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.”

    Playing back-to-back games this past weekend, the Montauk Rugby Club won both, capping its first undefeated Met Union season since 2005.    

    Bolstered this fall by a number of very athletic 20-somethings, quick studies who made their marks in other sports, lacrosse, wrestling, football, and baseball among them, the Sharks have been virtually unstoppable in divisional play. They take an 8-0 record into the Northeast region’s Final Four, to be contested Nov. 19 and 20 in Newport, R.I. A win on the first day there would assure the second seeds a berth in the national Sweet 16 tourney which is to be contested in the spring.

    Saturday’s well-attended home finale with the Connecticut Yankees proved to be a laugher as Montauk wound up winning 61-0. Steve Turza, Ricardo Salmeron (three), Connor Miller (three), Mark Scioscia, Gordon Trotter (two), and Matt Brierley, who was joined by his soon-to-be 53-year-old father on Herrick Park’s pitch in the second half, made the tries, rugby’s equivalent of touchdowns.

    Trotter, who finished as the Met Union’s Division II leader in points this season, with 92, didn’t have a good kicking day, going 2-for-7 conversion-wise, with two bouncing off the goal posts, but it didn’t matter given the fact that he and his teammates were so unrelentingly dominant.

    The Sharks used 23 players in Saturday’s romp, the maximum number allowed, Rich Brierley, the side’s coach, said. He added that the level of play suffered not at all when the substitutions were made.

    “They ran out of gas, and their defense was not organized,” the elder Brierley, whose nephew, Erik, was also in the lineup that day, said afterward in summing up.

    Some of the young guys, among them Scioscia, a former Big East lacrosse midfielder when he was at Villanova, and Charlie Collins, needed “some more training,” he said, “so they can fit in better with our pattern of play. That’s why we kept Mark out on the wing today [where he ripped off some long gainers], but he’s a weapon.”    

    Two other weapons, Zach Brenneman, an all-American lacrosse midfielder when he was at Notre Dame, and Jarrel Walker, who played arena football after his career at C.W. Post was over, were sidelined by injuries, back spasms in Walker’s case, a pulled muscle in Brenneman’s. Though Trotter said he expects everyone to be healthy when it comes time, following a bye week, to play at Newport.

    “These young guys are picking up the game so quickly,” he said in reply to a question, “that we’re the division champions and are playing in the regional Final Four.”    

    Middlesex, an undefeated Massachusetts side that is the defending Northeast champion, is the Newport tourney’s top seed. Montauk has received the second seed because of the showing last year of the Met Union’s Village Lions, who were the runners-up.

    Brierley said Montauk’s Nov. 19 opponent will be the winner of a match between Burlington, Vt., and Bayonne, N.J. The other teams, he said, will be Portland, Me., and Union, N.J. The Sharks won Met Union games with Bayonne and Union this fall.

    On Sunday, Montauk traveled once more to Rockaway to play a game that had been canceled the week before in stormy weather after the locals had jumped out to 22-0 lead in the first half.

    “We won 36-20,” Trotter reported Monday. “We only had 18 or 19 guys. We were behind most of the game, but in the last 20 minutes we put it away.”

    The East Hampton High School boys soccer team played to a hard-fought 3-3 double-overtime tie with Elwood-John Glenn here Monday to win its second league championship in the past three years.

    In two 10-minute “sudden death” OTs, the relentless Bonackers, as they had throughout the game, pounded Glenn’s goal, though somehow the visitors, who with the setting sun in their eyes packed the goal mouth, managed to avert a loss.

    It wasn’t entirely one-sided, however, as Esteban Aguilar, East Hampton’s goalie, was called upon to make a beautiful save of a hard-hit direct kick by Glenn’s Greg Orkiszewski taken midway through the first OT. But, by and large, it was Glenn’s goalie who came under fire as bids by Mario Olaya, Esteban Valverde, and Milton Farez, among others, went awry.

    Had Glenn won the game and had it gone on to win its one remaining regular-season game, as expected, “they would have won the championship,” Rich King, East Hampton’s head coach, explained later. “So, obviously, today’s game was huge. We couldn’t be prouder of the kids. They’ve worked so hard all year and have done everything we’ve asked of them. We couldn’t be happier for them.”

    When King and his assistant, Don McGovern, congratulated their players after the second overtime period — and thus the game — had ended, they circled together, whooped it up, and jumped up and down.

    They’ll learn tomorrow where they’ll be seeded in the county tournament. King said Sayville, which has an undefeated record in League V and is the defending state champion, will obviously be up for the top seed. “We’re hoping for the number-one seed too,” said East Hampton’s coach, noting that Sayville had “a bad nonleague loss, but we’d be happy to be number-two. It will give us a home field advantage.” Two playoff wins here would enable East Hampton to go to the finals, as it did in 2009, the last year it won the league title. Glenn won it last year.

    The Bonackers thus finished the regular season at 12-1-2 over all and 9-1-2 in league play.

    The sole loss came at the hands, as it were, of Westhampton Beach, though East Hampton avenged that with a 2-1 win here on Oct. 19, a win that eliminated the Hurricanes from league championship contention.

    Afterward, King told his charges that they could savor the victory “from here to the locker room,” alluding to the fact that games with Mount Sinai (which the Bonackers bested 4-1) and Glenn remained.

     “We had the ball in their end of the field 90 percent of the time,” King said following the Westhampton win, in which Olaya scored both goals, converting a free kick from about 10 yards out and a penalty kick after having been taken down — for the second time in the game — in the penalty box.

    Glenn, which East Hampton had defeated 3-1 earlier in the season, proved to be a formidable foe. Orkiszewski, a senior midfielder and one of the Knights’ captains, lofted free kicks into the goal mouth time and again, from midfield or beyond, and Glenn’s corner kicks were also nerve-racking.

    The visitors, though they had two dangerous forwards in the long-legged Francis Dela Agbotse and Adan Cruz-Velasquez, did not quite have the weapons East Hampton had.

    Farez broke the ice, sliding in to convert a pass from Valverde, who had been at the left edge of the box, 10 minutes and 23 seconds into the fray.

    About 10 minutes later, Orkiszewski beat Angel Garces to tie the score.

    With 5:26 left until the half, Esteban Vargas played the ball up to Olaya, who, despite being closely marked by Anthony Santagata, whipped the ball up high into the left corner of the nets for a 2-1 East Hampton lead.

    But one minute later it was 2-2 as Santagata successfully deflected past Aguilar an Orkiszewski free kick from midfield into the goal mouth.

    An East Hampton corner kick header bounced off the lower left goalpost with 3:35 to go, and just before the buzzer signaling the half Olaya and Glenn’s goalie came together in a jarring, leaping collision in the box.

    In recent home games, the Bonackers have used to their advantage the wind (though there was none on Monday) and the lowering sun, but Glenn continued to play toe-to-toe in the second frame. In fact, it took a 3-2 lead early on, in the 43rd minute, as Cruz-Velasquez, who had received a long cross from Dela Agbotse, beat Alex Serna and rocketed a shot high into the nets. Serna was soon to atone, however, as he headed out what would have been a certain goal headed for the left corner.

    In the 48th minute King replaced Vargas with Donte Donegal, a sophomore forward who recently returned to action following an early-season injury, and, in the 56th minute, moments after Serna’s heroics, Donegal came up big, blasting in from short range the goal that was to guarantee East Hampton the title.

    In the 65th minute, Jerjes Albin, a staunch Bonac defender who constantly repelled Glenn’s attacks, played the ball up onto the feet of Farez, and the tough senior forward broke in on the goal one-on-one. It was the best chance of the day for either team, but somehow Farez was foiled, prompting moans from Bonac’s fans, who, 35 minutes later, were to walk off the field cheering.

    When he ventured forth with a bag of live eels on Saturday night, John Bruno led the Montauk SurfMasters surfcasting tournament in the wetsuit division. The fish that had put him at the top of the heap a few weeks earlier weighed 49.30.

    The fish he weighed in at Paulie’s Tackle shop early Sunday morning caused the scale to groan out the number 50.82. It was Bruno’s first striped bass over 50 pounds.

    Fred Kalkstein, a tournament organizer and competitor in the wetsuit division, shared some of the excitement his type of fishing generates. The basic idea is to form a symbiotic relationship with a given rock over a number of years so that you can find it even if high tide hides it from view.

    On Sunday night, Kalkstein found his still-submerged rock about a half-hour past the top of the tide. “The water was up to my chest. There was not much of a swell on, so I just floated up and back down on the rock for a while. When the water went out a little, I had a good stand. It was between 7 and 8 and I got a few bumps. About 8:15 I got a whack and set the hook.”

    “The fish was 40 feet from me. It went to the right, then back to the left, back and forth 8 to 10 times. I couldn’t budge it. ‘Did I snag it?’ I thought. I finally got it to the rock, a nice fish.”

    But, was the bass over 50 pounds, was it big enough to beat the fish John Bruno caught the night before? Kalkstein half swam and half walked to shore dragging the big fish.

    “It measured 47 to 48 inches according to the marks on my rod, but it didn’t  look like a 50-pound fish. The 48.35 I’d caught was really wide. This one didn’t look that wide, but if you’ve never seen this before, a really large bass, when he came in, the top of his head and back — that submarine gray, a beautiful specimen. I leaned toward letting him go, a beauty. I put him back in the water and he took off. For the next 40 minutes I swam around but couldn’t find my rock.”

    There is no doubt that lunker bass are in our midst. A few hours before Bruno caught his big bass, Eric Linsner, on his boat Semele, caught a striper that the West Lake Marina’s scales put at 581/2 pounds. Linsner’s fish was also lured by a live eel.

    Alan Ballesteros landed a 45.3-pound bass while fishing on the Viking Star on Saturday.

    Bigger bass were being caught by surfcasters at night in the Montauk Moorland coves. In addition to John Bruno besting himself in the wetsuit division of the SurfMasters tourney, Gary Krist caught a 32.24-pound bass to knock Richie Michelsen out of third place in the wader division. Klever Oleas held on to first and second places in that division with bass weighing 37.74 and 32.96 pounds.

    Mary Ellen Kane holds first and second place in the women’s division, with Joan Naso-Federman in third. Phil Schnell has the biggest bass in the youth division, with Dylan Lackner in second place. The leading “kid” remains James Kim Jr.

    On the beaches farther to the west, smaller bass have been schooling close to shore here and there between Amagansett and Main Beach, East Hampton. Despite the chillier nights of late, false albacore continue to entertain fly fishermen outside the Montauk Lighthouse and off Shagwong Point.

    Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett took his boat Moonpie to the west side of Gardiner’s Island on Monday. It was a cast-and-blast trip during which he limited out on scoters and caught a false albacore to round things out. Scoters were rafting off Goff Point east to Waterfence, Bennett said.

    He sang the praises of Salty’s hand-crafted and hand-painted wooden surface lures — “the colors are amazing” — for catching striped bass in the early morning and evening hours. Otherwise, Hopkins lures or Kastmaster’s were working with a fast retrieve on Amagansett’s ocean beaches, where fishing was “a peaceful experience — everyone’s in Montauk,” Bennett said.

    Ken Rafferty, who guides fly fishermen out of Three Mile Harbor, said the west side of Gardiner’s Island had been offering good bass fishing, “but you have to dredge for them,” he said, meaning fly fishermen need to let their sink lines sink toward the bottom and retrieve the fly slowly.

    The Viking Fleet of party boats in Montauk reports jumbo porgy action off Block Island, and although wind-muddied water slowed the action, the blackfish and sea bass bite continued through the week.

Friday, November 4

CROSS-COUNTRY, Suffolk County meet, Class B boys race, 2 p.m., Class B girls race, 3:20 p.m., Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park.

GIRLS SWIMMING, League III meet, Hauppauge High School, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, county Class A tournament, first round game, site of higher seed, time to be announced.

Saturday, November 5

TOUR OF THE SHORE TRIATHLON, benefit for Paddlers 4 Humanity, 2-mile kayak, 11.5-mile mountain bike, and 4-mile beach run, Lazy Point, Amagansett, 9:30 a.m., registration from 8:30.

RUGBY, Connecticut Yankees vs. Montauk, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 1 p.m.

Monday, November 7

BOYS SOCCER, playoffs, first round, John Glenn-Miller Place winner at East Hampton, 2 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, county Class A tournament, second round, at site of higher seed, 5 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, county Division II tournament, first round, Sayville at East Hampton, 6 p.m.

Wednesday, November 9

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Division II championship game, Longwood High School, 5 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, county Class A tournament, championship game, St. Joseph’s College, Patchogue, 8 p.m.

Thursday, November 10

BOYS SOCCER, county Class A championship game, Dowling College Sports Complex, 4 p.m.

    A United States International Tennis Federation senior tennis team on which two locals, Frank Ackley and Vinnie Horcasitas, played recently won the Amigos Cup in Merida, Mexico.

    Ackley, Horcasitas, and Mark Harrison, who, in the summer, is the head pro at the East Hampton Tennis Club, played together in the same tournament two years ago, but the Mexicans successfully argued then that they should keep the Cup even though Hurricane Ida, with Mexico holding a slim 6-4 lead, had forced the cancellation of 50 of the scheduled 60 matches.

    “Remember the Cup!” the three stateside amigos said at the time, noting that when the Davis Cup-style tournament was halted in advance of the hurricane’s arrival, the U.S. was winning all seven of the matches that were under way.

    Thus this year’s win, which enabled the U.S. team’s captain, Andy Lake, to take the cup back with him to Florida, had been, said Ackley, particularly satisfying.

    Playing on red clay courts at a resort in the colonial city that he described as “knock-dead gorgeous,” Ackley, who’s 62, won four of the seven matches he played, including two singles matches.

    “In my first [50-plus] match,” he said, “I played a guy known as ‘the Cat,’ a guy who’d played Davis Cup for Mexico in the day. A very nice guy, but tough! He’d been fourth in the world championships. I went down early — it took me a while to get going. I lost the first set 6-2. In the second it went 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, and then, after he went down 0-40 on his serve, he dug in his heels and I was dead and lost 6-3.”

    “I was coming off the courts when they ask me if I’m ready to go out again. I was dripping wet. The Cat was the best player in the senior division. They gave me 30 to 45 minutes to shower, and I’m back out on the courts again. This time, I beat my guy 6-0, 7-5. I’m hoping to go to the pool now, but then they tell me I’ve got to play doubles! I’m over 60 and I’ve never played three matches in a day in my life before. . . . We lost 7-5, 6-4. I was done for the day.”

    “The next day, Saturday, I played the number-two guy on the senior team, Marcel Bouffer. I beat him 6-3, 6-2. I’m going off and they ask me, ‘How much time do you need?’ I was stiff! My partner was limping during the warm-up, and I knew we were in for it; they were going to lob him all day. But we won 6-4, 7-6.”

    “On Sunday, we were up by like six matches, each worth a point, with eight to play. So, guess what, they take out their seniors, everyone but the top two, and the guy I’m matched with tells me he’s 39! They put in all young guys, and the older ones didn’t even show up to watch.”

    “. . . Yes, it’s supposed to be 50-and-over, but it’s not set in stone. It’s in the bylaws, the fine print. I’d played six matches and they’re subbing in fresh guys. Andy Lake was out on the court, so I couldn’t ask him. I was going to ask their captain if this was allowed, but then I decided to take my beating for the team. My guy ran all over the court like a chicken. I knew the handwriting was on the wall. . . . But in the end, we won 28 matches and they won 25. We won the Cup! Andy had a sly smile on his face when it was over and said we were going to take it home. Next year, we’re going to play for the Cup where he is, in Florida.”

    “I love the team format,” Ackley continued. “The camaraderie is great. You cheer each other on. . . . And playing at the international level is great fun. They have U.S.-England matches, U.S.-France. . . . You’re playing for your country and you do whatever you have to do. Vinnie did well and Harrison did, too. He was doing triple, double duty. He could barely walk at the end. We had three guys in the open division and five in the seniors. Mexico had at least double that.”

    “There are no 18-and-unders in these competitions,” said Ackley in answer to a question, “but there’s everything else, all the way up to super seniors, 70-and-overs.”

    Next for him, said Ackley, who hits regularly with Horcasitas at the East Hampton Indoor-Outdoor Club, would be “an invitational tournament up the Island at Thanksgiving, but I’m not going to move,” he said, “for the next three or four days.”

    The postseason was to have commenced in earnest this week for seven of the nine East Hampton High School teams that earned berths in them.

    Only football, which bowed out at 0-8 in the foulest of foul weather here Saturday, and field hockey came up short.

    Girls tennis last week turned in a surprisingly good effort in a 5-2 second-round loss to the eventual county champion, Half Hollow Hills East.

    Michelle Kennedy, the team’s first-year coach, said that Jess Bono and Daniella Dunphy had won at first doubles, that Caitlin Walsh and Gillian Neubert had won at second doubles, and that the third doubles team of Carrie Sullivan and Sarah Becker and the team’s fourth singles player, Bryce Slater, an eighth grader, had lost in three sets.

    And this despite the fact that three starters — Sydney Sanicola, Rikki Slater, and Margaux Eckert — were, for various reasons, missing.

    The girls soccer team played a Class A outbracket game with Westhampton Beach here Monday — a game reported above — and the boys team, which recently won its second league championship in the past three years, is to play at home Monday versus the John Glenn-Miller Place winner. The winner of that game is to play in the county Class A championship game at Dowling College next Thursday at 4 p.m.

Sayville is the top Class A seed. East Hampton is the second seed, and John Glenn is the third.

Boys volleyball, which drew the second seed in the county’s Division II tournament, behind Eastport-South Manor, is to play third-seeded Sayville at home at 6 p.m. on Monday.

The girls volleyball team’s playoff schedule was not known as of earlier this week given the fact that the Class A seedings weren’t to be announced until yesterday morning.

Kathy McGeehan, the girls coach, said Tuesday morning, “If we’re seeded between 7th and 10th, we might have to play tomorrow. If we’re seeded sixth or higher, we’ll play Friday. We’re ready for anything. There’s so much parity in this classification that we know whoever we play will be tough.”

As an example of the parity she cited, McGeehan said that her team had split with the presumed top seed, Sayville, which this past week downed the Bonackers in five here after losing the first two sets. “We played well,” she said, “but after losing the first two their seniors came alive.”

The girls swimming team that is coached by Kathy McGeehan’s husband, John, was preparing this week for the League III championships that are to be held tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. at Hauppauge High School.

    John McGeehan, whose team added another “first” last week when it defeated West Islip 89-80 at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, expects East Hampton “will be in the mix with Sayville and Harborfields. We have a better shot at the title than we ever have before.”

    The county meet will be on Nov. 12 at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood at 2 p.m.

    Getting back to the football finale, a 46-0 loss at the hands of Miller Place, Bill Barbour Jr., the head coach, said he’d told his players afterward in the locker room that he was proud of them for having stuck through a singularly disappointing season.

    Barbour’s father, Bill Sr., said in walking off the field in cold, wind-driven rain that “it was a lack of knowledge” that had led to the team’s 0-8 record, “not a lack of enthusiasm.”

    His son agreed. “They worked hard; they were always very positive,” said Bill Jr. “There was a lot of inexperience, but the kids who committed themselves to the program all stayed and saw it through, and we picked up some kids along the way.”

    “We had a number of injuries, too. Today was Ryan Joudeh’s first game and the first for Desmond Tavera. Cort [Heneveld, the sophomore quarterback] broke his hand before the Westhampton game. Thomas Nelson was sidelined by a concussion. This was his first game back. . . . I told them I was proud of them, and that they’d demonstrated to me that when faced with life’s challenges they’ll see them through.”

    The coaching staff, he added, would continue to do everything it could to recruit and develop talent. “The four sophomores we have on the varsity represent the first P.A.L. [Police Athletic League] class. Hopefully, the P.A.L. program will prove to be a good feeder for ours going forward.”

    Girls soccer, the first of East Hampton High’s teams to play in the postseason this week, thrilled its fans here Monday, defeating Westhampton Beach 4-3, thus coming out on top in the decade-old program’s first-ever playoff appearance.

    Tiffany Lamprecht, the varsity assistant coach, who played on East Hampton’s first girls soccer team in 2000, said afterward that “we were playing today for Mike [Vitulli, East Hampton’s head coach, whose mother died this past weekend]. The girls dedicated this win to him.”

    She told her charges in the postgame huddle that Vitulli, who was to have attended wakes that day and evening, would be “so proud of them.”

    Lamprecht was proud too, though she admitted later that she’d also been a little nervous, especially when, following a stellar start, Bonac’s defense let the Hurricanes get back into the Class A outbracket game.

    East Hampton’s junior forward, Raffi Franey, who seems to score just about every time she shoots, had a hat trick Monday. She scored the first time East Hampton went downfield, depositing a hard shot from the right side into the left corner of the visitors’ nets.

    Soon after, in the 12th minute, Franey figured prominently again, bringing the ball down the right side before crossing it onto the feet of Amanda Seekamp, who, from about five yards out, tapped it by Westhampton’s beaten keeper.

    And, with the first half barely at the midway point, Franey, whose shots match up well with those of the boys, blasted a high one from 10 yards out that hit the underside of the crossbar and bounced down over the goal line for 3-0.

    It looked then that a rout was under way, but Westhampton, a team that East Hampton had twice defeated during the regular season, and which also went into the game with a 6-6 league record, was to wind up giving Bonac’s girls all they could handle, lending credence to the saying that it’s hard to defeat a team three times in a row.

    Before the half ended, the visitors, presented with an angled free kick from about the 20 after a defender, Rebecca Friedes, had taken down a Westhampton attacker, got on the scoreboard, the kick into the goal mouth, which drew Bonac’s goalie, Kathryn Hess, out to the right, having been chested past her.

    Still, at that point, with 8:23 left until the halftime break, it didn’t seem as if Westhampton would be capable of inflicting much more damage.

    Franey contributed further to that ho-hum feeling when, in the first minute of the second period, she just missed, banging a well-aimed 20-yard shot off the crossbar.

    Then Westhampton, which had some quick forwards, reasserted itself in surprising fashion, scoring goals in the 43rd and 45th minutes that tied the game — and wiped the satisfied smiles off the faces of Bonac’s fans — at 3-3.

    Hess, who’s rangy and aggressive, couldn’t be blamed for either of them. A rebound from a great sliding save she’d made in thwarting a one-on-one breakaway accounted for the first, and the next, which tied the game, resulted from another defensive lapse that allowed a Westhampton forward to break in on the goal unhindered.

    With the visitors emboldened now, the remaining half-hour of play proved to be tense indeed. In the 62nd minute, Hess had a close call as the ball zipped in front of her one way and then zipped back the other, without, luckily, a Westhampton foot having been applied to it.

    Meanwhile, Lamprecht and Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, who has coached state-championship teams in boys and girls soccer in his career, were urging East Hampton’s attackers, some of whom were getting rid of the ball too soon, not to panic.

    In the 73rd minute, East Hampton was awarded a corner kick. Seekamp took it, from the right side, and lofted the ball into the goal mouth where Franey, one of a number of attackers and defenders in contention, won out, heading in what was to be the game-winner as her teammates, those on the field and those on the bench, and Bonac’s fans leapt up.

    “We knew it wouldn’t be easy — we knew we’d be in a fight,” Lamprecht said afterward as East Hampton’s players, who had reached the outbracket playoff game as the result of defeating Amityville 3-1 on Friday night, celebrated.

    The Bonackers were to have played at top-seeded Sayville Tuesday. The Golden Flashes shut East Hampton out 4-0 here last week, though the latter half of the second half, during which two of Sayville’s goals were scored, was played in the gloaming — in the dark really in the final minutes.

    Seekamp, Franey, and Gabriella Penati scored Bonac’s goals Friday. “We must have had 20 shots in the first half, but it ended scoreless,” said Lamprecht. “In the second, Amityville scored first, but then we picked it up.”

    Lamprecht reported as well that Franey has been named to the all-county team, that Hess, who’s a senior, and Seekamp, who’s a sophomore, have been named to the all-conference team, and that Saoirse McKeon, the senior sweeper, has been named to the all-league team.

    Having made the playoffs was all the more notable, she agreed, given that during the season a number of players, including Tiffany Gutierrez, Tenae Walker, Bonnie Spink-O’Brien, and (until recently) McKeon, had been sidelined with injuries.

All-American

    Skye Marigold, who swims for Tom Cohill’s Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter Hurricanes team, has been named by U.S.A. Swimming as one of its scholastic All-Americans, a designation that takes into account swimming and scholastic achievements. Marigold is one of 1,000 female athletes nationwide to be so honored. Cohill said Marigold, who is a freestyler primarily, is the first Hurricane to be named an All-American.

    “She’s actually the second All-American I’ve trained,” said Cohill, who is the Y’s aquatics director. “The other is Albert [Woods],” an octogenarian who has won multiple national age-group championships.

    In other Hurricane news, eight of them — Marigold, Maddie Minetree, Lilah Minetree, Carly Drew, Teague Costello, Alex Astilean, Georgie Bogetti, and Thomas Brierley — are putting in extra hours of training in the Y’s pool from 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. When the varsity girls season is over, they’ll add fitness training as well, from 4 to 5 on Mondays and Wednesdays at Alex Astilean Sr.’s Speedfit Studio on Newtown Lane in East Hampton.

Ruggers Win Again

    The Montauk Rugby Club improved its Met Union Division II record to 6-0 and thus clinched a Northeast region playoff spot this past Saturday, trouncing Bayonne, N.J., 43-17 in an away game.

    Charlie Collins reported that “Bayonne was arguably the toughest and most skilled team the Sharks have faced this season. . . . Led by the inspired play of our forwards, especially Mike Bunce and Jarrel Walker, we took the lead in the second half and never looked back.”

    Those scoring tries for Montauk were Bunce (two), Gordon Trotter, Ricardo Salmeron, Hamish Cuthbertson, Nick Finazzo (a recent returnee), and Connor Miller. Trotter, the New Zealand-born fly half, made good on four of seven conversion kicks.

    This Saturday, the Sharks are to play at 3-3 Rockaway, a side that’s moved up from Division III owing to its 6-1 record in 2010. The Sharks can clinch the division title with a win.

Beyond Football

    The East Hampton High School football team’s players will wear purple shoelaces and their coaches will wear purple shirts in the season finale here this Saturday with Miller Place as a way of calling attention to the Retreat and its efforts to prevent domestic violence and to protect the victims of it.

    Bill Barbour, East Hampton’s head coach, has said that “the program is proud to team up with the Retreat to help raise awareness of this ever-present problem. . . . It is yet another way in which we can teach our players what it means to be a real man.”

    Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman is to speak “on the importance of students participating in ending the cycle of domestic violence” at halftime.

    In related news, the East Hampton-Springs junior high football team, at the instance of Burke Gonzalez, a defensive tackle and offensive guard, has been wearing pink socks in its games this season. The Springs School eighth grader said the money the players paid for the socks is to be donated to the Katy Stewart memorial scholarship fund.

    A half-dozen East Hampton High School teams are eyeing the postseason, foremost among them Claude Beudert’s undefeated golfers, though they’ll have to wait until next spring for that sport’s conference and county championships.

    The 12-0 golfers finished up last week with an 8.5-.5 win over Shelter Island on the Bonackers’ home course at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett. Ian Lynch, the junior number-one, led the way with a 35-to-43 win over Jay Card, who had bested Lynch 41-43 when they played on Shelter Island.

    Lynch can also boast of having carded East Hampton’s all-time low score, a one-under-par 33, which he shot in a recent crucial match at Southampton, a win that enabled East Hampton to clinch its eighth straight league title and the program’s 12th in the past 14 years.

    Beudert said during last Thursday’s outbracket girls tennis match between East Hampton and Mount Sinai (a match that East Hampton was to win 6-1) that his number-two, Cameron Yusko, was a finalist in Channel 12’s student-athlete of the week contest. The six-year varsity veteran was certainly worthy, said Beudert, who nominated him. “He has a 98.7 unweighted grade-point average, he’s a great community-minded kid, and he’s a three-sport athlete. He’s been all-league for us three times and all-conference twice. A quality kid, all around.”

    Golf’s all leaguers this season were Yusko, Lynch, and John Pizzo, said Beudert, “though we won’t know about all-conference until the spring. My m.v.p. is Ian, the coach’s award is going to Cameron, and Matt Griffiths is my most-improved. He and Andrew Winthrop really filled in well this year.”

    Turning to cross-country, whose girls and boys teams continue on the upswing, boosted by Bill Herzog’s junior high program, Diane O’Donnell has two potential all-state competitors in Ashley West, a senior, and in Dana Cebulski, a ninth grader.

    In a recent Northeast invitational meet at Brown University, Cebulski placed fourth among 215 entrants in the 5K varsity race in 19 minutes and 24 seconds, “a very good time,” according to O’Donnell, who added that West could well have finished in the top 10 too, but, because of an aggravated calf muscle strain, had to pull out after having run two thirds of the way.

    West, herself, who was seen biking in front of the high school last Thursday, said she was rehabbing the muscle with the school’s trainer, Randi Cherill, and was confident she’d be ready for the state qualifier meet that is to be held Friday, Nov. 4 at Sunken Meadow State Park.

    Things continued to go swimmingly, as well, for John McGeehan’s girls swim team, who defeated Hauppauge 96-74 at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter last Thursday.

    Posting career bests were Bonac’s 200 medley relay team of Marina Preiss, Mikayla Mott, Carly Drew, and Maddie Minetree, who won in 1:57.84, and the 200 freestyle relay team of Preiss, Mott, Morgan German, and Minetree, who won in 1:45.81.

    Recording season-bests were Mott, who won the 200 individual medley in 2:21.14; Minetree, who won the 50 free in 25.93; Preiss, who won the 100 free in 55.57, and German, who placed third in the 50 free in 27.32.

    Moreover, Lydia Florio ‘pr’d’ in the 100 breaststroke, placing third in 1:19.24, and Caley Serin, who was fifth in the 200 free in 2:49.51, also had a personal record.

    In addition, Haley Ryan placed second in the 500 free in 6:41.76.

    The 4-1 girls were to have had home meets earlier this week with West Babylon and West Islip. The League III championships are to be held at Hauppauge High School on Nov. 4. The county meet is to be held at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood on Nov. 12.

    Getting back to the aforementioned tennis match versus Mount Sinai (East Hampton being the 16th seed, Mount Sinai the 17th), Michelle Kennedy, the first-year coach, reported that Abby Okin, the eighth grader who plays first singles, suffered the sole loss that day, at the hands of Daniella Stefanucci, who won 7-5, 6-3.

    Carly Grossman, at two, defeated Rebekah Lester 6-2, 6-0; Phoebe Gianis, at three, defeated Erika Mavi 7-6 (8-6), 6-1, and Margaux Eckert, at four, defeated Alexa Mani 6-1, 6-0.

    In doubles, East Hampton’s first team, Jess Bono and Daniella Dunphy, who as a result of placing third in the recent division tournament had been named to the all-county team, won 3-6, 6-4, 6-4; Caitlin Walsh and Sydney Sanicola won 6-1, 2-6, 7-5, and Gillian Neubert and Bryce Slater won 6-2, 3-6, 6-4.

    Playing in the county tournament, Bono, a senior, and Dunphy, a sophomore, won a first-round match, defeating a Bay Shore entry 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 before losing to the top seeds in the quarterfinals.

    On the volleyball court, East Hampton’s boys team, with Thomas King sitting out, defeated Huntington in four on Oct. 17 to improve to 8-1 in league play.

    “It was a big game for Huntington, which needed it to make the playoffs,” said East Hampton’s coach, Dan Weaver.

    L.B. Lownes, who usually alternates with Trevor Shea playing opposite the opponent’s setter, moved to outside hitter, King’s position, and “had some big kills,” said Weaver.

    King was to have missed Monday’s match at league-leading Eastport-South Manor as well, though Weaver said he thought the team, which he said had been practicing jump pass serve returns and defensive positioning, had a good shot.