May 7, 1987

    Boys tennis continued last week as the only undefeated team among the six fielded by East Hampton High School in the spring. The Bonac squad topped Mercy, Stony Brook, and Smithtown West to run its record to 7-0.

    In a 6-1 win over Mercy on April 29, all three doubles teams — Luke Wornstaff and Clark Silva, Marc Kenny and Mauricio Castillo, and Tom Kalbacher and Chris Wellenborg — won their matches without the loss of a game. It was a “first” as far as East Hampton’s coach, John Goodman, could remember.

    The late East Hampton and Mepham High School wrestling coach, Frank (Sprig) Gardner, was inducted posthumously into the Long Island Sports Hall of Fame at a recent ceremony in Garden City.

    Elizabeth McCourt and Dawn Donatuti, an East Hampton High School girls track team pairing, walked away with first place in the 1,500-meter racewalk at the conference relays on Saturday, and Mandy Brugnoni set a school triple jump record of 30 feet in a dual meet at Southampton last Thursday.

    Andy Neidnig, the 67-year-old Sag Harbor runner, won the 65-to-69-year-old division in Sunday’s Long Island marathon in 3 hours, 23 minutes, and 44 seconds.

    Neidnig, who also was the fastest runner over 60 in the 26.2-mile race, finishing 173rd among 1,033 competitors, was happy to report that he keeps getting better. Last year, his time was 3:25:05.

May 14, 1987

    The Montauk Rugby Club, according to its president, Charlie Whitmore, proved itself to be “the top side on Long Island” in Saturday’s tournament at Heckscher State Park in Islip.

    Montauk finished third among the tourney’s eight sides, scoring wins over Rockaway and Long Island after losing 13-11 to the New York Rugby Club, the eventual runner-up to the Connecticut Yankees, in the first round.

    “We accomplished what we set out to do,” said Whitmore, concerning the revived Montauk rugby team, whose spring match record was 4-3. “Everybody knows now that Montauk is back full time. Our notoriety is surfacing once again in the New York rugby world.”

    The message of the weeklong FitHampton health fair, which benefited Southampton Hospital, seemed to be: Stay loose through stretching, don’t overdo, and eat smaller portions.

    The yoga lecturer, Patia Cunningham of the Body Shop in East Hampton, spoke of yoga as “a way of keeping your body tuned up. . . . We need maintenance at least as much as our cars do.”

May 28, 1987

    The East Hampton High School boys track team, which won the League Seven championship at 8-0, added the Conference Four crown — for the first time ever — in a meet held here on May 19.

    “The key was the triple jump,” said East Hampton’s coach, Mike Burns. “That got us 22 points, and put us over the top.” Four of the triple jump’s top five were Bonackers.

    While East Hampton had only two winners that day — Jim Dunlop in the 400-meter run and Barry Johnson in the triple jump, with a hop, skip, and leap of 38 feet 4 inches — the team placed in 15 of the 17 events.

    Bonac’s runners-up were Artie Fisher in the 800 at 2:05.7; Danny Evans in the 100 at 11.2, a personal best; the 4-by-100-meter relay team of Scott Bates, Dean Foster, Jeff LaCarrubba, and Evans, in 47.2, and Rich Ross in the discus at 125-10.

    Michael Scott, the number-one player on the East Hampton High School boys tennis team, won the Conference Four singles championship Tuesday, defeating Westhampton’s number-one, Fred Nassauer, 6-2, 6-2 in a match played at Westhampton Beach High School. East Hampton also won the conference doubles championship as Luke Wornstaff and Clark Silva downed Southampton’s Teague Cameron and Tim Hull in the final, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1.

    East Hampton went undefeated in League Seven play, at 14-0, to win the league crown for the second straight year. It was 15-1 over all, the only loss coming at the hands of Ward Melville.

    It was the first time that East Hampton has gone undefeated in league play, said its coach, John Goodman.

    Goodman rated this year’s and last year’s teams as the best boys teams he’s ever had. The 1986 squad went 17-3.

   The Pierson and Southold High School baseball teams were to have played for the county Class C championship in the third game of a best-of-three series at Sag Harbor’s Mashashi­muet Park Tuesday.

    Presumably, Colman Vila, Pierson’s impressive undefeated left-hander, was penciled in as the Whalers’ starter that day by Pierson’s coach, Jon Tortorella.

    Pierson, which had lost only three games going into Tuesday’s finale, last won a county championship in 2009.

    Vila was masterful in the opener on May 16 (Southold won the second game 5-4 Friday on the North Fork), giving up two hits on his way to a 1-0 shutout, striking out eight — a number of the victims fanning on changeup curves — and walking two.

    He also made a neat fielding play — catching a runner sliding into third after fielding a sacrifice bunt and faking a throw to first in the top of the sixth.

    Vila’s opposite number, Kyle Clausen, was almost as good. The righty gave up five hits, all singles, struck out five, and walked two. He also hit a batter and made a wild pitch.

    He too made a nifty fielding play, tossing to first for the out there after falling onto his back in fielding a high hopper with two outs in the bottom of the fourth.

    Pierson scored its all-important run in the third. Kyle Sturmann, the second baseman, led it off by working Clausen for a walk. The leadoff hitter, Hunter Leyser, after fouling off two bunt attempts, then singled through the left side, putting runners at first and second for Vila, whose bunt was converted into an out at third.

    Forrest Loesch, the sophomore shortstop, who bats third in the Whalers’ lineup, hit a comebacker to Clausen, resulting in a force at second, but the relay throw to first went wide, allowing Sturmann to come home with what proved to be the winning run, after which Aaron Schiavoni, the cleanup hitter, popped out to third.

    Southold threatened to score in the top of the sixth. The first batter, Lucas Hokanson, who had singled off Vila to start the game, reached on an error by Loesch. He stole second with Rob Mahoney up, but the aforementioned fake and throw to third by Vila ensued, after which Clausen singled through the right side, putting runners at first and second for the cleanup hitter, Will Fujita, whose hard 0-1 drive to right field was caught. Anthony Fedele, Southold’s catcher, popped out to first to end the inning, prompting Vila and his teammates to exult.

    Pierson had runners at first and second with one out in the bottom half of the sixth, the result of back-to-back singles by Loesch and Schiavoni, but Clausen reached back to strike out Sean Hartnett and Sturmann to retire the side.

    Vila closed the visitors out in the top of the seventh, inducing Shane Johnson to ground out second-to-first before striking out Alex Poliwoda and Alex Sinclair, the seventh and eighth hitters in the Settlers’ lineup.

   Twelve athletes, two teams, two coaches, and an honorary member make up the first class to be inducted into East Hampton High School’s Hall of Fame at the homecoming football game with Southampton on Sept. 22.

    The announcement was made May 23 by Jim Nicoletti, the president of East Hampton’s Hall of Fame committee, and Joe Vas, the school district’s athletic director, who suggested that such a committee be formed last summer.

    “We’re really thrilled about our inaugural class — it’s a great one,” said Nicoletti, who not long ago retired following a very successful baseball and tennis coaching career at the high school.

    “There were many nominees, from coaches, teammates, family members . . . and many nominees who were worthy but did not get in this year will in time get in. Those who remain on our list will continue to be considered for the next 10 years, along with future nominees. We’re hoping that this will spark an interest in the community.”

    Nominees must have been out of the high school for at least 10 years, “and what they did while here is the chief consideration,” said Nicoletti.

     The inaugural class includes five who were named posthumously: Frank Jewels, a member of the class of 1929; Walter Sheades, a 1930 graduate; Rich Balnis Sr., of the class of 1963, a three-sport athlete (football, basketball, and track) who played football at New Mexico State and did graduate work at Ohio State before opening a physical therapy business and working generously with youth here; Bill McDonald, a 1966 graduate who was a second-team high school all-American in football and who later went on to captain Vanderbilt’s team, and Kendall Madison, a 1991 graduate, a three-sport athlete who won a football scholarship to the University of Connecticut. The high school’s weight room is named in his memory.

    The other athletes to be inducted individually are Leroy DeBoard, Howard Wood, Margaret Dunn, Ed Budd, Kenny Wood, Ross Gload, and Ellamae Gurney.

    DeBoard, a 1951 graduate, was a four-sport athlete here (football, basketball, baseball, and track), and in 1994 was named to the Benedict College football Hall of Fame.

     Howard Wood, a 1977 graduate, led East Hampton to a state basketball championship and later, following a stellar career at the University of Tennessee, played in the National Basketball Association and in Spain’s premier leagues.

    Margaret Dunn, a 1979 graduate, was a four-sport athlete (field hockey, basketball, volleyball, and softball), and for a number years held the single-season scoring record in girls basketball.Ed Budd, a 1983 graduate who went on to UConn, was named to all-county teams here in football, wrestling, and baseball.

    Howard Wood’s younger brother, Kenny, led East Hampton to a state basketball championship in 1989, his senior year, played for the University of Richmond team that upset highly-seeded Syracuse in the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament, and went on to a professional career in Spain and South America. He was named to the University of Richmond’s Hall of Fame in February 2011.

    Ross Gload, a 1994 graduate who played soccer, basketball, and baseball, and who was the Carl Yastrzemski Award winner in his senior year, an award given to the best baseball player in Suffolk County, went on to set records at the University of South Florida and to a Major League baseball career with a half-dozen teams, most recently, in 2011, with the Philadelphia Phillies.

    Ellamae Gurney, also a 1994 graduate, was a three-sport athlete (field hockey, basketball, and softball). She played on the 1993 county championship field hockey team, which advanced to the state tournament’s semifinals. At Brown University she played varsity softball.

    The two coaches to be inducted are the 100-year-old Fran Kiernan, who coached football, basketball, and baseball here from 1945 to 1960, after which he served as athletic director for the better part of a decade, and Ed Petrie Sr., who, over a 52-year career, oversaw numerous championship teams and became the winningest public high school boys basketball coach in New York State. A member of the Frank McGuire Foundation Hall of Fame and Suffolk’s Hall of Fame, Petrie was last honored here in January 2011, when the high school’s basketball court was named for him.

    The two teams to be inducted are the undefeated, untied 1952 football team, which Kiernan coached — the only undefeated, untied team in East Hampton football history, which dates to 1923 — and the 1989 state-finalist field hockey team.

    The ’52 football team included, among others, John Tilley, Jim Clark, George Cafiso, Fred Yardley, Bob Yardley, Rich Cooper, Dave Cheney, Fritz Schenck, Charlie Gould, Bob Taylor, Don Bovie, Billy DeBoard, Augie Dragotta, Bob Lynch, Charles Kaiser, Russ Peele, Joseph Brubaker, David Kerstein, and Joe Green.

    On the ’89 field hockey team, its coach, Ellen Cooper, said, were Jen Vish, Megan Barnett, Dawn Da Costa Faro, Meredith Diefendorf, Renee Grau, Michelle Hammer, Paula Hatch, Rebecca Libath, Diana Lys, Shana Menu, Bridget McSweeney, Carolina Vargas, Danielle Ficeto, Nicole Ficeto, and Andrea Wyche.

    “That team was a terrific bunch,” Cooper said. “They gave girls sports here a big boost.”

    The honorary inductee is this writer, who took over The Star’s sports beat in 1979.

   The last time out against Islip, the East Hampton High School softball team made six errors in the final two innings, frittering away a 2-0 lead on the way to a 4-2 loss.

    This time, on Friday, it was the Buccaneers’ turn to play fumbleitis, and the Bonackers took full advantage, pulling out the county Class A semifinal 6-5 in the 10th inning.

    “I didn’t even want to look at the book afterward,” said Lou Reale, East Hampton’s coach, who added that it was a good thing he was 90 feet away when his pitcher, Casey Waleko, served up an 0-2 meatball in the sixth inning that was transmogrified into a three-run home run over the fence, a shot that put the home team ahead 4-2.

    But then, wonderful to tell, Reale’s crew came back.

    Courtney Dess, the eighth hitter, led off the top of the seventh, but was replaced by Shannon McCaffrey after falling behind 0-2 in the count. McCaffrey lined a shot to short, but Islip’s shortstop snagged it, diving flat-out.

    Ceire Kenny, the second baseman, then grounded toward third, but the third baseman threw the ball away, an error that allowed Kenny to reach first base safely. Dana Dragone, the leadoff hitter, was walked, which put runners at first and second for Deryn Hahn, whose double plated one run.

    With runners at second and third, Waleko popped out to the pitcher for the second out of the inning, and it looked initially as if Kathryn Hess, the senior catcher, who lofted a routine fly ball to right, would make the third — the out that would end Bonac’s season. “But their kid dropped it,” said Reale. “A two-run error — we were up 5-4.”

    “Wait, it gets worse,” he added, looking back at the scorebook. “They tied it 5-5 in the bottom of the seventh. Their ninth hitter bunted for a single, stole second, and then Casey got a strikeout. With that runner on second and one out, the next kid hit an r.b.i. single for 5-5. Casey got the next two on infield popups.”

    “Ellie [Cassel] lined to the fence to lead off the eighth for us, but it took her forever to get to second and she was thrown out. I’m getting sicker. . . . Ilsa [Brzezinski] popped out, Ali [Harned] singled, and Shannon struck out to end the inning.”

    “They threatened again in the bottom of the eighth. Casey walked the first batter, which isn’t good, and then, after a strikeout, the girl who hit the home run singled, putting runners at second and third with one out. A popup to Casey and another strikeout took them out of the inning.”

    “In the top of the ninth, Ceire popped out to the first baseman, Dana flied out to third, Deryn singled, and Casey was thrown out third-to-first.”

    “With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Ali made an error and Casey walked the next one on four straight pitches. So there were runners at first and second. The next girl hit a catchable foul fly behind first, but Ceire didn’t­ get it. It wasn’t an error, but she should have caught it.” A subsequent 6-3 groundout ended the inning.

    With the 10th, each team began its at-bat with a runner on second, Waleko in East Hampton’s case. And there was a new pitcher on the mound for the Buccaneers.

    Waleko advanced to third on a 5-3 groundout by Hess, Cassel struck out, and, with the count 1-1 on Brzezinski, a wild pitch enabled Waleko to come across with what proved to be the winning run. Brzezinski then grounded out third-to-first, but East Hampton had, without a hit, managed to wrest the lead back, at 6-5.

    There was, of course, more to come. With a runner on second in the bottom of the 10th, Islip’s first batter popped out to Hahn at third, “and then came the defensive play of the game for us,” said Reale. “The runner on second went to third on a passed ball by Kathryn, and the next batter hit a little fly between Casey and Ilsa that was trouble. Ilsa dove, and caught it inches from the ground. The girl stayed at third. Casey struck out the next one on a 2-2 rise. . . . It was unreal. It’s not over ’til it’s over. This time it was their turn to make the costly mistakes.”

    Waleko, in recording the big win, gave up six hits, hit a batter, struck out 14, and walked four.

    “We only had seven hits,” said Reale, “but, somehow, we got it done.”

    And so, for the first time since 2008, East Hampton was to have begun playing for a county championship Tuesday, at Sayville, the first game of a best-of-three series. The second game is to be played here today, and the third, if necessary, is to be played at Sayville tomorrow.

    Sayville defeated East Hampton twice in the regular season, by scores of 3-2 (in 10 innings) there and 8-2 here, the latter loss largely the result of a five-run fifth inning during which Waleko was hit hard.

    “We’ve been in a lot of close ones, so we’re used to the pressure,” said Reale, whose team was 16-5 going into the finale. “Hopefully, all the hard work the girls have done will pay off.”

    Kousaku Yokota, an international karate master who gave a weekend seminar recently at John Turnbull Sensei’s dojo in Southampton, began with judo at the age of 13, a martial art practiced by his father, in his hometown of Kobe, Japan.

    “I thought judo was it,” Yokota Sensei said during a conversation at Turnbull Sensei’s house in Bridgehampton the day the seminars were to begin. “But after I’d been practicing a couple of years, a new guy came to my class — a very short guy I could throw easily. But every time I threw him he would jump up like a grasshopper!”

    “I thought that was very strange. When you’re thrown in judo you’re not expected to jump up — you slap an arm as you fall to the floor and stay down for a short moment. When I asked him why he popped up like a bouncing ball, he confessed to me that he was a karate guy who was practicing judo to supplement his karate. I had thought that judo was the most lethal form of the martial arts, but he said no, no, that karate was, that he could disable me with a karate move before I could throw him.”

    To test that assertion “I grabbed both of his arms so he couldn’t punch me. He smiled and without moving his arms he kicked me in the groin! Not that hard, but enough so that I let his arms go as I crumbled to the ground. In judo it’s just throws. So that got me interested, it convinced me that karate [imported to Japan from Okinawa in the 17th century] was the better way. I stopped judo completely. My dad didn’t like it, but he said, ‘At least it’s a martial art.’ ”

    After a year during which he studied the Shotokan style in Kobe and the Gojuryu style in Osaka, about 30 miles away — there are many styles of karate — Yokota Sensei dropped the latter style entirely in favor of the former, which he found to be “more complete.”

    His first mentor, he said, had been an imposing 6 foot, 200-pounder, Sugano Sensei, “strong like a bear. . . . We were all afraid of his punch when he summoned us to demonstrate. He pushed us to the limit!”

    He had been lucky, he said, inasmuch as he had been able to practice karate throughout his life. “In Japan, most have to quit at 22 when they begin working from 8 in the morning until midnight. There isn’t enough time.”

    The 65-year-old eighth-degree black belt, who lives in San Jose, Calif., came to this country in 1966, at the age of 19, graduated from the University of Delaware with a business degree, and became a high tech salesman, which enabled him to teach karate on the side. He’s been teaching for 40 years. “My heart,” he said, “has always been in karate.”

    Faithful practice, he said, in answer to a question, furthered self-realization and helped the karateka face down his biggest enemy — himself.

    Of course, self-realization hadn’t been uppermost in his mind when he was a teenager, and “looking to be a bad martial artist!”

    While Yokota Sensei thinks competitions have become over-emphasized at the expense of the martial art’s ascetic Samurai tradition, he competed frequently in full contact tournaments when he was younger, until his retirement at 37, not long after having held his own as the eldest competitor in the All Japan championships in 1981 and ’82.

    At 50, he said, he — a 5th degree black belt at the time — felt that he’d reached a plateau, and underwent two-and-a-half years of Ki (inner force) training in Japan before meeting up again with Tetsuhiko Asai, a 10th degree black belt whose Taiwanese-based style, he said, was well suited to more experienced practitioners.

    The Ki training produced mixed results: While he believes that one can internalize and use the universal force that surrounds us, his master’s failure to fell him by pointing a finger — even as he was able to topple countless others in this way — persuaded Yokota Sensei that he could learn no new techniques there.

    Asai Sensei, whose method he now teaches throughout the world, had, however, impressed him greatly. “He was in his late 60s and was flexible — his movements were sharp and dynamic. I thought, ‘This is the way I want to look in my 60s and 70s.’ And so — this was in 2003 — I decided to follow his path.”

    The effectiveness of Asai Sensei’s style — an admixture of relaxation and explosive power — was abundantly evident during the weekend seminar. Yokota Sensei’s arms were like whips, his fluid movements like those of a jungle cat.

    These analogies did not overstate the case, Turnbull Sensei, a 6th degree black belt himself, and one of the highest ranking Shotokan practitioners in the United States, said during a separate conversation. “There were 35 of us who took his seminar, many of us very experienced black belts, and we really were awed by him — by his grace, his speed, his power, and the knowledge he had. He was very inspirational. . . . It was a tremendous honor for us that he came here. He’s one of the top international instructors in the world. He’s published books, videos. . . .”

    The director of the World Japanese Karate Association-U.S.A., Turnbull Sensei said, “I’ve been doing karate for 45 years and I’ve never taken a better seminar.”

    “When you’re older you do the movements more efficiently,” Yokota Sensei said, when questioned, adding that his 20-year-old son “wastes a lot of energy.”

    “The key part is breathing. That’s very important. And daily practice of the forms and stretching.”

    “I try to flow like water,” he said, with a smile, when this writer said he’d seen his movements so described in an interview published a year ago.

    “Sometimes, at our dojo we flow like molasses,” Turnbull Sensei interjected, with a laugh.

    Asked if he was planning to teach “forever,” Yokota Sensei smiled again. He had never, he said, been sick a day in his life.

    And to what did he credit that?

    “To karate and tea. I drink a lot of tea — green and black, with honey.”

    A 15-12 win at Elwood-John Glenn last Thursday enabled the East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team to make the playoffs for the first time in the program’s 12-year history.

    The win, however, didn’t come easily. “We didn’t play our best, but we did play well down the stretch,” said the team’s head coach, Matt Maloney. “We scored three goals in the final five minutes and stopped them twice, which gave us the victory. Allison Charde, our goalie, had 12 big saves to prevent an upset.”

    “John Glenn has three sisters, numbers 7, 8, and 9, who broke our zone defense down a bit,” added Maloney’s assistant, Kathy McGeehan, during a conversation at Friday’s practice session. “It was tied at 12-12 with seven minutes left. They had gone up 12-11, then we tied it. Maggie Pizzo made it 13-12, Jenna Budd made it 14-12, and Amanda Seekamp, on a free position shot, made it 15-12. . . . That was nice — we had to win that one to get into the playoffs.”

    As a result, East Hampton was seeded seventh in Division II’s Class B tournament, drawing second-seeded Eastport-South Manor as its first-round opponent this Saturday. The tournament Web site on Monday had the game, to be played at Eastport-South Manor, starting at noon, though McGeehan said that because East Hampton’s junior prom will be that night, she and Maloney would try to get it moved up to 10 a.m.

    “We love the postseason,” McGeehan added. “We’re getting a second chance. We’re excited.”

    East Hampton finished in 10th place among the division’s 21 teams with an 8-6 (10-6) record and 111.620 power points. The last time the Bonackers played Eastport, away on May 2, the Sharks won 11-5.

    “We’re trying not just to be happy we’ve made the playoffs,” said Maloney. “We want to make some noise. Eastport-South Manor is a very strong, athletic team. We’re looking to see if we’ve improved in the last couple of weeks.”

The Boys

    As for the boys team, which wound up at 4-10 (4-12) and well out of the running for a playoff spot, the coach, Mike Vitulli, said, when asked to sum up, “We couldn’t overcome our penalties — we’d get tired and make mistakes, which cost us.”

    The Bonackers were pretty much routed in their last two games, with Bayport-Blue Point and Babylon. The Phantoms, who boasted three Division I-bound senior attackmen, won 20-5 and Babylon overcame a 4-2 halftime deficit to defeat East Hampton 13-4.

    Asked what had happened in the second half, Vitulli said, “We took seven penalties in the third quarter. They scored on four of those man-up situations and three or four more in transition. We weren’t able to come back.”

    Vitulli’s assistant, Owen McCormack, had said the day before Friday’s game with Babylon that he and Vitulli thought East Hampton had a decent chance — Babylon went into the game with a 5-8 record. Certainly it looked so in the second quarter, during which goals by Drew Griffiths, Jamie Wolf, and Drew Harvey increased East Hampton’s lead to 4-1 before the visitors got one back in the final minute.

    The game with Bayport-Blue Point, played here May 9, got out of hand early as the Phantoms, who took a 15-4 lead into the halftime break, scored repeatedly in transition as outmaneuvered defenders looked on.

    Vitulli said later that he’d love it if his dozen varsity returnees and the 28 players on this year’s junior varsity played more in the off-season. “We only had 20 on the varsity this spring — I’d like to have 25 to 30 next year. I think we’ll be able to do that. . . . Hopefully, we’ll come around.”

Thursday, May 24

BASEBALL, game two of county Class C final, Pierson at Southold, 4 p.m.

GIRLS TRACK, division championships, Bellport High School, 3 p.m.

Friday, May 25

SOFTBALL, county Class A tournament, semifinal games at sites of higher seeds, 4 p.m.

BASEBALL, game three of best-of-three county Class C final, if necessary, Southold vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4 p.m.

Tuesday, May 29

SOFTBALL, game one of best-of-three county Class A final, site of higher seed, 4 p.m.

Thursday, May 31

SOFTBALL, game two of best-of-three county Class A final, site of lower seed, 4 p.m.

   Kirk Edwards would like it to be known that the Montauk Racquet Club’s eight Har-Tru courts are open to the public seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Oct. 31.

   “For some reason,” said Edwards, who has put in stints at the Green Hollow Tennis Club and the Racquet Club of East Hampton in the past 26 years, “people think the Town of East Hampton closed the club permanently because it was losing money. We have been leasing it from the town for the past two years and pay it a percentage of our profits. It’s a little jewel, the courts are as good as any out here, and you don’t have to pay a $2,000 membership fee up front to play. The fee is $12 an hour — you can’t beat that.”

   While open to the public, “we’re running it as a tennis club, with a fully stocked pro shop, camps, clinics, and so forth. Mats Wilander, the former world’s number-one and eight-time Grand Slam champion, will give masters clinics here on Aug. 24, and we’re trying to get Reggie Gaines, a four-time Tony Award-winning actor who loves tennis, to spend a week here giving lessons in the early summer.”

    There has been talk about whether this year’s Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School baseball team is the best that ever was, though the Whalers’ coach, Jon Tortorella, is more interested in what the next game will bring.

    That next game — the first in a best-of-three county Class C championship series with Southold — was to have been played at the Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Monday afternoon, though despite the fact that the weather permitted — it was a gray day, though otherwise pleasant — Section XI, the governing body for high school sports in Suffolk, called it off.

    It really was raining here Tuesday, and more was predicted for yesterday, and even, perhaps, for today. In the meanwhile, the 18-2 Whalers, who clinched a playoff berth in April, were anticipating the postseason.

    As for being the best ever, Bob Vishno, a former longtime baseball and basketball coach at the Sag Harbor school, said, “This school has a strong baseball tradition and we’ve had a lot of great athletes go through here. It’s hard to say they’re the best. It appears they’re one of the best, but one of the best among many.”

    Tortorella, during a conversation following Monday’s practice at the park, was not inclined to argue the point. In fact, he said, “if you look at our games this season, every one of them has been a battle. Even the ones in which we scored 6, 8, or 10 runs. We always had a big inning, and those big innings were what made the difference in what essentially were back-and-forth games.”

    There were a number of close games: In one of them it took the Whalers 11 innings to edge Port Jefferson 9-8; the Whalers played three one-run games with Smithtown Christian, losing one, and lost a game to Southold by a score of 3-0.

    Still, as is the key to any exceptional team, the Whalers, while they don’t have much depth — “Smithtown Christian has 10 kids who can pitch, really pitch” — have a good mound corps, led by the assistant coach Benito Vila’s son, Colman, whose record going into the Class C final was 8-0.

    Asked about him, Tortorella said, “He has tremendous control, he can change speeds, and has a command of all the pitches. He understands what it takes — he gets the job done.”

    In the aforementioned 9-8 win over Port Jeff, Vila “came out of the bullpen in the third inning when we were trailing 8-4 and pitched seven innings of shutout ball. We were down to our last at-bat, with two outs and nobody on, when Colman doubled. A walk followed, and Aaron Schiavoni hit a two-run double to tie the score and send the game into extra innings.”

    When the season began, Forrest Loesch, one of four or five who came over from Pierson’s feisty boys basketball team, was the number-two starter, but a shoulder injury intervened. He returned to action about two weeks ago, not as a pitcher, but as the team’s shortstop. In his absence, Tortorella had to mix and match in the infield and at the bottom of the lineup. But that was “a good problem to have,” said the coach, inasmuch as it gave others a chance to play.

Jake Bennett took over as Pierson’s number-two pitcher when Loesch got hurt, and “has done really well. He made the all-league team [as did five other Whalers] as a pitcher.”

    Schiavoni, the catcher, also pitches, as do, in short stints, Tim Markowski, Kyle Sturmann, Emet Evjen, Brendan Hemby — the sole Bridgehampton student — and Michael Heller.

    Hunter Leyser, who plays left field and third base, tops Pierson’s batting order, followed by Vila, who plays in right field when he’s not pitching, Loesch, Schiavoni, Paul Dorego, an outfielder and backup catcher, and Sean Hartnett, the center fielder. In the seventh and eighth spots Tortorella has been alternating Heller, Bennett, and Markowski — “who can play any position” — and Sturmann, the second baseman, bats ninth.

    As for hitting, “we’ve been getting contributions from everyone top to bottom, and from our bench too. We’ve got speed also, which helps. . . . Our outfielders can run down anything, though the infield is young, with some kids playing a little out of position. We could be better in that respect. . . .”

    It was by no means a given that his charges would beat Southold (which finished in third place in League IX) in the Class C final, said Tortorella, who’s in his third year of coaching the varsity. “We don’t have an advantage going in — we’ve got to beat them.”

   Lou Reale, East Hampton High School’s softball coach, said over the weekend that he was happy to have the third seed (behind Sayville and Islip) in the county Class A tournament. The Bonackers were to have begun it here yesterday with sixth-seeded Mount Sinai.

    The veteran coach, whose team lost 8-2 in the regular season finale here Friday to Sayville, which went on to grab the top seed among the A playoff teams — a seeding East Hampton could well have received had it defeated the Golden Flashes that day — said he thought East Hampton’s was the less tough of the two brackets.

    Of Sayville’s draw, he said, “Rocky Point has a really good pitcher — she beat Sayville in the regular season — and Shoreham, which also has a good pitcher, beat Sayville too. . . . I wouldn’t be shocked if Sayville loses [in the first round] to Rocky Point. A team with seven or eight losses could well wind up winning it. That’s the way it’s been this year. Everyone’s been beating everyone else. It will all come down to which team catches fire.”

    As for the 8-2 loss in Friday’s game, which was for a share of the league championship, Reale said, “You have to play a great game to win against a team like Sayville — we can hang with them. But the pitching has to be consistent, you can’t make any errors, and you’ve got to get some timely hits.”

    Merissa Selts, Sayville’s starter, whose drop Bonac’s batters were pounding into the ground, gave up only one hit through the first five innings — a Kathryn Hess single up the middle in the second on a 1-2 changeup.

    East Hampton’s pitcher, Casey Waleko, while getting through the first three frames unscathed, served up a fat two-out pitch to the visitors’ designated hitter, Nicole Petillo, in the fourth, a hanging curve that Petillo belted into the left-center gap for a 2-0 Sayville lead. Waleko then fanned Olivia Kaczmarick, Sayville’s catcher, for the second time that afternoon, to retire the side.

    Sayville made it 7-0 in the top half of the fifth. Jackie Christensen, the second baseman, drew a walk from Waleko on a 3-2 pitch to lead it off. Hess then snagged a popped-up bunt by Jess Griffen, but the leadoff hitter, Kira Karl, singled between third and short to put runners at first and second for Emily Sel­litti, whose base hit through the right side made it 3-0.

    With the count 1-0 on Selts, Waleko unleashed a wild pitch, which enabled another run to score, and then Selts singled up the middle for 5-0. The cleanup hitter, Kathleen Maehr, reached first base safely on a grounder to the shortstop, Ali Harned, and Cindy Griffen followed with a base hit of her own to load the bases for Petillo, whose subsequent two-run single through the right side — her third and fourth runs batted in of the day — upped the Golden Flashes’ lead to 7-0.

    “They were crowding the plate,” Reale was to say later, “so they could hit Casey’s curve to the right side.”

    The good news was that East Hampton didn’t call it a day at that point, but fought on.

    A double play took Sayville out of its half of the sixth as Deryn Hahn, the third baseman, snagged a hard, low liner off the bat of Karl and threw across the diamond to double off Jess Griffen, who had been hit by a pitch.

    Finally, East Hampton got something going in the bottom of the sixth. Shannon McCaffrey, with the count 2-2, singled over second to lead it off. Ceire Kenny, the ninth batter, slapped a 1-2 pitch up the line, but just foul, before striking out.

    Dana Dragone, who leads off for the Bonackers, then grounded out short-to-first, but, with two outs, Hahn singled up the middle, and Waleko, with the count 0-2, was hit by a pitch, loading the bases for Hess, who stroked a two-run double that plated McCaffrey and Hahn.

    That brought up Ellie Cassel with Waleko on third and Hess on second. After going down 0-2, Cassel fouled off the next two pitches before Selts missed twice, evening the count at 2-2. Cassel fouled off the next two deliveries as well — the latter landing a couple of feet off the right-field line as Waleko and Hess, who were subsequently told to go back where they’d come from, crossed the plate hoping that the margin had been narrowed to 7-4. Selts’s next offering resulted in a soft lineout by Cassel to Karl at third.

    Two errors, by Hahn and Harned, led to Sayville’s eighth run in the top of the seventh, but, following a subsequent single to center, Courtney Dess’s throw to Hess cut down a runner at the plate before a foulout off third and a flyout to left ended the inning.

    Maehr, who throws heat, closed the door in the bottom of the seventh, inducing Ilsa Brzezinski, who hits sixth in the lineup, to pop out to second, after which Harned, with the count 3-2, was caught looking at a called third strike, and McCaffrey struck out swinging on a 1-2 pitch.

    The winner of yesterday’s game is to play the Bayport-Islip winner tomorrow at the site of the higher seed. A best-of-three final series will decide the Class A championship.

    League VI’s regular season ended with Sayville in first, at 16-3, followed by East Hampton, at 14-5, Shoreham-Wading River, at 13-6, Miller Place, at 12-7, and Rocky Point, at 11-8.

    Islip defeated East Hampton 4-2 in a crossover on May 2, though all of the Buccaneers’ runs were unearned. “We were winning that game 2-0 and Casey had a no-hitter going until we made four errors in the sixth and two in the seventh,” Reale recalled. “We can beat anybody and we can lose to anybody. That’s the way it is with everyone. It [the playoffs] should be fun.”