On the eve of his team’s departure for 10 days of scrimmages and practice sessions at Disney World’s sports complex in Orlando, Lou Reale, who coaches East Hampton High’s softball team, said things were looking pretty good given the young team’s early season wins over Shoreham-Wading River, Rocky Point, and Miller Place, and a close loss to Sayville, the top-ranked Class A school and one of the best teams over all in the county.

    The 3-2 loss in 10 innings at Sayville on April 2 “shows we can play with anybody. . . . It was like a playoff game,” said the veteran coach.

    East Hampton jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the third inning on run-scoring singles by Deryn Hahn and Sam Mathews. The Golden Flashes came back to tie the score in the bottom half, on a triple, a double, and a single.

    Casey Waleko, East Hampton’s starting pitcher, didn’t really have it that day, Reale said. “She was missing her pitches — she’d get ahead in the count and then give up a hit. She gave up 13 hits that day, probably the most she’s ever given up, but we played great defense.”

    The game was scoreless from the 3rd through the 10th, though Reale’s charges came up big defensively on numerous occasions. “They had runners in scoring position in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth, but we played unbelievable defense. Ceire Kenny [the second baseman] made two diving plays that held runners at third, Deryn made a great overhead catch of a foul ball with the bases loaded in the sixth to take them out of that inning, and Kathryn [Hess, the catcher] made a diving catch of a foul ball behind the plate to get us out of another jam. We didn’t make any errors in 10 innings.”

    For its part, East Hampton finished with nine hits, though none as authoritative as Sayville’s. “We made 10 outfield putouts, so that shows you they were hitting the ball hard,” Reale said.

    The Bonackers did make some base-running mistakes, however. Ali Harned, the freshman shortstop, was picked off second base in the seventh inning, “which wasn’t good,” and in the 10th, Kenny, who had started the inning on second in accordance with the tiebreaker rule, was tagged out as she ran toward third following a one-out lineout by Waleko to Sayville’s shortstop, “thinking it was the last out.”

    East Hampton had runners at first and second with one out in the ninth, “but Ali popped out to third and Ceire grounded out to first.”

    In Sayville’s ninth, “they hit two shots to the outfield, to left and to right, before Ali got the third out on a ground ball hit to her.”

    As aforesaid, Kenny began the top of the 10th at second. Dana Dragone, who leads off for the Bonackers, “couldn’t get a bunt down in two tries, and then grounded out pitcher to first. That’s when Casey lined out to short and Ceire got caught off the base.”

    The first batter to face Waleko in the bottom of the 10th singled, putting runners at first and third. “We walked the next one intentionally to load the bases so we could get a force at the plate, and pulled the infielders and outfielders in, but Casey gave up a fly ball to left that went over the head of Ellie Cassel, who, as I say, was playing in. . . . It was a game that could have gone either way, and it showed we can play with anybody.”

    The very next day, April 3, Reale’s crew bounced back to defeat Miller Place 6-2 at home.

    “That was good, coming back the way we did after playing such a tough game the night before — it didn’t end until 7:30, I don’t think they would have let us play another inning.”

    East Hampton scored 4 runs in the fourth, on run-scoring singles by Hahn and Mathews, and a two-run double by Hess. The Bonackers tacked on two more in the fifth. Cassel drove one in on a single, and Mathews scored on a fielder’s choice play.

    Waleko came out after 51/3 innings, having given up no runs, two hits, and one walk. She struck out 12. Mathews, who replaced her, gave up two runs, two hits, walked one, and struck out one.

    Hahn went 4-for-4 with an r.b.i., Hess went 3-for-4 with 2 runs scored, and 2 r.b.i.s., and Kenny went 2-for-3 with a run scored.

    “We made some mistakes, but that was understandable,” said Reale. “I thought there’d be a big letdown after that Sayville game, but there wasn’t. I was pleased.”

    The team was to have left for Florida last Thursday morning. “The girls will get a lot of at-bats down there — we’ll be working on our hitting on situations. We’re hoping to come back a stronger team.”

    On the eve of a three-game series with Amityville, the East Hampton High School baseball team had played single games with all of its league opponents, winning two games and losing three.

    But for a tendency to blow leads, a tendency that Bonac’s coaches, Ed Bahns and Will Collins, hope to correct, “we could be 5-0 at this point rather than 2-3,” Collins said following the spring break’s first practice session.

    That having been said, aside from the loss to Shoreham-Wading River, a game in which the Bonackers held a 6-1 lead in the fourth inning, only to wind up losing 11-6, “our kids have played well. . . . They’re giving it a good, hard effort.”

    On April 3, in a game played here, East Hampton, behind A.J. Bennett’s pitching, defeated Elwood-John Glenn 13-4. The day before, at Bayport, with Michael Abreu on the mound, the team lost 4-1 after going up 1-0 in the fifth inning.

    East Hampton jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second inning of the game with Glenn as Brendan Hughes, via a fielder’s choice play, and Brady Yusko, a freshman who’s making a serious bid to start at second base, drove in a run with a sacrifice fly. These runs were scored after East Hampton loaded the bases on two walks — to Cameron Yusko and Bennett — and a hit batsman — Abreu.

    The Bonackers made it 5-0 in the third. Ryan Joudeh, the catcher and leadoff man, singled to get things going, took second on a passed ball, and moved to third on a balk. Brandon Brophy, who’s been hitting very well, drove Joudeh home with a base hit of his own. Deilyn Guzman’s grounder forced Brophy at second, but then Yusko and Bennett received free passes again, loading the bases for Abreu, whose sac fly plated Guzman. An error on a grounder hit by Brendan Hughes scored Yusko with East Hampton’s fifth run.

    “But, as I’ve said, we’ve been having trouble holding onto leads,” said Collins. “They got four runs back in the fourth, and though they were all earned, mental mistakes played a part. We’d let another team get back into a game.”

    Bahns’s assistant said that “the turning point was Peter Vaziri’s at-bat, which led off our fourth. He worked their pitcher for a walk after having gone down 1-2. Ryan singled, and Brandon drove in Peter with a base hit. Then Deilyn hit a three-run homer over the left field fence.”

    The home team put more distance between itself and the visitors in the fifth. Hughes led it off with a single, Brady Yusko bunted him over to second, Vaziri drew another walk, and Joudeh, in reaching first base safely on an error, was credited with driving in Hughes. Brophy followed with a two-run single that plated Vaziri and Joudeh. Brophy then scored on a base hit by Bennett, which upped East Hampton’s lead to 13-4.

    Peter Shilowich, a sophomore, pitched the seventh. “He had trouble finding the plate initially — he walked the first batter to face him and hit the next. But once he began throwing strikes he was fine. The third kid lined out to Cameron at third, and Cameron doubled off the guy on second for a double play. A groundout ended the game.”

    Collins said Abreu, who pitched the Bayport game, “deserved better, though Bayport’s pitcher was very good. I think he was their number-one. As I told you, we had the lead in that one too, 1-0. Following a strikeout by Jimmy McMullan, Vaziri walked, and on a hit-and-run with Joudeh up, beat the throw from shortstop to second. Brophy then hit a fly ball to left that was dropped. That allowed Peter to score.”

    In the bottom half, Bayport tied the score as the result of an error by McMullan at second, a passed ball, and a base hit.

    The Phantoms touched Abreu for three more runs, on four hits (two singles and two doubles) in the sixth. “Then they shut us down in the seventh,” said Collins.

    East Hampton was to have begun the three-game Amityville series with a doubleheader here Monday morning. The third game is to be played at Amityville this morning.

   The Montauk Rugby Club’s warmups for next month’s national Division II East bracket Sweet 16 games in Pittsburgh began March 24 at a tournament held by the Village Lions on Randalls Island in New York City.

    The Sharks, who are the eighth seed in the East region, split on the 24th, defeating the New York Rugby Club 19-12, but losing 22-19 to White Plains, a loss that kept the side from advancing beyond pool play.

    Montauk is to meet White Plains, a solid D-I side, again in a friendly match to be played at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on April 21.

    The March 24 tournament — Montauk played in the Men’s Club bracket — drew Division I and D-II sides, including its familiar foes, the Connecticut Yankees and Danbury.

    “That tournament was only the beginning of our spring schedule,” said one of the club’s spokesmen, Charlie Collins. “We’ll be going back to Randalls Island on April 14 to take on the Village Lions. The Lions moved up to Division I after they went 7-1 the year before and secured the Northeast Division II championship. They lost 35-33 to Doylestown, Pa., in the first round of the national tournament.”

    The Sharks presumably will face a stiff test over the May 12-13 weekend in Pittsburgh. Their opponent in the first game will be the champion of the South Rugby Football Union, the region from which the last two national D-II champions have come. The South region’s tournament is to be held the weekend of April 28-29.

    “We’ll have our work cut out for us in Pittsburgh,” said Collins.

    Montauk last played in Division II’s national Final Four in 2006, in San Diego, where they were trounced by Santa Barbara. The Sharks played in the Final Four in 2005 as well, also in San Diego, losing to Pearl City, Iowa.

    To further prepare for Pittsburgh, the Sharks have scheduled another friendly game at Herrick with the Long Island Rugby Club, also a Division I club, on April 28. That evening, “to help defray some of the costs associated with making the trip to the Sweet 16 we’ll hold a Casino Night from 6 to 11 p.m. at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett,” Collins said. Tickets will be $60 per person, or $100 for two. “Besides the casino games, we’ll have a large raffle.”

    The Sharks swept through last fall’s Met Union schedule undefeated despite having a number of young players who either were new or fairly new to the sport. In the Northeast tourney, they defeated Portland, Me., 29-8 before being bageled 53-0 in the title game by defending-champion Middlesex, a Boston area side.

    At the time, Rich Brierley, a Montauk veteran and the side’s coach, said that loss “wasn’t the worst thing in the world. In the spring our young guys will be playing teams above them in ability, and that will be good for them. It will give them something to shoot for. So far, they’re handling it well. . . . These guys, Erik [Brierley, Rich Brierley’s nephew], Mark Scioscia, Connor [Miller] Zach [Brenneman], Brian Anderson, and the others have no idea how good they can be. They’ve been playing at nowhere near their potential.”

    At the club’s holiday dinner, Gordon Trotter, who led the Met Union’s Division II sides in scoring, was named the player of the year and the clubman of the year, attesting to all the organizational and promotional work the New Zealand-born fly half has done. Connor Miller was named the club’s rookie of the year.

    A close second in that competition, the elder Brierley said later, was Jarrel Walker, a former arena football player and C.W. Post lineman, who “improved so much over the course of the year.”

    Brierley said that while Trotter certainly was deserving of his two awards, “I can think of a couple of other guys who could have been player of the year — Ricardo Salmeron, who really stepped up, and John Glennon, our hooker.”

    Last fall marked the first undefeated Met Union season for Montauk in six years.

   The East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch league, which is down to five entries, has put out a call for a few more good teams. Whether they will materialize is questionable, but league officials are hoping, given the success each summer of the Travis Field memorial scholarship tournaments, that they may.

    “We’re down to five teams now. We had six last year,” said the league’s spokesman, Rich Schneider, who can remember the days when 14 teams played in two divisions at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett.

    The dropout from last year is the Independent, the league’s storied team under various banners in the past 20 years. Some of its players, such as Barry Mackin, Tim Brenneman, Ken Weldon, and Rob Nicoletti — the latter two especially — go back even further.

    Schenck Fuels broke the Independent’s string of playoff victories last August, though when Indy won the trophy in 2010, it was the team’s third straight championship and its fourth in the past five years. Moreover, that title was the 20th for Weldon, a 75-year-old pitcher, who, according to Nicoletti, went 6-0 last season and was ready to play again this year for the Independent had it fielded a team.

    Nicoletti, who recently turned 56, said, “Kenny and I have played together for 38 years. Before that, he coached me for three years in Babe Ruth baseball.”

    While in recent years the team was bolstered by the addition of its older players’ sons — Zach and Tyler Brenneman, Pierce and Peyton Kelley, and Charlie Collins among them — they have decamped, or are about to.

    When asked why he thought the enthusiasm for slow-pitch softball had waned in East Hampton, Schneider said, “There are probably many reasons. Probably the fee [at $1,600 the past two years] is part of the problem. The Parks Department still mows the outfield grass, but they don’t maintain the infield or the batter’s box. Matt Bennett, one of the umpires, does that. They used to give us all of our softballs, then they gave us half, and now none. The town’s cutting corners — it’s all part of the economic downturn here.”

    The need to make hay while the sun shines also may have led to a slackening of interest in playing three nights a week, he said. “A lot of these guys have to work long hours. They may not have the time, though we could be more accommodating with the schedule.”

    Then, too, people were growing older and moving away, and many of the young reportedly can’t afford to stay. Then baseball’s not necessarily the sport anymore, what with soccer and lacrosse grabbing the attention of the young.

    When a similar question was posed to Nicoletti, who also plays in Montauk’s seven-team league, which he described as competitive though more casual, he said, “People are just getting old; they’re not moving away.”

    Schneider, who can be contacted through the East Hampton Village Police Department, said the next meeting for managers, sponsors, and players is to be at the village’s Emergency Services Building on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Trip of a Lifetime

    The East Hampton High School Coaches Association is to have a golf outing at the South Fork Country Club this Saturday, and at the dinner that night the winner of a “trip of a lifetime raffle,” whose tickets cost $20, will be announced.

    The possible destinations — the winner may choose one — include the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl, the Indy 500, the Kentucky Derby, the Major League Baseball all-star game, the National Hockey League all-star game, the Stanley Cup finals, the U.S. (tennis) Open, the U.S. (golf) Open, the Masters golf tournament, the N.C.A.A. Final Four, the B.C.S. championship bowl game, Disney World, Disneyland, Hawaii, St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, a Carnival cruise to the Caribbean, and a Carnival cruise to Alaska.

Preiss Qualifies

    Marina Preiss, an East Hampton High School sophomore who after the girls season ended in the fall began swimming as an unattached USA Swimming athlete, qualified for national competition in the 100-meter backstroke, the 100-meter freestyle, and in the 50-meter freestyle at USA Swimming’s Eastern Zone north regional meet in Buffalo over the March 22-25 weekend.

    According to a release, she is “the first East Hampton swimmer to qualify and swim at this level . . . USA Swimming’s junior national meet is one qualifying step lower than the Olympic trials, which are to be held in Nebraska this summer.”

Ross Awards

    At the Ross School’s recent winter athletic awards dinner, the following were cited: Hayden Aldredge, most valuable player in boys basketball, Emma Betuel, the m.v.p. in girls basketball, Joe Lin, m.v.p. in boys indoor track, Max Rowen, most-improved in boys basketball, and Ajiah Jones-King, m.v.p. in girls basketball. Riko Kawahara was the m.v.p. and Riri Kamata was most-improved in cheerleading.

    Coach’s awards went to Roosevelt Odidi in boys basketball, Isabel Milligan in girls basketball, Lily Steele in girls indoor track, John Chang in boys indoor track, and Suna Garcia in cheerleading.

    Moreover, Ironman/woman awards went to Liam Chaskey in boys basketball and to Jessica Kim in girls basketball. Geige Silver and April Sygman received elite stunter cheerleading awards, as well.

Ward­ Cited

    Hayden Ward, of Montauk, who helped lead Oswego State’s men’s basketball team to an undefeated season in the State University of New York Athletic Conference, the first time Oswego had finished at the top of the SUNYAC heap since 1965, was named recently to the Eastern College Athletic Conference’s Division III Upstate first team. The junior forward averaged 15.7 points and 9.1 rebounds per game this season, and had 13 double-doubles.

Thursday, April 12

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Bellport, 10 a.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 10 a.m.

Friday, April 13

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Kings Park, 10:30 a.m.

Saturday, April 14

RUGBY, Montauk vs. Village Lions, Randalls Island, New York City, 1 p.m.

Monday, April 16

BOYS LACROSSE, Mattituck-Greenport-Southold at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Islip at East Hampton, nonleague, and William Floyd at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 17

GIRLS LACROSSE, Deer Park at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

TRACK, Ross-Pierson boys and girls at Port Jefferson, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, April 18

SOFTBALL, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Eastport-South Manor at Ross, and East Hampton at William Floyd, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Center Moriches, 7 p.m.

March 12, 1987

    It’s Glens Falls, Ho! for the Pierson High School girls basketball team, which on Tuesday night easily defeated Alexander Hamilton of Elmsford in the state Class D Southeastern Regional championship game at Sachem High School, 81-59.

    After three minutes of to-and-fro, at which point Pierson held a slim 11-10 lead, the Whalers, using their height and well-executed fast break to advantage, left the younger and less-experienced Westchester County team farther and father in their wake.

    “That’s what we wanted to do,” said Pierson’s coach, Larry Foden, afterward — “play an up-tempo game and control the boards. Offensively, we wanted to attack them in the paint, and, defensively, since we knew their outside shooting was shaky, we packed in our zone.”

    . . . It was the fifth straight year in which Pierson’s girls team had made it to the state tournament. The motivation to win a state title is certainly there, for two years ago, when Katie Browngardt, Kyle Beyel, and Irene McMahon were sophomores, Pierson lost 59-58 in overtime to Morrisville-Eaton in the final.

    Eric Kaufman wrestled one of the most exciting matches of his high school career and one of the most disappointing at the New York State championships in Syracuse last weekend.

    The 112-pound Cornell-bound senior, who had on March 7 become the first East Hampton student ever to win a county title, reached the state semifinals in rousing fashion at the Onondaga War Memorial as he came from behind to pin Mike Reese of Elmira Southside, who earlier had upset a two-time state finalist, Shannon DeRouche of Massena.

    The third period of the quarterfinal ended at 5-5 as Kaufman was awarded a point in the last three seconds for attaining a neutral position. In overtime, which was divided into three one-minute periods, Kaufman had fallen behind 5-2 when, with 10 seconds to go in the match, he pinned Reese, using a lateral drop to put him on his back for 5 points before pinning him at 8:52. The comeback had the crowd, estimated at 3,500, on its feet.

    “The place went wild,” said East Hampton’s coach, Jim Stewart. “My heart was in my throat. Eric was interviewed by a lot of reporters from papers up there. The match caught the eye of a lot of college coaches.”

    Kaufman pinned Gil Soto, the Public School Athletic League champion, in 4:56, using a half nelson. At the time of the pin Kaufman led 17-3.

    That brings us to Kaufman’s most disappointing match, an 18-2 technical fall loss in the final on Saturday to Olean’s Jeff Prescott, a two-time state champion who had been undefeated in 119 matches going back to his freshman year.

    Prescott, the tourney’s most outstanding wrestler last year, used combinations of takedowns and tilts to build up an insurmountable lead. “Eric was never in danger of being pinned,” said Stewart. “You can’t pin somebody with that move, but Prescott excels at it.”

    . . . Kaufman thus wound up his career with a 105-12-1 (32-2-1 this season) record. He and two teammates, Amasa Winter and Orlando Blowe, sixth-place finishers in the county tournament, will be honored at an awards dinner in Smithtown on April 8.

    Paul Annacone’s game is getting better and better. Ask Ivan Lendl, who was the top seed in the recently completed $1.8-million International Players Championships at Key Biscayne, Fla.

    The eventual runner-up to Miloslav Mecir, Lendl had never lost a set to the East Hampton pro, but had to come back from being down two sets to one to best Annacone in a second-round match, 5-7, 7-6 (7-3), 4-6, 6-2, 6-2. Annacone, ranked 46th in the world at the moment, broke Lendl’s serve five times in the first three sets, but was unable to do so thereafter as the world’s top-ranked player prevailed in 80-degree heat.

March 19, 1987

    The Killer Bees are dead, the Killer Bees are dead . . . Long live the Killer Bees. . . .

    The state high school boys basketball championships and Bridgehampton have practically been synonymous, but this year there’ll be no trip to Glens Falls for the feisty, fast-breaking team that had until recently been ranked as the number-one small school in the state. The Bees, or Bridgies, as they are also known, lost 81-79 to Alexander Hamilton of Elmsford in Saturday’s state Class D Southeastern Regional final at the State University at Old Westbury.

    Twice — at the outset and midway through the second quarter — the Bees went up by 10 points, but each time the psyched-up White Plains area opponent, whose shooting was uncannily accurate, came back.

    . . . “It just doesn’t seem real that Bridgehampton won’t be going to Glens Falls this year,” said one fan. “It’s weird.”

    Troy Bowe broke Carl Yastrzemski’s longstanding Bridgehampton School scoring record of 1,253 points with his 16th point, and wound up the game with 21. Duane White, who fouled out with 2:23 to go, was second-high for the Bees, with 19. “Duane played a helluva game,” said John Niles, Bridgehampton’s coach. “He asserted himself.” Bowe also had 11 assists, 8 rebounds, and 6 steals. His 1,259 career points were scored in a little over three years of varsity play.

    . . . Bridgehampton, whose high school enrollment was 56 last fall — 26 boys and 30 girls — has won five state Class D championships in the past 10 years — in 1978, ’79, ’80, ’84, and ’86. The team was the runner-up in 1985.

    The Racquet Club of East Hampton, which lies near the Long Island Rail Road tracks off Buckskill Road, has received permission from the Town Zoning Board of Appeals for four indoor tennis courts.

    . . . The indoor tennis club, whose president, John Carr, expects to have it opened by the fall, would be the first indoor club east of the Hampton Tennis Academy in Quogue, which, for East Hamptoners, is a 40-minute drive away. . . . The project still is subject to site plan approval by the Town Planning Board before the courts and proposed pre-engineered metal-sided building to house them can be built.

    Things were going swimmingly for the East Hampton High School softball team as of earlier this week.

    Thanks to early-season wins over Westhampton Beach, Shoreham-Wading River, and Rocky Point, Lou Reale’s girls were 3-0 going into Monday’s game at Sayville. Miller Place was to have played here Tuesday.

    “I’ll be happy if we can go down to Florida at 4-1,” the veteran coach said during a conversation Sunday, following a clinic he and his assistant, Erin Abran, gave for coaches, parents, and young players that morning.

    Reale also availed himself of his former protégée Jessie Stavola’s services at the clinic. Stavola, who pitches for Dowling College, worked with East Hampton’s number-one, Casey Waleko, correcting her fastball release so as to add velocity.

    “Her hand’s been hitting her hip and that’s been slowing the ball down,” Reale said of Waleko, who, nevertheless, had struck out 29 in 18 innings of work as of Friday.

    In Friday’s 2-0 win here over Rocky Point, Waleko struck out the first 9 batters she faced, and 11 of the first 12. She finished with 14Ks.

    Waleko’s battery mate, Kathryn Hess, spent some time Sunday at the University of Rhode Island with the coach of the University of Dayton, a Division 1 school in Ohio, where Hess intends to go. Reale said he’d been hoping his hard-playing catcher would have been able to make an official visit there last fall, but the girls soccer playoffs intervened.

    “Dayton’s in a conference with UMass, U.R.I., Towson State, and other D-1 schools,” said Reale. Hess, who attended a summer camp at Dayton, her mother’s alma mater, receiving favorable notice there, will be taken onto Dayton’s team as a walk-on, though she’s been assured of a roster spot, said Reale. She is the latest among a group of D-I recruits Reale, one of the winningest coaches in the state, has turned out in recent years — a list that includes Stavola, who went to UConn before transferring to Dowling, Abran (Elon), Melanie Anderson (Kentucky), Kathryn Mirras (University of Virginia), and Willa Johann (Dartmouth).

    Getting back to last week’s games, the young team, whose spunk, at the plate and in the field, has surprised its coach, demolished Shoreham-Wading River 13-1, and, as aforesaid, shut out Rocky Point 2-0.

    In Newsday’s preseason forecast Sunday, Sayville was rated as the Class A team to beat (a conclusion with which Reale agreed), with Shoreham, Islip, East Hampton, and Miller Place listed as contenders.

    The Bonackers greeted Shoreham’s starting pitcher, Chelsea Hawks, with four runs on three doubles — by Hess, Sam Mathews, and Ellie Cassel — in the top of the first inning, and with six runs on five hits in the second.

    During that barrage, Cassel, a sophomore who hits sixth in the lineup, rocketed a bases-loaded shot off the shin of Hawks’s lead leg, the ball bouncing over to the first baseman, who recorded the out as runners from third and second raced home.

    “She wasn’t the same after that,” said Reale. “She lasted until the end of the inning, but then she was done.”

    Shoreham got its run, which was unearned, in the bottom of the third. Mathews pitched the fourth, and the game was called after five innings of play because of the 12-run-margin mercy rule.

    “We’ve been hitting the ball,” Reale said afterward. “We had 18 hits in that Shoreham game, and five were doubles.”

    East Hampton got all the runs it needed Friday in the first inning. Dana Dragone and Waleko led off with back-to-back bunt singles. They were on second and third when Deryn Hahn, the senior third baseman, reached first base safely on an error, Dragone coming home on the play. Hess then followed with a base hit that drove in Waleko.

    “We should have scored four runs in that inning,” said Reale. “With Sam up I put a steal sign on for Kathryn. Their catcher in making the throw hit Sam’s bat with the ball. Sam was standing in the box, which was her right, but the umpire called her out for interference. He was wrong.”

    The same umpire had also erred, said the coach, “when he said a bunted foul ball had hit Deryn before going out of bounds in the fifth. She was nowhere near it.”

    That fifth inning offered Rocky Point its best shot. But, with the bases loaded and one out, Waleko notched a strikeout, and a subsequent fly ball caught by the center fielder, Courtney Dess, retired the side.

    Waleko struck out the first batter to face her in the top of the seventh, and threw the next one out on a ball hit back to her. She then gave up a single, but a fly ball hit to Dess ended the game.

    East Hampton was to have played a nonleaguer with Pierson-Bridgehampton at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Saturday morning, but it was rained out.

    “We’ll be playing teams from Wisconsin, Ohio, Maine, upstate, and New Jersey in Florida,” said Reale, who added that “since its our 10th year there our name is going to be put in the concrete walkway at the [Disney World] sports complex.”

    “The kids will get a lot of at-bats and chances in the field there, and by the time we get back [on April 16] we should know where we’re at.”

   East Hampton High’s track teams went up against their Miller Place peers in season-opening meets on March 27, and while it was no surprise that both the boys and girls lost, their coaches, Chris Reich and Diane O’Donnell, were encouraged nonetheless.

    “It was a good start,” O’Donnell said Monday morning. “We’ve got a lot of new people, and Shani and I don’t know what exactly they can do yet, but we had some good performances there, and the ones we expected to do well did.”

    O’Donnell said she expected Miller Place and Sayville to vie for the league championship. “We’ve got Sayville today,” she said with a sigh. “We’re beginning the season with a one-two punch. But we’re expecting that the playing field will even out after that.”

    In recounting the boys’ 80-50 loss here to the Panthers, Reich said he was happy to have Hunter Kelsey back. Kelsey, a junior, missed half the season last year because of an injury. He looked in fine fettle on the 27th as he won the 100-meter dash, the 200, and was a member of the winning 4-by-100 relay team.

    “It seems like he’s 100 percent even though he didn’t do winter track,” said Reich, who also singled out, among others, L.B. Lownes, a senior hurdler and long jumper, Adam Cebulski, a sophomore distance runner, Jacob Hands, Joe Olszewski, both throwers, J.C. Barrientos, a senior 400 runner who’s new to the sport, and Liam Kessler, “the biggest suprise . . . he came to us from baseball, out of nowhere, and was just a hair slower than Hunter. He also anchored the 4-by-1.”

    A number of East Hampton’s soccer players are on the squad, among them Jerges Albin, Barrientos, Alvaro Aguilar, Pablo Carreno, Donte Donegal, and Nick West. The latter two are nursing injuries at the moment. “Nick has a sore Achilles — if we’d had him for the 4-by-4, we would have won it.”

    As it was, the Bonackers put a scare into the Panthers. “I was running the numbers, and at the midway point we were beating them,” said Reich. “I don’t think they expected that. . . . If we had everyone healthy — Mike Hamilton, who does the mile and 4-by-4 for us was missing, as was one of our throwers, Keaton Crozier — we would have won by 5 points. It’s the fewest points we’ve lost by in two years.”

    Reich wasn’t about to concede 9 points in the pole vault. “Only one of their three guys was able to clear eight feet, the minimum height; so they got 5 points in that. At the moment we don’t have any pole-vaulters, but I’d like to get Dallas Foglia to do it — he’s not afraid, and he’s speedy and strong. Maybe Alvaro and Nick West too.”

    Hands won the discus and fouled out in the shot-put. “Otherwise,” said the coach, “he would have been second in the shot.” Olszewski was the shot-put winner.

    Lownes won the 100-meter high hurdles and the 400 intermediate hurdles, and was a member of the winning 4-by-1 team. “L.B. won it for us, blowing by their kid on the third leg,” Reich said, adding that “he would have won the long jump for us too, but he fouled three times, taking off a little bit ahead of the board.”

    Barrientos was “still figuring out how to run the 400,” said Reich. He’s doing it in 56 seconds now, but he should be able to get down to 54 or 53. . . . He also does the 100 and 200.”

    Cebulski ran a personal best 10:37 in the 3,200, finishing third.

    Reich said he told his charges they couldn’t win a meet with just second and third-place finishes, that they needed firsts. “If we had seconds and thirds in everything, and no firsts, we would still have lost by 10 points.”

    Reich and his assistant, Luis Morales, remember the good old days of East Hampton track not all that long ago. They were mainstays, along with the Ahearn twins, Brian and Kevin, Joe Sullivan, Kenny Fromm, and Kevin Rousell on the league-championship team of 2003, capping a school year that included division, county, and Long Island titles in cross-country, and a league championship in winter track.

    “With our 50 guys we’re hoping to break our losing streak this season,” Reich said.

    Getting back to the girls, Ashley West, the team’s all-state performer, won the 200 and 400, Sedona Brosse won the high jump, Morgan German was the runner-up in the 400 hurdles, Hannah Jacobs was the runner-up in the disc, Kathryn Wood was second in the triple jump, Saoirse McKeon was third in the 100, Jenny DiSunno was third in the 800, Amanda Calabrese was third in the 200, and Lena Vergnes, with a time of 8:37.57, led a Bonac sweep of the 1,500-meter racewalk. Julie DeSousa was second, and in third was Shannon Ryan, whose aunt, Kathy Piacentine, still holds the school’s racewalk record.

    The Ross School’s boys tennis team handed Westhampton Beach a 4-3 loss in the private school’s bubble Friday, thanks in the end to a clutch performance by one of Ross’s seventh graders, Jonas Linnman-Feurring, who played third singles.

    Newsday had touted the Hurricanes as the team to beat in League VII in its Sunday edition, noting that Ross had lost six players from last year’s county-finalist team.

    Felipe Reis, who plays number-one for the Cosmos, having moved up from four last year, said the win “was huge, though we still have to beat them over there.”

    Going into Monday’s match at Southampton, a match that Ross’s coach, Vinicius Carmo, thought would be very close, Ross led the league with a 3-0 record. Southampton, which has Jeremy Dubin, the division singles champion and a county finalist last year, at number one, was 3-1, as was Westhampton. East Hampton, which is eyeing a winning season as well, was 2-2 in league play, followed by William Floyd (1-2), Eastport-South Manor (1-3), and Shoreham-Wading River (0-4).

    East Hampton’s losses have come at the hands of Ross, by a score of 6-1, and Southampton, by a score of 4-3. The Bonackers defeated Shoreham 4-3 Friday as Dan Okin and Collin Kavanaugh won at second and third singles, and as the first and second doubles teams of Matthew Silich and Reese Donaldson and Nicky Neubert and Julian MacGurn won in straight sets.

    Marco Silimbergo lost to Shoreham’s Chris Kuhnle 6-2, 6-4; Milton Farez, at four, lost to Peter Deleon 3-6, 6-0, 6-2, and East Hampton’s third doubles team of Juan Agudelo and Andrew Dixon lost 6-1, 6-3.

    Michelle Kennedy, East Hampton’s coach, was missing the Davis brothers, Andrew and Peter, that day. Against Ross, Andrew played first doubles with Dan Ruggiero, and Peter played second doubles with Neubert. Presumably the margin would have been greater with them there.

    In the Ross-Westhampton match, Reis defeated Cooper Lacetera 7-6 (7-4), 6-2; Ben Okin lost to Westhampton’s Beecher Halsey 6-1, 6-3; Linnman-Feurring defeated Brian Schwartz 6-1, 1-6, 6-3; Mikey Petersen, another seventh grader, defeated Elan Assayag 6-1, 6-2; Ross’s first doubles team of Harrison Rowen and Pedro Zagury lost to J.D. Sipala and Reid Paoletta 6-0, 6-2; the second team of Jack Brinkley-Cook and Louis Caiola defeated Michael Polan and Tim Liguori 6-0, 6-0, and the Cosmos’ third team of Will Greenberg and Jordan Schwimmer lost to Sheel Pate and Matt Kantor 1-6, 6-2, 6-4.

    “It all came down to Jonas,” Carmo said during a conversation Monday morning. “He was still on when third doubles lost its third set. There’s a 10-minute break, you know, between the second and third sets, and during it he said, ‘I can’t beat him.’ I told him he had to believe in himself. He’s very good at picking out opponents’ weaknesses. He lost the first game of the third set, but he kept fighting and won two games quickly, and that got him believing in himself again and he rose to the occasion!”

   Carmo said the match had gone pretty much the way he’d thought it would, there being no surprises. “Mikey had a solid win, which was good because he didn’t play well at Shoreham two days before. He lost 7-5, 7-5 there.”

    Ross’s coach said he could see Sipala and Paoletta winning the division tournament’s doubles crown.

    Concerning Ross’s graduation losses, Carmo said Richard Sipala was now playing at Bryant, that Henry Lee was playing at Bates, and that Spencer Kuzon was at Colgate and Cole Katzter was at the State University of New York at Binghamton, though neither Kuzon nor Katzter was playing tennis, he said.

    Moreover, Ian Combemale, last year’s number-three, behind Sipala and Lee, was “in Florida now, with his own pro, Trippie [Tuff, who as a seventh and eighth grader played for Ross’s league-champion and county finalist teams] is in our tennis academy [and thus not allowed by Section XI to play in team matches], and Cole Grant, an eighth grader, who was in our academy for part of the year, fractured his knee while skiing.”

    Carmo is still chafing over the fact that Section XI won’t allow academy students to play for the team. “The Cold Spring Harbor coach told me he thought they should. . . . It’s not as if these kids at Cold Spring Harbor and Half Hollow Hills East [which bageled Ross recently in a nonleaguer] aren’t putting in extra hours on the courts. It’s just that they’re playing outside the school, while our kids are playing here at the school.”

    “If this bubble were across the street, then it would be different, I guess,” he said with a laugh.

    “Even with our academy kids, we still wouldn’t be able to beat Cold Spring Harbor or Hills East,” he added.

    Asked what his lineup would look like should the academy students be allowed to play on the team, he said, “Felipe would still be number one, Fernando [Fernandes] would be two, Trippie would be three, and James [Ignatowich, a sixth grader] would be four. . . . A team with four good players is all you need to win a match, you know. Southampton has four good players. That’s why I think it will be close.”