these younger kids to feed into the 11-and-12-year-old team, and then into the high school program. . . . There was a period of years not long ago when East Hampton didn’t field any traveling teams.”

    Of his charges, he said, “We had kids who could pitch and hit . . . I think it was a great experience for them to play in a competitive tournament and to develop the camaraderie they did, and just to pay attention.”

    Christian Johnson, a 10-year-old who throws strikes, finished with a 2-0 playoff record and also was credited with a save. Five of his teammates, Henry Garneau, Logan Gurney, Jackson Baris, Owen Ruddy, and Liam Leach, have another year to play with the 9-10s.

    With Johnson on the mound in Friday’s must-win game here with Sag Harbor — another team that had one loss in the double-elimination tournament — the outcome was never in doubt.

    East Hampton, the “visiting” team, jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the first inning as Britton, Garneau, and Pat DeSanti had hits. Johnson, who was to allow just two hits, struck out the side in the bottom half.

    The young Bonackers scored six more runs in the top of the third, the big hits being two-run singles by Britton, Johnson, and Elian Abreu.

    East Hampton added one in the fourth. After two were out, Britton and Garneau singled, Britton moving to third on Garneau’s hit. A passed ball, with Johnson up, allowed Britton to come home with Bonac’s 13th run.

    The visitors had runners on third and second with one out in the bottom half of the fourth, which was to prove to be their last gasp.

    After Johnson notched a strikeout — his seventh of the game, which brought his pitch count to 45 — Gurney was brought in from center field to finish the young Whalers off by way of an infield groundout.

    There was agony and ecstasy to spare this past week as East Hampton’s Little League finalists — boys and girls — duked it out in best-of-three “world series.”

    Tim Garneau’s Indians came from behind to win the 9-10 boys series at the Pantigo Fields on June 11, thanks to a two-out, two-strike walk-off double hit to deep center field by Jackson Baris that treated the Indians to a 6-5 win over Greg Brown’s Orioles.

    The Orioles had defeated the Indians 7-5 in game one, but the eventual winners took game two by a score of 4-1. Scott Healey got the save in the finale, pitching two scoreless innings during which he struck out five of the Orioles’ batters. “He was key,” Garneau said as his charges were dashing around the bases, celebrating their victory.

    Later, Brown said, “We were up 5-0 at one point, but that’s the game. The kids played fantastic. Our team was built on respect, on respecting the game, our opponents, the umpires, the coaches. And they did that. It was a great group of kids — they played their hearts out.”

    His players had taken the defeat in stride, Brown said in reply to a question. “The main thing we’ve taught them this year is sportsmanship. You don’t see that much anymore.”

    Tom Talmage, the head coach of the 11-to-12-year-old Diamondbacks, said after his team had been swept in two by Steve Minskoff’s Reds, “I recruited him a few years ago and he’s been torturing me ever since.”

    “The last two games we made some uncharacteristic errors that came out of nowhere,” said Talmage, “but my kids are very resilient. We had a few losses earlier in the season and then won five in a row to come out ahead in a three-way tie for second.”

    Minskoff, whose team’s consecutive 7-5 and 13-4 wins polished off the Diamondbacks, said Hunter Fromm, who had pitched three no-nos during the season, one of which had been a perfect game, was his M.V.P. The Reds, he said, also boasted an exceptional 10-year-old fourth grader, Christian Johnson, the team’s starting shortstop, who was his rookie of the year.

    As for the girls, Pat Bistrian’s Sand Gnats prevailed 19-14 over The Express, coached by Rich Swanson, in the third game of the 10-to-11 Little League girls softball series Saturday morning at East Hampton High School’s field, where all three games were played.

    The Sand Gnats, who had been crushed 20-5 by The Express in game two, after having won the first game 15-13, jumped out to a 9-0 lead in the pivotal clash, but The Express came back to tie the score in the second inning before the Sand Gnats put the game, and the series, away with four runs in the top of the sixth inning.

    “We’ve gotten to the final two years in a row,” Swanson said afterward. “We lost last year too, but this year was a bigger disappointment. We were undefeated in the regular season — we’d played the Sand Gnats once and beat them 6-5 — but sloppy play did us in. We don’t normally play like that.”

    The game was delayed for 15 or so minutes in the fifth when the sprinklers came on, chasing The Express’s outfielders toward the dugout. “I thought that might have cooled the Sand Gnats down, but it didn’t,” said Swanson. Dave Fioriello eventually turned the sprinklers off so the game could resume.

    Lina Bistrian, a 12-year-old pitcher with a windmill delivery, got the all-important win. She was smothered afterward by her teammates, who included her cousin, Elizabeth, the first baseman, who caught everything thrown her way.

    Three traveling all-star teams — two boys squads, coached by Garneau and Minskoff, and one girls entry, coached by Swanson — are to play in District 36 tournaments in the coming weeks.

June 11, 1987

    Duane Bock, a senior who has played five years on East Hampton High School’s varsity golf team, finished fifth in the New York State high school golf championships held Sunday and Monday at Cornell University.

    It was the first time that an East Hampton student had placed in the state tournament, which this year was won by the Suffolk team. One of Duane’s older brothers, Darrell, played in the state tournament in 1983, as a junior, finishing 25th, and E.J. Pospisil went as an alternate in 1977 and ’78.

    East Hampton High School celebrated a very good athletic year with an awards dinner attended by about 500 at the high school’s gymnasium on June 9. Of the 17 teams the school fielded, three — wrestling, boys track, and boys tennis — won league and conference championships.

    There were, as well, outstanding individual performances by, among others, Eric Kaufman, who, as a 112-pound senior wrestler, became the first East Hampton student ever to win a Suffolk County championship, after which he went on to become a state finalist; Kenny Wood, the 6-foot-4-inch sophomore boys basketball team’s center, who now stands third on the school’s all-time scoring list, with 1,130 points, only 103 shy of breaking the record held by his older brother, Howard, and Duane Bock, a five-year letterman on the golf team, who recently placed fifth in the New York State tournament.

    The Paul Yuska award, given to the school’s most valuable senior athlete, was shared by three students — Kirsten Barrett, who last fall set a school record for shutouts (10) by a field hockey goalkeeper, Kaufman, and Michael Scott, who played number-one singles for the boys tennis team, and who won the Conference Four singles championship.

    Wrestling, coached by Jim Stewart, won the League Seven and Conference Four championships for the third year in a row; boys tennis, coached by John Goodman, repeated as the league champion, at 14-0, and, also for the second straight year, won the conference singles (Scott) and doubles (Luke Wornstaff and Clark Silva) doubles titles. Boys track, coached by Mike Burns, won championships in League Seven and, for the first time ever, in Conference Four.

    With the weather cooperating as well as could be expected, a 24-year-old Kenyan, Yobes Ondeiki, a 25-year-old New Zealander, Christine McMiken, and a 42-year-old former Miller Place resident, Bobbi Rothman, broke course and Long Island records in Saturday’s Shelter Island 10K race. Ondeiki’s time was 28 minutes and 53 seconds, the result of a blistering 4:39-per-mile pace.

    “I couldn’t have asked for anything more, it was a total success,” Cliff Clark, the race director, said afterward. “We’ve now got all four Long Island 10K records — in the open and masters divisions.”

Thursday, June 28

LACROSSE, open play at East Hampton High School begins, 6-8 p.m.

Friday, June 29

LITTLE LEAGUE, District 36 tournament for 9-10-year-olds, site to be determined, 5:45 p.m.

Saturday, June 30

RIDING, cocktail party to benefit Stony Hill Stables Foundation with dressage exhibition and pony drill team performance, Stony Hill Stables, Town Lane, Amagansett, 6-8 p.m.

Monday, July 2

GIRLS SOCCER, summer workout, East Hampton High School, 6-7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, July 4

MEN’S SOCCER, 75 Main vs. Espo’s, 6:30 p.m., Bateman Painting vs. Tuxpan, 7:25, and Tortorella Pools vs. Maidstone Market, 8:20, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

    While East Hampton’s 11-to-12-year-old traveling all-star team lost two games last week, resulting in its elimination from the District 36 Little League tournament, the 9-10s won both of their initial outings and were to have played a third game yesterday.

    Christian Johnson, an impressive fourth-grader, started for the young Bonackers in Monday’s game against Mastic at the Pantigo fields, and while the visitors touched him for two runs in the top of the first inning, it was pretty much all Bonac after that as Tim Garneau’s crew cruised to a 13-6 win.

    East Hampton quickly wrested the lead back in the bottom of the first inning, scoring six runs before it was over. Henry Garneau, a lefty, led off with a line single to center field. After Lou Britton, also a left-hander, was walked, Johnson drove in Garneau with a single, and Britton and Johnson alertly moved up to second and third on the play. Elian Abreu, the cleanup hitter, walked to load the bases with none out, and while the next batter, Chasen Dubs, struck out, Britton came home with East Hampton’s second run as the catcher let the ball get by him.

    And so it went, as more passed balls and more walks led to more Bonac runs. Batting for the second time in the inning, with runners at first and second, Garneau doubled home run number six before Britton grounded out second-to-first to end the inning.

    Johnson, who pretty much throws swift strikes, shut down the visitors in the top of the second. He led off East Hampton’s second with a high, deep fly to center field that Mastic’s center fielder one-handed over his head as he fell onto his back. Abreu followed suit, hitting the ball just about where Johnson had, but this time the center fielder dropped the ball, allowing Abreu to pull in at second. After Dubs struck out, an error by Mastic’s shortstop resulted in Abreu scoring, upping East Hampton’s lead to 7-2.

   Mastic got one back in the top of the third, a run scoring on a passed ball with the bases loaded and none out. But Johnson closed the visitors out with two strikeouts sandwiched around an out at home as a runner tried to score on a passed ball.

    A two-out line drive base hit by Britton that plated Zach Barzilay from third made it 8-3 in the bottom half of the inning. Johnson followed with a little nubber that remained inside the third baseline, putting runners at first and second for Abreu, who was walked after the count went full. Mastic brought in a reliever then to pitch to Dubs, who lined out to the pitcher, ending the inning.

    The little Little Leaguers won game one by a score of 8-6 over North Fork. Garneau reported that North Fork led 6-2 after four innings, after which East Hampton came back to win.

    A triple by Dubs that led off East Hampton’s fifth was followed by a double by Britton and four consecutive singles by Logan Gurney, Jackson Baris, Nate Wright, and Owen Ruddy. Johnson closed the door in the sixth, striking out the side in 12 pitches.

    The 11-12s were shut out 10-0 at Southampton, and lost 6-3 to Riverhead.

    East Hampton’s roster included Zachary Minskoff, Rudy DeSanti, Jack Healey, Luke Vaziri, Jack Murphy, Noah Lappin, Ryan Brewer, August Schultz, Hunter Fromm, Kurt Mathews, Jack Suter, Sean Tyler Tronsen, Chris Stoecker, and Hunter Medler. Steve Minskoff was the head coach.

    Rich Swanson is to lead East Hampton’s 10-to-11-year-old Little League girls softball entry into the district tournament in two weeks.

    Its roster comprises Lina Bistrian, Elizabeth Bistrian, and Grace Myers of the playoff-champion Sand Gnats, Isabella Swanson, Nina Gonzalez, and Alexis Vargas of the playoff-runner-up Express, Sophia Ledda, Ella Gurney, and Julia Kearney of the Owls, Olivia Brauer and Julia Short of the Bandits, Jaylean Schiappacasse of the Thunder, and Danielle Lackner and Maddison Neff of the Shamrocks.

    Since the Cashins, Ed and his Irish-born wife, Caroline, seem to be on the move most of the time, you better be prepared for a mini cardiovascular workout of your own should you want to interview them.

    The Exceed Fitness studio that they have overseen since Memorial Day on Plank Road off Route 114 in East Hampton is a hive of activity every day of the week. Simply to observe is to get your blood flowing and your heart pumping more efficiently.

    “We’ve just got done biking and running,” Ed said on his arrival at the studio Sunday morning with a half-dozen others just prior to an hourlong class for 15 or so students that mixed boxing in with TRX suspension strap and Bosu ball training.

    Ed Cashin has been a personal trainer for the past 25 years, his first client being the president of his alma mater, Lock Haven (Pa.) University, where he played rugby and was a frat mate of Mike Bahel, a fellow trainer who owns the Body Tech studios in Amagansett and Montauk.

    Peter Rana, Body Tech’s former owner, who now “owns the two biggest gyms in New Zealand,” helped foster Cashin’s personal training career, placing him with an art dealer (the late Thomas Ammann) who lived in Switzerland. When, six months later, Cashin returned to the U.S., Bahel replaced him for a spell in Switzerland.

    “Since the early ’90s, I’ve been on my own, though this is my first studio,” he said, looking about the 1,800-square-foot space, with its 50 feet of monkey bars, ranks of TRX training straps, clusters of Bosu balls, kettlebells, and Dynamax medicine balls. “My partners and I also have an Exceed Fitness studio in New York, at 83rd and Third. I’m there Mondays and Thursdays.”

    Classes in boxing, biking, running, paddleboarding, TRX, kettlebells, and sledding are among the offerings. As for his clientele, “Many are local people who I’m taking to another level. It’s highly functional training, very movement based.”

    “There are no machines,” he added, “except for the fans. . . . We use our own body weight. We do a lot of calorie burning at a high heart rate. Mobility and flexibility come first, then we build up strength, primarily with kettlebells, those iron things over there. We do full range of motion work with lighter weights and then progress from there, adding plyometrics [explosive exercises designed to increase muscle power and speed].”

    When this writer, who attended two classes last week, wondered whether the workouts might be too strenuous for the average Joe, he was told by one of the students, Andy Cairns, that “it’s up to you how many reps you do.”

    “The classes are scaled to all abilities,” Cashin said.

    When Cairns’s wife, Meredith, was asked during last Thursday afternoon’s similarly well-attended TRX and Bosu ball class what she did sports-wise, she replied, with a laugh, “I don’t run marathons — I’m the mother of a 2-year-old.”

    “Ed’s fantastic,” she continued. “Everyone’s equally challenged, but at a different level. He’s wonderful at creating a sense of camaraderie.”

    “Meredith is an athlete now,” Cashin said, when questioned before Sunday’s boxing and TRX class began — an assessment with which Andy Cairns readily agreed.

    “I take every class he gives,” said Cairns, pointing out another in-shape convert, Tom O’Donoghue.

    “I was a smoker until I was 40,” said O’Donoghue, who directed the inaugural Katy’s Courage 5K race in Sag Harbor last year. Katy’s example, he said of Jim and Brigid Stewart’s late daughter, who died of a rare form of liver cancer, had inspired him. “I’ve been doing this since Thanksgiving — at least five days a week,” he said. “It’s brought about a big change in me, but a good change.”

    O’Donoghue said he recently brought over some of Pierson High School’s county championship baseball players, “but they couldn’t keep up with us old guys. . . . No matter what sport you play this will make you better.”

    The I-Tri program for sixth-through-eighth-grade girls in the Springs and Montauk Schools benefited to the tune of about $9,000 from a Turbo-Tri, a triathlon for adults new or relatively new to the sport that was contested Saturday over the same Maidstone Park course the I-Tri girls and others of their peers are to traverse on July 22.

    The overall winner, Annette MacNiven, who recently placed second in her age group in the International Triathlon Union’s world championships — and thus was decidedly not a triathletic neophyte — told the race director and fellow I-Tri coach, Sharon McCobb, before the 300-yard swim, 7-mile bike, and 1.5-mile run event began, that she’d defer if she won.

    As a result, the official winner that day among the 30 entrants was Elizabeth Parry, 32, of Water Mill, who finished in 44 minutes and 17.6 seconds, about two and a half minutes behind MacNiven. Bill Costello, 51, of Wainscott, fourth over all, was the men’s winner in 48:05.9. Stephanie Brabant, 36, of Springs, was fifth, in 48:13.5, and Diane O’Donnell, 61, the East Hampton High School girls cross-country and track coach, was sixth, in 48:19.

    There were relay teams as well. Eric Casale, the Springs School principal, was on one of them, along with Kim Notel, the school’s DARE officer, who did the bay swim, and Ana Jacobs, a teacher’s assistant, who did the bike leg.

    “It’s a wonderful program,” Casale said of I-Tri before the race began. “Theresa [Roden] has done an unbelievable job with them. In two years these girls have blossomed. They’re engaged in a lifelong commitment to personal fitness and to increased self-confidence. They would have been couch potatoes; they’re leaders now.”

    As of the moment, I-Tri has 40 members, including 14 alumnae. Its motto is “Transformation Through Triathlon.”

    Topping the eight relay teams, in 53:03.2, was Big Blue, with John Foster (swim), Whitney Reidlinger (bike), and Abbey Roden (run).

    The Women’s Sports Foundation, from which I-Tri has received grant money, sent out from Hicksville a professional ultra-distance competitor, Amy Winters, a 39-year-old below-the-knee amputee who continued to compete after losing a leg to a motorcycle accident when she was 21.

    Winters, who was mentoring her sister, Stacy Hatzo, a first-timer, that day, said, in reply to a question, that she would do the 135-mile Bad Water race in Death Valley next. She added that as a member of the United States’ able-bodied team, she competed in a 24-hour race in France in April, running 125 miles in that span.

    While for her Saturday’s event was a walk in the park, Winters, who brought along her two children, Carson, 8, and Madilynn, 7, said it was fitting she was there, inasmuch as I-Tri “is about mentoring and helping others.”

    The children, she said, “do sprint triathlons with me, distances like this.”

    As for the amputation, she said in answer to a question, “Everybody faces something in life, a crisis that presents you with a choice. Do you give up or do you move on?”

    Leslie Andrews, a former ESPN marketer who at the age of 30 forsook corporate boardrooms for the greener pastures of golf, and who later became a teaching pro and a corporate golf consultant, has, with Adrienne Wax, written a book, “Even Par: How Golf Helps Women Gain the Upper Hand in Business,” which says that working women are handicapping themselves by not taking up the sport.

    During a recent conversation at Montauk Downs, where she gives lessons most of the year, Andrews, who may well be the first to offer such a primer, said, in reply to a question, “For beginners, men and women, the physical skills are the same, but the psychological experience is far different for women. Women have far more difficulty making the transition from lessons to playing. They think they’re not good enough, whereas the guys just go out and let ’er rip.”

    The spirits of those who might not feel good enough, the blond, blue-eyed teaching pro said, with a smile, would undoubtedly lighten considerably should they check out the foursomes on the first tees. Timid souls would see then that the vast majority of golfers, men and women, are not playing the same game as it is played on television — far from it.

    All Andrews wants to do is to get women in the game so that they, too, can be part of the conversation, as it were, and have fun at the same time.

    “According to a study by Catalyst,” she writes, “46 percent of female executives cited ‘exclusion from informal networks’ as a main impediment to their ability to reach the top of an organization. And the biggest informal network is golf. Why would you let an inability to play golf stand in your way when it is relatively easy to learn?”

    “In the work GolfingWomen does with businesswomen we debunk the myths of golf and underline its realities,” the former three-sport athlete at Wellesley and Dartmouth M.B.A. said. “If Annika Sorenstam, who might be the greatest woman golfer ever, and who’s my size, is your standard, you better ratchet it down.”

    “At ESPN you had to play golf,” she said in recounting her own experience, which, amplified by a decade of teaching, had led her to write the book, which has, she said in reply to a question, been doing quite well.

    While the golf industry, Andrews said, had tried to get more women to play the game, “the percentage of female players has remained pretty much steady, at between 23 and 25 percent, over the years. But the industry has treated women like men. Women don’t need more lessons, they need help with the psychological things. The bar is not as high as you think!”

    Myth #1: “To play in a business outing, you need to be a good golfer.”

    Reality #1: “To play in a business outing, you need to show up.”

    Myth #2: “All men who play in business golf outings are good golfers.”    Reality #2: “Wrong. Most people, regardless of gender, are not good golfers. Yet they are golfers, regardless of ability level.”

    Myth #3: “Men don’t like to play golf with women.”

    Reality #3: “Generally speaking, my experience has been that men like to play golf with women. First, most men like being with women, period, and, second, as more women move into influential roles in business — hence become key clients, bosses, and so forth — men need to build relationships with women just as much as vice versa. Remember: this isn’t personal; it’s business.”

    Myth #4: “You need to make a major commitment — both in time and money — to learn to play golf and participate in golf outings for business.”

    Reality #4: “Golf is an investment, yes, but an investment in you . . . a tool to propel you up the ladder of your career. . . . You need an understanding of three things to play golf: 1) Basic golf skills; 2) How to maintain the pace of play throughout a round, and 3) Golf etiquette.”

    So, she would say, take a few lessons from a teaching pro (not from a friend, relative, or significant other), get a golf calendar, put up on your office bulletin board a photo of yourself in golf attire on a golf course, and say yes when someone asks if you’d like to play in the next company golf outing.

    Anyone can learn to play golf, she said, during the course of three months, with a little persistence.

    Andrews would advise that beginners here — male or female — start out playing at the nine-holers, the Sag Harbor Golf Club or Poxabogue, rather than at Montauk Downs, even though its head pro, Kevin Smith, she said, was “very woman-friendly.”

    The Downs was, she added, “a long course that plays much longer when the wind’s blowing. It is difficult, but it’s playable. And beautiful, and open to the public. We’re very lucky to have this course here in our backyard.”

    On the subject of tees, “they really are ability-related rather than gender-related. Men tend to hit longer than women, but the women pros at Sebonack next year will be playing from the back tees. . . . You should play the tees that fit your game.”

    As for beer and betting, women oughtn’t to fret. “There is pressure to drink and pressure to gamble, but you can decline in various ways.”

    When this writer said a golfer of his acquaintance maintained he did better after having had one or two beers, she smiled and said, “Drinking doesn’t improve your game — that’s a known fact. The betting thing is tricky. Men tend to like to bet on golf, they need the ‘action,’ it piques their interest. Women tend not to be into that. But there are ways to excuse yourself. Betting, however, shouldn’t discourage women.”

    There are 10 chapters in the breezily written “Even Par,” each beginning with a quote, perhaps the most helpful of which is Lao Tzu’s “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”

    Thus, in signing off, on page 121, Andrews says, “Grab a 5-iron and carpe diem.”