Howard Wood and his assistant, Louis O’Neal, spoke many times last season about the need for the East Hampton High School girls basketball team’s players to practice in the off-season.

    Apparently, however, not many did, aside from Kaelyn Ward, the junior point guard from whom more big things are expected this year, and Quincy King, Ward’s sister, a sophomore.

    Nevertheless, Wood, the 6-foot-8-inch former pro, said, once he’d made his way to a folding chair at the sidelines in order to rest a nagging back during Saturday’s practice, he was reasonably optimistic that the Bonac girls, who made the playoffs last season for the first time in 17 years, would do so again.

    He had begun Saturday’s practice at 8 a.m., as usual, even though four of his players — Ward, Christina Cangiolosi, Gaby Penati, and Katrina Raspa — were taking a mock ACT exam elsewhere in the high school building. “We practice at 8 on Saturdays and holidays, and I don’t want to change it, it gets them out of their rhythm,” the coach said.

    For most of Saturday’s session, Wood worked with his inside players, foremost among them the senior Sarah Johnson, who’s close to 6 feet, nudging them repeatedly out of their comfort zones as they backed toward the basket looking for layups or, after head fakes and ball fakes, hook shots.

    Meanwhile, O’Neal was working at the other end of the court on freeing up perimeter shooters for shots.

    “They’re working hard — they’re excited to continue,” Wood said as he rested his sore back. “We’ve got a lot of new ones — six from last year. Fifteen in all. A good number. We definitely want to improve. I’ve told them girls basketball still doesn’t have a banner on the wall. It’s not that far-fetched to think we can win one. The only team we didn’t beat in league play last year was John Glenn.”

    While he agreed that Johnson — and Ward as well — had grown some in the past year, what impressed him most, Wood said, was “her wingspan.” Because of that, she could play as if she were 6-plus.

    Back to last year, “If we’d made half our layups we would have averaged 50 points a game . . . but we’d hear footsteps, even though I have yet to see someone catch up and block a layup from behind,” as his younger brother, Kenny, had in the state tournament at Glens Falls in 1989.

    To give her some extra incentive, Wood has told Ward that “this year she can reach 1,000 points. In other words, by the time she finishes her senior season — her fifth year on the varsity — she could put that career scoring record out of reach. It would be very tough to break.”

    As Wood spoke, the girls began to practice foul shots. “If they miss, they run the length of the court,” said Wood, who added, as the group, following a miss, took off, “Run hard!”

    The core of the team, then, would be Ward, Johnson, and Nicole Miksinski, a forward who’s not afraid to mix it up. As for the other starters, it remained, he said, to be seen.

    “Sarah will be a force underneath, for sure — she really came on last year. We’ve got to find a second and a third scorer to take the heat off Kaelyn. We’re looking for another ballhandler too, again to take the pressure off Kaelyn. We know they can do it. . . . We definitely have girls who can shoot from the perimeter. We know they can, but they have to believe it too.”

    “Defensively,” Wood continued, “we intend to press. They tried it last year, but they didn’t get it. The key is not playing three or four feet back in practice. In practice you forget that you have friends. Because, if you don’t practice with that in-your-face attitude, by gametime, when all hell breaks loose, it’s too late. We want them to practice so hard that the game is easy.”

    Scrimmages have been scheduled for the first week in December, with Southold here next Thursday, at Center Moriches on Dec. 3, and here with the Ross School on Dec. 5.

    The league-champion East Hampton High School boys soccer team is to vie with Sayville for the Class A county title this afternoon at Dowling College as the result of an exciting 3-1 win here Monday over arch rival Elwood-John Glenn, with which the Bonackers had recently played to a 3-3 tie that enabled East Hampton to win the league title.

    J.C. Barrientos, assisted by Mario Olaya, Denis Espana, assisted by Nick West, and Esteban Valverde, with an assist from Olaya, scored East Hampton’s goals while East Hampton’s slightly-rearranged defense clamped down on Glenn’s stars, its tricky senior midfielder, Francis Dela Agbotse, and the equally dangerous junior forward, Adan Cruz-Velasquez. Angel Garces was assigned to Dela Agbotse, and marked him well, throwing a monkey wrench into Glenn’s transition game, and Jerjes Alban was moved back from stopper to sweeper for extra strength in the back.

    Glenn’s set plays, however, always present problems because those who take them, Greg Orkiszewski, and David Sherman, can lay the ball into the goal mouth just about every time the chance is presented. On Monday, there were plenty of such opportunities, though the visitors were only able to capitalize on one as, in the 63rd minute, after Esteban Aguilar, who played perhaps his best game thus far in the goal, let a shot get by after stopping two others.

    No matter. No sooner had Glenn got on the scoreboard than Valverde, assisted by Olaya, got that goal back.

    Midway through the first period East Hampton, whose multi-pass attack is relentless, put a lot of pressure on Glenn’s keeper, but couldn’t put the ball by him until Jean Carlos Barrientos — with Olaya assisting — did from close range with seven minutes left until the half.

    Five minutes earlier, Dela Agbotse had blown a golden opportunity after he’d juked a defender and let one go from the right side that, happily for Bonac fans, zipped wide left.

    Thus East Hampton could hardly rest easy with that one-goal lead. With nine minutes having been played in the second period, Aguilar, as he did on numerous occasions that day, leapt high to save a 30-yard free kick headed for the left corner of the cage.

    Soon after, he did it again, parrying a kick from the 20. And so it went for Aguilar, who showed that he’s benefited from the instruction he’s received recently on how to respond to air balls.

    In the 58th minute, East Hampton, which had been awarded a corner kick, made it 2-0 as Espana headed home a corner kick that had been taken by West.

    Five minutes later came the aforementioned Glenn goal, by Zach Zambuto, which made the score 2-1, and, 30 seconds after that, Valverde’s stunning reply, which effectively clinched East Hampton’s second county final appearance in the past three seasons.

    There was one close call left to come when, in the 73rd minute, Cruz-Velasquez got around Alban at about the 30 yardline and went in on Aguilar one-on-one. Undaunted, Aguilar came out and made a sliding save that electrified East Hampton’s fans.

    When the celebrating was over, King, who couldn’t talk to the team initially afterward because he was a bit choked up, told his players that it had been “a great win — you played really well. But we’re not going to be happy just getting to the county final. We want to bring back the title this time.”

Saturday, November19

RUGBY, Northeast regional semifinal games, Portland, Me., vs. Middlesex,  Mass., noon, and Burlington, Vt., vs. Montauk Rugby Club, 2, Newport, R.I.

Thursday, November 24

RUNNING, Thanksgiving Day races, 3 and 6-milers around Fort Pond, the Circle, Montauk, 10 a.m.

    Marina Preiss, an East Hampton High School sophomore, qualified this past weekend at the county girls swimming championships for the state meet in the 50 and 100-yard freestyle races.

    Preiss won the 50, in 24.58 seconds, and was second in the 100, in 52.96. The state meet is to be held this weekend at Erie Community College in Buffalo.

    In other postseason action, Dana Cebulski, East Hampton’s freshman all-county cross-country runner, placed 40th among 132 runners in the state Class B race Saturday in Verona, N.Y., which is near Rome.

    Diane O’Donnell, Cebulski’s coach, said, “Dana ran a good race. Rain and snow the day before made the course a mess — girls were slipping and falling. . . . Her inexperience hurt her a bit, she kept getting boxed in and never really found her stride. Because of the slippery conditions, all the times were slow, some by as much as three minutes. Dana’s 21:31 was good, considering. The winning time was 19:43. We were happy for her, but she wasn’t. She said it wasn’t good enough. She has the desire — she can only get better.”

    Cebulski, who finished as the 113th ranked cross-country runner in the entire state and 15th countywide, is to compete in the regional Foot Locker championships’ freshman race at Sunken Meadow State Park on Nov. 26.

    O’Donnell expects her to do well on her home course. “I see her comfortably finishing in the top 10,” she said.

    Back to girls swimming, East Hampton’s team, which is coached by John McGeehan, placed seventh among the 16 schools vying in the county meet.

    Bonac’s relay teams did well. The 200 freestyle relay team of Preiss, Maddie Minetree, Mikayla Mott, and Carly Drew, who were the runners-up in 1:42.28, just missed the state-qualifying time of 1:42.18, and Preiss, Mott, Drew, and Morgan German finished fifth in the 200 medley relay, in 1:55.22. Drew, an eighth grader, placed ninth in the 100 butterfly.

    With their high-scoring field leader, Mario Olaya, absent because he had allegedly celebrated excessively East Hampton’s first county championship in the program’s 35-year history at Dowling College three days before, the East Hampton Bonackers lost 2-1 to Jericho in the Class A Long Island boys soccer championship game played at Adelphi University in Garden City Sunday.

    “Mario came to the pregame meal we had at the high school, and he was the first one there to greet us when we came back,” said Rich King, East Hampton’s head coach, who has called the red-carding of Olaya for having taken his shirt off during celebrations of East Hampton’s 2-1 win last Thursday over defending state champion Sayville, a win that earned the Bonackers the county Class A title, “an absolute injustice . . . almost criminal.”

    “We had a golden opportunity early, about seven or eight minutes into the game,” said King in recounting Sunday’s game, “when J.C. [Barrientos] had an outstanding run from midfield, dribbling by two or three defenders, and passed to Milton [Farez] in the six-yard box. Their goalkeeper came out. Milton’s first shot hit a defender in the back. He got the rebound and pushed it just wide from about four yards out. That would have been the game-changer. Otherwise, the first half was even. It was scoreless at halftime.”

    Jericho, which had edged Island Trees 1-0 in Nassau’s Class A county championship game, jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second half, the first score resulting from a cross into the box that “was misplayed by a defender. Esteban [Aguilar, East Hampton’s goalie] was out of position to stop the shot.”

    A long throw-in and a flicked header to the far post from about six yards out accounted for Jericho’s second goal with about 16 minutes left to play.

    During the final minutes, said King, “we pushed players forward and generated two or three great chances — a cross through the box that no one came onto, a shot by Donte [Donegal] inside the 12 that their keeper made a diving save of. . . . We scored our goal with about seven minutes to play. Angel [Garces] shot off the post; Milton got the rebound and buried it. We continued to put pressure on after that, but couldn’t quite get it done.”

    “The kids were devastated — they were ready to make a run at the state championship. Don [McGovern, King’s assistant] and I are very proud of the way they represented this school and the community throughout the entire season. They play a very attractive style of soccer with such skill and emotion and energy. They’re a hard team to beat. They take care of things academically, they’re leaders in the school. . . . This loss will make the kids who are coming back even hungrier next year. Our level of expectations going forward are very high.”

    The 9-year-old Police Athletic League football team here crowned a division-championship season with a 26-6 win over Three Villages on East Hampton High School’s turf field Sunday.

    “This is the first championship season an East Hampton P.A.L. team has had since the 10-year-olds won two years ago,” said Bob Nicholson, who, along with Andy Baris, Chris Stewart, and Kieran Brew assisted Joe Hren III in coaching the 9-year-olds, who went 9-1 this fall in the Pioneer Division.

    “We started with 23 players and ended up with 18 lean and mean kids who put their hearts into the game,” said Hren, who was happy to report that J.B. Stewart, who “has been running right, left, even backward, but never forward, ran straight ahead on Sunday.”

    While it had been “a total team effort,” Hren said that “Christian Johnson, our quarterback, was our m.v.p., and Jackson Baris was probably our toughest defender. Bob’s [7-year-old] son, Bret, played guard on offense and defense and ran the ball as well.”

    Besides Three Villages, the young Bonackers defeated teams from Patchogue-Medford, Eastport-South Manor, Hauppauge, Westhampton, and Sayville.

    “Most of these teams we blew off the field,” said Nicholson, “except for Sayville [with whom Bonac split wins] and Westhampton.”

    “The parents should be thanked,” said Hren, “for getting their kids to all the practices and games. . . . We practiced three days a week and played on Sundays. We traveled a lot.”

    Hren, who’s going to move up to coach the 10-year-olds next year, said that having six experienced players, some with three years of football under their belts, had been “very helpful. The new players quickly learned from them.”

    “The first few games [with Sayville and Westhampton in particular, teams the Bonackers defeated by 4 and 8 points] were very exciting. I was amazed by the skill level. . . .”

    The second Sayville game, played away on Oct. 30, “had an N.F.L. atmosphere with crowds on both sides of the field yelling under the lights. Losing that game was upsetting, knowing that we could have won, but over all it was a great season of football.”

Thursday, November 10

BOYS SOCCER, Suffolk County Class A final, East Hampton vs. Sayville, Dowling College, 4 p.m.

Saturday, November 12

CROSS-COUNTRY, state meet, Verona, N.Y., 9 a.m.

GIRLS SWIMMING, county meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 1 p.m.

Sunday, November 13

DOCK RACE, 3.3-miler, Montauk Post Office to the Dock restaurant, 11 a.m., benefit Montauk senior nutrition center, $20 donation, free beer.

ROWING, Snowflake regatta, Peconic River, Riverhead, 8 a.m.-3 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Regional Class A final, Suffolk champion vs. Nassau champion, Adelphi University, 4 p.m.

Wednesday, November 16

WINTER SPORTS, practice begins at local high schools, 3 p.m.

Saturday, November 19

BOYS SOCCER, state Class A semifinal, Middletown High School, 4:15 p.m.

Sunday, November 20

BOYS SOCCER, state Class A final, Middletown High School, 3 p.m.

    East Hampton High’s girls and boys volleyball teams were ousted from the playoffs this past week, though they went grudgingly, not gently, into the off-season.

    On Monday here, Danny Weaver’s boys team went the distance with Sayville, a team it had beaten twice before, before losing 26-24 in the fifth.

    The sidelining of his senior setter, A.J. Bennett, whose calf muscles had cramped up, with the score 21-16 in Sayville’s favor, compelled Weaver to look to his bench, a bench that included two freshmen — Pat Silich and Brady Yusko — who had been brought up from the junior varsity.

    And, Weaver said later, everyone stepped up, pulling to 23-22 following Ian Philipbar’s set that Mike Messemer smashed to the floor.

    But then, with the ball in East Hampton’s hands, Weaver called for a lineup check as Andrew Rodriguez, who’d been signaled by the referee to serve, was throwing the ball up in the air. In the confusion, Rodriguez didn’t follow through, which resulted in Sayville’s siding out.

    Ryan Fitzgerald, East Hampton’s all-county middle hitter, got the ball back right away, nailing a kill through a double block, and a few moments later, with Bonac down 24-25, Fitzgerald put the ball to the floor again, but in an instant the celebrating shifted from East Hampton’s side to Sayville’s as the net judge ruled that in putting the ball away Fitzgerald had touched the net.

    And that was it.

    Sayville, the Division II tourney’s third seed — East Hampton was the second — thus advanced to yesterday’s final versus Eastport-South Manor with a 25-20, 10-25, 32-30, 16-25, 26-24 victory.

    It was indeed hard, Weaver agreed afterward, to win three in a row.

    “It’s a tough way to end the season,” he added. “The kids were disappointed — and justly so. I’m proud of them, not only because of how well they played, even when we were in a patchwork rotation, but also because of how they responded to something that happened off the court today — something I don’t really want to go into, but it was something they needed to pick themselves up from. It was an emotionally trying day over all.”

    In the end, Weaver laid the loss to periodic poor receiving, which had thrown the offense out of sync at times.

    Despite losing a number of seniors to graduation, Bennett, Fitzgerald, Rodriguez, Pat McGuirk, and Trevor Shea among them, the coach said he expects “we’ll be right back there next year. Thomas [King, Bonac’s chief offensive threat], Evan Larsen, and Brock Lownes are juniors, and we’ll have young players like Brady Yusko, Pat Silich, and Henry Whitney up from the jayvee.”

    As aforesaid, Fitzgerald made the all-county team, as did King. McGuirk, Bennett, and Rodriguez were all-league, and Shea received an all-league honorable mention. Moreover, Fitzgerald and Shea made the all-county academic team.

    East Hampton’s girls, who had handed Hauppauge a 25-23, 25-6, 14-25, 25-12 loss in the playoffs’ first round here last Thursday — a match during which Lydia Budd, a ninth grader, reeled off 15 straight service points in the second set — were, in turn, bested in four the next day by Sayville.

    “It was a great match,” Kathy McGeehan, East Hampton’s coach, said. “The girls played really well — I’m very proud of them. Sayville’s setter and two outside hitters are seniors, and, yes, we’re a young team, but that’s not to make an excuse. We played much better against them in this playoff game than we did recently at home.”

    Early on, McGeehan said, her assistant, Sara Faraone, suggested setting the middle given the fact that Sayville was weaker there than outside, a strategy that, when the passes and sets were well aimed, yielded good results.

    “The third set was the make-or-break one,” McGeehan said. “We had three set points — at 24-23, 25-24, and 27-26 — but we couldn’t finish. In the fourth, Sayville went up 7-2, but we eventually tied it at 19-19 and pushed ahead 22-21 before losing 25-23. . . . Sara and I couldn’t have asked for anything more — the girls played great volleyball. As it was, any team in our league was capable, as Sayville has been, of moving forward.”

    While she will lose Katla Thorsen, who “developed into a great all-around player this year,” and her two middles, Sarah Johnson and Melissa Perez, to graduation, “we’ve got a strong group coming back.”

    Tryouts for the traveling East End Waves 10-and-up teams, McGeehan added, will be held at Sportime in Amagansett beginning Nov. 28. Asked how many age-group teams there would be, the coach said, “I don’t know yet — not until we have the tryouts. We’ve had four or five teams in the past.”

    The East Hampton High School girls swimming team placed third in the league meet at Hauppauge High School Friday, behind Sayville-Bayport-Blue Point and Harborfields, a result with which Bonac’s coach, John McGeehan, was not displeased, though absent the diving — an event in which East Hampton does not compete — the girls would have been in first place following the seventh event, the 100-yard freestyle.

    In the end, Say-Bay-Blue, which amassed 30 points in diving, was, as aforesaid, the winner, with 288 points; Harborfields was the runner-up, at 277, and East Hampton was third, at 232, ahead of Hauppauge (198), Huntington (188), and West Babylon (77).

    McGeehan will take seven competitors to the county meet on Saturday at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood — Marina Preiss, Maddie Minetree, Mikayla Mott, Carly Drew, Morgan German, Lilah Minetree, and Laura Gundersen.

    On Friday, Preiss, Mott, Drew, and German, who placed third, qualified to swim in the county meet’s 200 medley relay with a time of 1 minute and 57.69 seconds. Harborfields won that opening event in 1:57.60.

    Maddie Minetree won the league’s 200 free in 2:00.69, a time that qualified her for the county meet, and Mott, who placed third in the 200 individual medley in 2:22.15, also qualified for the counties.

    Preiss placed second in the 50 free, behind Hauppauge’s Alexandra Hemp, in 25.42 seconds, a county qualifying time, and Drew’s 1:03.12 in the 100 butterfly, good for third place, put her into the county meet in that event.

    Preiss and Maddie Minetree placed one-two in the 100 free, in 54.92 and 56.23. At that point, with seven of the 12 events having been contested, Sayville-Bayport-Blue Point held the lead with 160 points, followed by Harborfields, with 151, and East Hampton, with 133, leading to the conclusion that, if swimming had been the sole criterion, East Hampton would have been in the lead, by three points.

    The Bonackers, with Maddie Minetree, German, Drew, and Preiss, were to go on to win the 200 freestyle relay, in 1:44.62, though McGeehan said later in the week that Drew, Maddie Minetree, Preiss, and Mott would do that event in the counties.

    In the 500 free, although she was fourth in 5:50.28, Gundersen also became a county qualifier. Swimming a season-best 1:12.92 in the 100 breaststroke, Mott, who was the runner-up by five one-hundredths of a second, qualified too, as did the 400 freestyle relay team of German, Lilah Minetree, Drew, and Maddie Minetree, which placed second in 3:56.70.

    Bettering her division meet time by nine seconds, Dana Cebulski, East Hampton High’s freshman phenom, placed fifth in the county Class B girls race at Sunken Meadow State Park Friday, a finish that enabled her to become the first female runner from Bonac ever to advance to the state meet in the sport, whose program was begun here in 1991.

    Also as a result, she was named to the all-county second team, another “first.”

    Moreover, her time of 20 minutes and 20.06 seconds set an East Hampton High School record for Sunken Meadow’s 5K course, a record that East Hampton’s girls coach, Diane O’Donnell, thinks will be hard to beat.

    Asked if Dana, an all-around athlete, according to her mother, Nidia, was the best runner she’d ever had, O’Donnell said, “Certainly she’s the most talented freshman runner I’ve ever had. She has that competitive drive, though she’s still got things to learn.”

    While the day was an elating one for Cebulski, who covered the course, which includes two big hills (Snake and Cardiac) and several smaller ones, in the aforementioned 20:20.06, it was a very disappointing one for East Hampton’s star senior, Ashley West.

Absent a stress fracture in her left shinbone, “Ashley would have been right there too — in the top seven,” said O’Donnell. “I wish it had happened for her — she’s put so much into it.”

West, who has been rehabbing the injury and who forwent the division race in order to give herself a better chance in the county one, pulled out in pain on emerging into a clearing from a short uphill known as the Mousetrap a little more than a half-mile in.

She was in tears afterward, “but there were a lot of other girls in tears that day,” said O’Donnell. “Girls who had expectations but who, for whatever reason, didn’t realize them.”

O’Donnell and Bill Herzog, who, as the East Hampton Middle School coach usually is the first to spot the talented young runners here, and who helps see them through their high school careers, strongly advised West to take the winter off so that she would not risk further aggravating the injury. “That way, she’ll come back strong in the spring and have a great finish to her high school career,” O’Donnell said.

    Regarding the race, which took the some 78 competitors over a hilly 3.1-mile course that is ranked as the fifth-toughest in the entire Northeast, O’Donnell said, “Dana did exactly what she, and I, and Kevin [Barry, East Hampton’s boys coach] agreed should be done before it began. We told her to forget about the twins [Miller Place’s top two, Talia and Tiana Guevara, the eventual winner and runner-up], but that she had to beat the third Miller Place girl [Laura Nolan, an eighth grader], which she did. She’d beaten the John Glenn girl [Sarah Hardie, who finished fourth] before, but Dana said she ran a strong race.”

    The third-place finisher was Bayport-Blue Point’s Katie Saroka. Bayport-Blue Point was the team winner, with Miller Place second. East Hampton, which had been seeded ninth among the 12 entries, wound up seventh, a result that pleased O’Donnell, who has coached girls cross-country here since the fall of 1992, taking over from Kevin Corliss, who had overseen East Hampton’s first girls team in 1991.

    “It wasn’t just Dana — everybody on our team, except for Ashley and Brittany Rivkind, who each had to pull out, ran a p.r.,” said O’Donnell. “Jennie DiSunno was our second runner [and 28th over all] in 21:49, a p.r. by 50 seconds; Jackie Messemer [a freshman like Cebulski] was our third finisher, in 23:05; Emma Newburger was our fourth, in 23:10, and then came Jamisine Staubitser, who was subbing for Carrie Kaestner, in 23:17, a p.r. by two minutes! . . . Every single girl there ran a race she could be proud of. They were complaining last week that they were the only team out there practicing, but now they’re saying they had a great season and they’re sorry it’s over.”

    The boys team, whose lead runner was Dana’s older brother, Adam (in 18:44), also did better than expected, placing eighth among the 11 entries, bettering its prerace seeding of 10th.

    Adam Cebulski, who placed 26th over all, was followed by Mike Peralta, in 19:12, Thomas Brierley, in 19:25, Mike Hamilton (who was hampered by Achilles’ tendinitis), in 19:35, Deilyn Guzman, in 20:07, and Jack Link, in 20:16.

    Dana Cebulski looked to be in some pain herself on crossing the finish line, but quickly recovered, and soon was smiling, surrounded by her brother and his teammates.

    She was excited to be going to the state meet (in Verona, N.Y., outside Syracuse, this weekend), Dana said in answer to a question.

    Given that she had been one of the Y.M.C.A. Hurricanes’ top swimmers as a 10-year-old, and that she apparently is a very good volleyballer, there was some question as to which sport she’d choose this fall. Her parents, her brother, and Herzog were pushing for cross-country, but, in the end, she said, “I made the decision. I’d been thinking about it for a year. It was the right one.”