In the world of sports, youth has its cachet; however, when it comes to boccie, seniority, and all its wisdom, has its perks. The Founders, a boccie ball team of 59 to 88-year-old men, took the Southampton Boccie League championship Sept. 18 on the court at North Sea Park. Their opponents, Southampton United, a much younger team, 37 to 61 years old, were defeated 12-6 in the first game, and again, 12-6 in the final deciding match.

    The overcast day with its slight fall chill did not deter the crowd’s presence or their enthusiasm. Clustered at the end of the court, which is about 16 feet long, the players took turns tossing balls down the trimmed turf in an attempt to get as close as possible to the pallino, a smaller ball thrown down the court at the start of the game. In Italian, boccie means to kiss, and the object of the game is to accumulate points by being closest to the pallino.

    You get two points if your ball touches, or kisses, the pallino. “We put a dollar bill through the two balls, if it goes through, it’s a no go, if not, then you get the points,” said Rich Van Houten of the winning team. Such a feat was achieved only twice this season.

    “Nice shot, John,” yelled a man sitting in the front row of the bleachers as a member of the Southampton United threw a ball that neared the pallino. Cries of “Oh no,” echoed through the crowd as a green ball smashed into a red one and knocked it away from the prize, and when a green ball hit the wall, “Aws” flooded the court. The audience burst into applause after a green ball rolled up next to the pallino, putting the Founders firmly ahead of the game. “Sal, they’re good,” said the same heckler to a member of Southampton United. Woefully, Sal Ficara Jr. replied, “We don’t have a chance.”

    The idea for a boccie league originated with Steve Marciw, who said, “I remember playing and watching my parents and grandparents play.” He then approached Chris Nuzzi, a Southampton Town councilman, to get the green light. Mr. Nuzzi discussed it with the town board, and, according to Mr. Marciw, the town offered to build some courts for the league, on one condition, Mr. Nuzzi told Mr. Marciw, “ ‘You run the league, and the town doesn’t have anything to do with it.’ ” Mr. Marciw agreed and enlisted the help of his friend Sal Ficara Sr., a fellow boccie aficionado who has played the game with him at parties for years.

    In 2008 they started with eight teams, and this year there were 24 teams and 138 players. “This is the first time any team has repeated the championship,” said Mr. Marciw, who officiated at the event via microphone wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. 

    The Founders lost the championship the first season, but have been victorious two years in a row. “We don’t like losing,” said Saverio Naclerio, the only Italian Founder. The former Pork  Store owner hails from Naples and still retains a strong accent. “I played boccie when I was younger in Italy. There are different rules here. We create more of them.”

    Charlie Mottern, one of the Founders, who is also the league’s treasurer, learned boccie after he married his Italian wife. “Her relatives taught me on a clay court in the backyard,” he said. “It’s a great thing.”

    When Ron Forman was in his 20s, he lived on Thompson Street, near Prince Street in Manhattan’s Little Italy. He saw the men in his neighborhood playing boccie down the street. “Finally on a Saturday one of the men asked me, ‘Why don’t you play?’ ” said Forman. They taught him the game, but he had stopped playing until this summer, when he joined the Founders.

    Mr. Van Houton, another member of the team, was turned onto the game by Mr. Marciw. “We developed the league, and I love it,” he said. Mr. Van Houten plays in Florida during the winter, and runs a league there. “It’s great to be on the winning team,” he said.

    The oldest member of the Founders,  the elder Ficara began playing boccie after his neighbor gave him a boccie set, and let him use his backyard court.  Ficara taught his kids, and two of his sons are on the Southampton United team. Involved with starting the league,  Ficara worked with  Marciw to secure four courts at the park. When asked how he felt about winning the championship  Ficara Sr. said, “I’m getting used to it.”

    “It’s a simple game and a lot of fun,” he said. “We made our own rules, and try to make it as simple as possible. When we have a discrepancy, no one but an official is on the court.”  Naclerio said they play more by the original rules in Naples. “They think they are the only rules.” The group decided to merge the Italian rules and the American ones. “We got the official rules from Rome. We read them, and then we decided which ones we wanted to adopt,”  Van Houten said.

    The concluding shot of the day was made by Ficara Sr., who earned the last two points. “That was the closer,” he said. And after that,  Mottern said he overheard Ficara Jr. say, “My father would say you’ve learned another lesson.”

    When asked how he felt about losing to his dad, Sal Jr. said, “Well, how could we win? They were 13-1 this season. You know how we got here? We didn’t play them all season,” he said.

    Any money raised by the league throughout the season goes back to the community. “What isn’t used for our end-of-season party or mail is contributed to charity. We donated $500 to the scholarship fund for kids for summer camp, S.Y.S. [Southampton Youth Services], and $250 each to two food pantries. There might be more this year because we have a larger group,”  Mottern said.

    One thousand seven hundred and thirty-six runners crossed the finish line behind the Springs School Saturday — 336 marathoners, 1,279 half-marathoners, and 121 contenders in the 5K.

    A 25-year-old California mathematician by way of Washington, D.C., Shaun Maguire, won the marathon in 2 hours, 44 minutes, and 46 seconds. Chris Koegel, the defending champion, who experienced Achilles problems about 10 miles into the 26.2-mile race, was the runner-up, in 2:52:19.

    Maguire waited at the line for Koegel to finish, a gesture that the race directors, Amanda Moszkowski and Diane Weinberger, remarked upon.

    Moszkowski and Weinberger, by the way, who have overseen this huge event, which benefits Project MOST, Southampton Hospital, and the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, the past five years, have been named as the recipients of the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s 2011 community service award.

    The club’s athlete of the year, Sharon McCobb, was there that day too. She placed 36th in the half-marathon, in 1:38:09, and thus won the women’s 45-to-49-year-old group.

    “I did better last year,” McCobb said after crossing the finish line, a fact she attributed to the humidity.

    Perhaps because of the humidity, the ambulance was called out five times, though in each case, Moszkowski said later, “it was nothing serious.”

    The marathon’s women’s winner — and fourth over all — was Mary Beth Ryan, 28, of Holden, Mass., in 3:08:53.

    Steven Mitchell, 31, of New York City won the half, in 1:25:30, with Jason Hancock, 37, a Southampton resident who teaches kindergarten at the Amagansett School, second, in 1:26:16. Veronica Jackson, 24, of New York City was the women’s winner — and fourth over all — in 1:28:07.

    Barbara Gubbins, who is twice Jackson’s age, nevertheless finished third among the women, in 1:29:58.

    Like Koegel, Gubbins came into the race with a slight injury, a tight left calf muscle in her case. “I hurt it in the Run for Ron this August,” she said. “I didn’t run for two weeks after that. I did 18 miles last weekend and it tightened up. That’s why I’m wearing compression socks today.”

    She ran with Jackson and the eventual runner-up, Sarah Chase, a 31-year-old Manhattanite, for the first seven miles, after which she “watched them battle it out. . . . It’s exciting to see how this race has blossomed.” Gubbins is to run in the New York City Marathon in November.

    “Maybe they should call this the Springs School marathon,” Owen McCormack, who coaches the school’s junior high girls soccer team, said, alluding to the fact that a Springs eighth grader, Erik Engstrom, had won the 5K in a record time of 19:20.

    Tonio Vassilaros, a 17-year-old cross-country runner at Columbia Prep in New York City, whose father, John, has supplied the runners with free cups of Vassilaros coffee for the past five years, said he couldn’t keep up with the Springs 13-year-old.

    “ ‘That kid is something,’ ” John Vassilaros reported his son as having said.

    “That’s a spectacular time for an eighth grader,” said John Conner, a former national-class age group miler and 800 runner who lives next door to the start-finish line. “A six-minute pace would work out to an 18:36 . . . his pace was around 6:15. . . .”

    Not far behind Engstrom, in fourth place, was his classmate Jackson Rafferty, in 20:44. “That’s what makes you fast,” Conner said, when told Engstrom was a classmate of Rafferty’s. Vassilaros was fifth. Mollie Duggal, 34, of Southampton was the women’s 5K winner, in 23:51.

    McCormack had all of his players, about 30 of them, run in the 5K, saying afterward, with a smile, that “it was a good thing there was a medical tent nearby.” The 5K field also included five members of the I-Tri program, the aim of which is to promote self-confidence and camaraderie among young girls through athletics.

    Jim MacWhinnie, a 39-year-old Southamptoner who experienced a nigh-fatal accident several years ago when he was crushed by a fuel oil tank, but who later made a remarkable recovery, placed second in the half-marathon’s 35-to-39 group, in 1:35:12. He and Kevin Barry, East Hampton High’s boys cross-country coach, who placed third among the 45-49s, in 1:37:33, are to run in the Chicago Marathon next month.

    Before the race, the 49-year-old Barry, who lives on Shelter Island, said he was going to jog that day. Asked about his cross-country team, he said, brightening, “We’re undefeated . . . for three more days. From now on, we’ll either be going up against defending league or county champions.”

    The team’s two wins, though, over Pierson, in a nonleaguer, and Rocky Point, were, he said, “a huge step — a league championship for us is not too far away.”

    Had he thought East Hampton stood a chance of winning a banner this fall, he might have brought Engstrom up to join his team of seniors and sophomores, all of whom he’s found to be “very coachable.”

    Mike Hamilton, in 18:57, and Adam Cebulski, in 18:58, had been the top two in the Rocky Point meet. Seven of the top 10 had been Bonackers, a group that also included Thomas Brierley, Ryan Lewis, Deilyn Guzman, Mike Peralta, and Alex Osborne. Brierley, said Barry, had placed fifth over all in 19:46. It was, he added, the first time the sophomore had broken 20:00.

    Among the marathon’s place-winners were Caroline Walsh, 24, of Montauk, first among the 20-to-24-year-old women; Erin Tintle, 39, of East Hampton, who won among the 35-to-39-year-old women; Mike Bahel, 45, of East Hampton, who was second among the 45-to-49-year-old men, and Paul Maidment, 60, of East Hampton, who won among the 60-to-64-year-old men. Bahel was the seventh-place finisher over all in 3:17:05.

    Place-winners in the half included Charles Whalen, 49, of Montauk, second in the 45-49s; Ruben Pinillos, 50, of Sag Harbor, third in the men’s 50-54s; Jackie Minetree, 51, of Sag Harbor, third in the women’s 50-54s; Jeff Yennie, 62, of Sag Harbor, second, and Arthur Nealon, 64, of East Hampton, third in the men’s 60-64s; Richard Mohlere, 65, of Shelter Island Heights, first in the men’s 65-69s, and Carole Ostroff, 68, of Bridgehampton, first in the women’s 65-69s.

    While the Hamptons Marathon raises money for the aforementioned three local beneficiaries, many runners, including 250 associated with Team in Training, 80 with the American Cancer Society, 19 with Friends of Karen, 14 with Somaly Mam, and six with JackRabbit Sports (who had been picked from among 325 applicants to train throughout the summer with Jon Cane), raised funds for other charitable causes as well.

    Although the football team was blanked 39-0 by Eastport-South Manor under the lights here Saturday night, there were enough good sporting results inside and outside that day to fuel East Hampton High’s homecoming spirits.

    Even as the football team was taking its lumps under the lights, joy reigned in the grandstands, with irrepressible students holding up an oversize headshot of Pete Vaziri (a tribute to his 95-yard touchdown runback against Kings Park) and brandishing placards that seemed to say “Bonac Pride Reientiess” (“Relentless,” apparently), “Get ’Em,” and “Let’s Go Bonac.”

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    At halftime, the band played, the dance team did the cancan, the cheerleaders leapt, and Ryan Joudeh, a running back sidelined for the moment because of an ankle sprain, and Kathryn Hess, the girls soccer goalie, who had just learned she’d been named second team all-state in softball, were hailed as homecoming’s king and queen.

    The day before, at a pep rally in the school’s auditorium, all the fall’s teams took the stage, with the golf and boys soccer squads hoisting trophies aloft — the golf team’s attesting to its Long Island championship last spring and the soccer team’s attesting to its triumph in the recent 10-team East End Cup tournament sponsored by Bridgehampton National Bank. The boys cross-country team waved an American flag, the girls tennis team came with rackets and served Nerf balls to their schoolmates, and the girls swimming team, which debuted in a nonleague meet at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter Saturday — one of eight teams to participate in homecoming contests — tossed out Nerf balls too.

    Earning homecoming Ws were field hockey, which crushed Hampton Bays 8-0, with goals by Dana Dragone (two), Meghan Dombkowski (two), Amanda Calabrese, Alyssa Bahel, Nicole Miksinski, and Laura Perez; boys soccer, which, likewise, crushed Amityville 7-0; girls soccer, which prevailed 1-0 over Elwood-John Glenn in double overtime, and girls volleyball, which swept Bayport-Blue Point by 25-17, 25-19, and 25-16 scores.

    In the girls volleyball match, Melissa Perez and Katla Thorsen each had six aces; Melanie Mackin had 14 kills, Perez eight, and Raya O’Neal seven. O’Neal had 16 assists and Maggie Pizzo had 10. Defensively, Thorsen had 17 digs, O’Neal had 12, and Lydia Budd had 10. The team had nine blocks in all.

    Girls swimming, while it did not win, “did very, very well,” according to the team’s coach, John McGeehan. “We went up against Half Hollow Hills, which is a League I school — we’re in League III. Half Hollow Hills was second in the county last year, to Connetquot.”

    Among East Hampton’s winners were Marina Preiss, in the 50 and 200-yard freestyle races; Carly Drew, an eighth grader, in the 100 butterfly; Maddie Minetree in the 100 free; Mikayla Mott in the 100 breaststroke, and the 200 medley, 200 freestyle, and 400 freestyle relay teams.

    Although it was the team’s first meet of the season, Preiss, in the 50 and 200 free, Minetree, in the 100 free, and the 200 freestyle relay team of Minetree, Drew, Morgan German, and Preiss were close to meeting New York State qualifying times.

    McGeehan said he wasn’t sure what the final score was, “but it was close.”

    A few of the girls cross-country runners took part in the Suffolk Coaches invitational meet at Sunken Meadow Saturday morning, with Ashley West placing 18th in the 5K Class A race in 21 minutes and 36 seconds, and with Dana Cebulski placing fifth in the freshman 1.5-mile race in 8:56. Diane O’Donnell, East Hampton’s coach, said she’s not seen a faster time run in that distance so far by runners in Cebulski’s division. West was in a field of 140 from 19 schools, Cebulski went against about 100 other ninth graders.

    It appeared for a while last week that Bonac’s girls had earned their first win of the season in a meet at Sunken Meadow with Mount Sinai, but O’Donnell said later she’d not seen Mount Sinai’s first runner cross the line. “It can be confusing — there are all sorts of races going on, boys and girls, and she must have come in with a group of boys.”

    Thus, instead of winning 27-28, East Hampton lost 25-30. Nevertheless, West and Cebulski served notice, finishing one and two over the three-mile course. West won in 20:24 and Cebulski “was a heartbeat behind.”

    The potential to win meets is there, the coach continued during a conversation Monday. “We’ll get one and two. How we do, though, will depend on the other four. I’m going to talk to them about team strategy at practice today. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve had that luxury!”

    In another homecoming contest, the girls tennis team lost twice to McGann-Mercy by 4-3 scores, a suspended match at second doubles carried over from the teams’ first meeting having preceded the regularly scheduled match here.

    Getting back to the field hockey team, it wound up doing surprisingly well in a 3-2 loss to Shoreham-Wading River — Newsday’s fourth-ranked team in any sport on Long Island — here last week.

    Shoreham jumped out to a 3-0 lead by the half, but East Hampton came back with goals by Dombkowski and Bahel in the second, and almost tied it with a shot by Dragone that was said to have been taken just outside the circle.

    As for boys volleyball, its coach, Dan Weaver, said Monday that, despite the homecoming loss in three to Eastport-South Manor, he still thinks the Bonackers and the Sharks are the two best teams in Division II.

    “We lost the first 25-11, which was disappointing — they had two jump servers we couldn’t handle initially — but we bounced back after that, losing the second 27-25 and the third 25-23,” the coach said.

    Thomas King, an outside hitter, had 16 kills for East Hampton. “Thomas carried us at times,” said Weaver. “He was dominant.”

    The boys volleyball team made the playoffs last year, losing to Shoreham in the semifinal round. “We should make them again this year,” Weaver said.

Thursday, October 6

GOLF, East Hampton vs. Ross, East Hampton Country Club, 3:30 p.m.

FOOTBALL, East Hampton at Islip, 3:30 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Sayville, 4:30 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, Southampton at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Westhampton at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

Sunday, October 9

SERPENT’S BACK DUATHLON, Ed Ecker County Park, Navy Road, Montauk, 9 a.m.

Monday, October 10

GIRLS SOCCER, Amityville at East Hampton, 10 a.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Harborfields at East Hampton, nonleague, 10 a.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Sayville at East Hampton, 10 a.m.

Tuesday, October 11

GOLF, East Hampton at Southampton, 4 p.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, William Floyd at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton boys vs. Harborfields boys, and East Hampton girls vs. Elwood-John Glenn girls, Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park, 4:30 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, East Hampton at Greenport-Southold-Shelter Island, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, October 12

GIRLS TENNIS, East Hampton at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS SWIMMING, Harborfields vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, Westhampton at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Westhampton at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

    Harry de Leyer, “the Galloping Grandfather” who is now a great-grandfather as well, spent four hours here at East End Stables Saturday afternoon signing copies of Elizabeth Letts’s best seller about him and his Cinderella show-jumper, Snowman, an event that enabled many of his former students to reconnect with their teacher, who has lived in Dyke, Va., for a number of years.

    The story of Snowman, a former plow horse de Leyer rescued from the glue factory in 1956, and with whom he went on to win national show-jumping championships, is one of sport’s most compelling. The long gray gelding for whom the sky seemed to be the limit when scaling fences was show-jumping’s equivalent to Seabiscuit.

    Ms. Letts, who lives in Baltimore, was there that day too, and said she got the idea for “The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation” when, quite by accident, she saw on the Internet a black-and-white photograph of Snowman jumping over another of de Leyer’s horses, Lady Gray.

    She wrote de Leyer a letter, she said, and so began a collaboration that resulted in a very well-written book, published by Ballantine Books, that debuted at around the time of the Hampton Classic at number 10 on The New York Times best-seller list for hardcover nonfiction.

    Suzanne Wolfson, who had interviewed the 84-year-old de Leyer on radio station WBAZ the day before, said she remembered having been fascinated by Snowman and de Leyer’s story when she read the children’s book about them in the 1960s. Later, she rode at East End Stables, which is owned by Andre de Leyer, one of Harry’s sons, and his wife, Christine.

    Andre and his sister Harriet de Leyer, who in the book is credited with giving Snowman his name, taught her, said Ms. Wolfson, who still rides there. As for the interviewee, she said, “He was so much fun.”

    In a long line of people waiting for their books to be signed, Carol Kurzig, a former student of de Leyer’s, recalled that while she’d started riding late, “he made me jump in my first lesson.”

    Mark Goldstein said that de Leyer had “taught me and my whole family. . . . He sold me a horse named Twiggy and told me not to interfere when we approached a four-and-a-half-foot wall. He said the horse would jump it, and he did! Harry gave us a lot of confidence . . . and he made it fun. He enriched all of our lives.”

    During his first lesson at East End, de Leyer asked Jerry Schwabe, if he’d ever jumped a fence. Schwabe had ridden at the Claremont stables in New York City, but had only jumped cross rail fences that he said, bending close to the ground, were “this high.”

    “The ones he had me jump the first day were much higher,” Schwabe said. “He’d be running and waving his hat to get the horse to go over.”

    He and his wife subsequently bought horses. “We’d go in the evenings,” he said wistfully, looking away from the barn over the fields, “down there, bareback, no reins, no nothing. . . . I have good feelings about Harry.”

    Asked what it was like to jump, Barbara Sansone, Schwabe’s wife, said, “It’s like flying in heaven.”

    “I didn’t know if he was alive,” Letts said, when asked to continue the story of how she’d come to meet de Leyer, who is to present trophies and ribbons at the Washington International Horse Show at end of this month. “He called me . . . it was in 2008 . . . He really helped me set the story within its historical context. In 1956 I wasn’t born yet! Snowman was more of a story of my parents’ generation.”

    Given the success of her book, and should a film of “The Eight-Dollar Champion” be made, it will also become a story of this one.   

    Saturday will be crammed sports-wise what with the fifth running of the Hamptons Marathon, a home rugby game, and a full schedule of East Hampton High School homecoming contests capped by a football game under the lights with Eastport-South Manor at 7 p.m.

    Amanda Moszkowski, who shares the Hamptons Marathon race directing chores with Diane Weinberger, said earlier this week that “we closed out registration for the marathon and half-marathon at 2,500. There will be 2,000 in the half, 500 in the full, about the same proportion as last year. We’ve got two runners from Qatar, one from Australia, two from Belgium, one from Germany, one from Spain, and runners from 34 states.”

    There will also be a 5K, which people can register for Saturday morning. There won’t be a mile race, however. “We hoped to get some elite local runners and it didn’t work out that way,” said Moszkowski.

    Chris Koegel, the defending marathon champion, has pulled out because of an injury, though the women’s winner, Lisa Tecklenburg of Cincinnati, is expected to return. John Honerkamp, who won the half last year, will be running a marathon in Berlin Saturday. In the absence of Bridget McKenna, last year’s women’s winner in the half, “we’re looking for Barbara Gubbins to win it,” said Moszkowski.

    The races are to start behind the Springs School at 8 a.m. The marathoners and half-marathoners divide at mile six, at the intersection of Stony Hill Road and Deep Lane near the Quail Hill farm in Amagansett. Marathoners and half-marathoners can be seen again at Marty’s Deli at Neck Path. Marty’s is at mile 10 of the half and at mile 23 of the marathon.

    The race, now in its fifth year, benefits Project MOST, Southampton Hospital, and the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center. “In the past four years we’ve netted $175,000 for our beneficiaries,” said Moszkowski, who added that runners also raise money for charities of their own. “Last year,” she said, “Team in Training raised $600,000 for cancer research.”

    As aforesaid, East Hampton High School’s homecoming schedule will be full Saturday, with a girls soccer game with Elwood-John Glenn and a boys volleyball game with Eastport-South Manor at 10 a.m., a field hockey game with Hampton Bays at 10:30, a girls volleyball game with Bayport-Blue Point at 1 p.m., a girls tennis match with McGann-Mercy and a girls swimming meet at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter with Half Hollow Hills at 2, and a boys soccer game with Amityville at 3:30.

    The Montauk Rugby Club is to play the Princeton Athletic Club in its Met Union Division II home opener at East Hampton’s Herrick Park at 1.

    From 3:30 to 6:30, there will be a barbecue and community tailgate party with a rock-climbing wall, a bounce house, face painting and tattoos, and carnival games at the high school. The homecoming king and queen will be announced at halftime of the football game with Eastport-South Manor.

    At last, Diane O’Donnell thinks she’s got a girls cross-country team able to make some noise, a team headed by a hard-working senior, Ashley West, and a fleet freshman, Dana Cebulski.

    But it takes more than two to score in cross-country. You need a pack of goers as well, and O’Donnell thinks she has that in Jen DiSunno, Kerry Kaestner, Emma Newburger, and Brittany Rivkind, who all ran 25-something in the Peconic Invitational meet at Southampton’s Red Creek Park last Thursday.

    West won the race, in exciting fashion, dueling with Center Moriches’s Ryleigh Donegan throughout the final half mile of the 5K course.

    Donegan, who made the state meet last year, and West, who trained hard this summer, alternated the lead several times until, with about 200 meters remaining, West “blew her away. Everybody was yelling and screaming. Ashley ran an excellent race, an excellent strategic race. Last year, she probably would have ended up second, but she pushed the other girl over the edge.”

    West’s time of 21 minutes and 22 seconds was a record for the reconfigured course, which had a hill added near the end of it.

    There was other good news that day inasmuch as Cebulski, a ninth grader, won the freshman race, topping a field of about 30 competitors. Cebulski covered the 1.5-mile course in 9:30. O’Donnell said that she had done 21:27 in a three-mile scrimmage two days before with Pierson. “The nearest one to her was about a minute behind,” said East Hampton’s coach, who added that Jackie Messemer placed fourth, in 11:21.

    Turning to other East Hampton sports, on Monday the field hockey team, which had suffered a disappointing 2-1 loss Friday at the hands of Greenport-Southold despite having outshot the Porters 13-6, rebounded to defeat William Floyd 1-0 here. Nicole Miksinski got the goal midway through the first half. Meghan Dombkowski, arguably the team’s best player, scored Friday’s goal, the result of a penalty shot awarded in the first half when the visitors’ besieged goalie sat on the ball.

    Becky Schwartz’s charges were to have played Shoreham-Wading River at home Tuesday. Shoreham was listed in Tuesday’s Newsday as the fourth best sports team on Long Island.

    Also on Monday, the girls tennis team won, besting the Ross School 5-2. Ross is rebuilding, having lost last year’s top five, including its number-one player (and county singles champion) Nadia Smergut, who now lives in New York City.

    In contrast, East Hampton, which has a new coach in Michelle Kennedy, has a balanced lineup, headed by an eighth grader, Abby Okin, who, though 12, is playing in 14-and-under United States Tennis Association East region tournaments.

    Bonac’s doubles pairings are Ricki Slater, a junior, and Carrie Sullivan, a senior, at number one; Caitlin Walsh and Sydney Sanicola, both juniors, at two, and Gillian Neubert, a sophomore, and Bryce Slater, an eighth grader, at three.

    The win improved East Hampton to 2-2, though it could improve to 4-2 Saturday, should the final set of the second doubles match that was suspended last week at Mercy, and a subsequent homecoming match with the Riverhead Catholic school go its way.

    Though the boys soccer team grabbed the headlines this week for having won the Bridgehampton National Bank East End Cup tournament, the girls team, coached by Mike Vitulli, looks as if it will be competitive as well. The girls shut out Pierson 2-0 in a nonleaguer here Saturday as Tiffany Gutierrez and Raffi Franey scored goals in the first half. Kathryn Hess, East Hampton’s athletic goalkeeper, made sure nothing got by her. It was her second shutout of the young season.

    “I’ve got the most depth ever,” Vitulli said afterward. He was looking forward to playing three games this week, the first, on Tuesday, at Westhampton, which had outscored Pierson 4-0 in a recent scrimmage.                 

    Outnumbered, outweighed, and outplayed, the East Hampton High School football team took a drubbing in its home opener Saturday, losing 42-7 to Kings Park, which in turn had been routed the week before by Islip.

    And “drubbing” is not overstating the case: Three Bonackers went down that day, Ryan Joudeh, a running back, by way of a sprained ankle, and two — Dan Barros, arguably the team’s best defender, and Cortland Heneveld, its sophomore quarterback — by way of concussions.

    Barros lay motionless on the field for about 20 minutes in the first quarter as everyone — both teams having taken a knee at the sidelines — waited for the arrival of an ambulance.

    “All of a sudden, winning and losing doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Bob Budd, a volunteer assistant, said when, finally, an East Hampton ambulance took the hard-playing junior linebacker away.

    Heneveld, who was hit hard throughout the game, was decked decisively early in the fourth period, and, though he was able to walk off after some time on the ground, remained dazed and was driven off the field by the trainer, Randi Cherill.

    Later that day, Cherill said during a brief telephone conversation that she’d heard from one of Barros’s parents that he was “okay,” and on Monday Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, after confirming that both players had experienced concussions, said they were “okay.” They would not be allowed to practice or play again, he said, “until a doctor certifies that they can do so.”

    The injuries — it was the first time in this writer’s memory that two Bonackers were rendered hors de combat in such a way in a game — served to underline the fact that East Hampton, whose squad has been reduced to around 23 players, a half-dozen of whom are said to be new to the game, was overmatched, at least on that day.

    Afterward, Bill Barbour Jr., the head coach, told his charges that he was proud of the way they’d played, despite the odds, and that the way they’d stepped up would prove helpful in meeting challenges off the field in their future lives.

    Kings Park scored right off the bat, recovering a fumble by Heneveld on East Hampton’s first possession at the 20-yard line, and added another touchdown and two extra points before the first quarter ended.

    Barros went down moments after Kings Park’s second score, as Drew Griffiths, who played well on both sides of the ball, was running back the kickoff.

    Griffiths recovered a Kings Park fumble at East Hampton’s 37 early in the second period, but soon after that Heneveld fumbled himself, at Kings Park’s 45, with Luke Toscano, who had scored the visitors’ first touchdown, recovering. Seven plays later, the Kingsmen were in East Hampton’s end zone again, an 11-yard scamper by Tommy Milich, who was to score twice more that afternoon, capping the drive.

    But then, wonderful to tell, an East Hampton moment arrived as Pete Vaziri gathered in the subsequent kickoff at the 5 and, with Barbour urging him to head for the middle of the field, ran it back all the way. Jhovani Hernandez’s point-after kick was good, and, all of a sudden, with the score 21-7, the spirits of the hometown fans brightened.

    Momentarily, that is. Two more touchdowns by Milich were to come, as was one on the return of a Hernandez kickoff that began the second half.

    The fourth quarter was scoreless, though it was notable for the fact that Vaziri was pressed into action as the quarterback after Heneveld was taken to the sidelines.

    Though the visitors had substituted liberally by then, Vaziri directed in the final moments an 84-yard, 11-play drive that ended as Griffiths, who’d gathered in a pass, was hauled down at the Kings Park 8.

    “What a job Vaziri did,” Bill Barbour Sr. said after the teams had shaken hands.

    “You get these lean years, and this is one,” his son said. “But we’ve got a good core of about 10 kids who are showing up for practice and having fun. They worked hard all summer. I hear Southampton is facing the same problem. We’ve had a lot of injuries, guys were playing out of position, but they stepped up. I told them I was very proud of them.”

    The 0-2 Bonackers are to take the field at 7 p.m. Saturday in a homecoming game with 1-1 Eastport-South Manor.

    When they entered the locker room at East Hampton High School prior to Sunday morning’s practice session, the boys soccer team’s players saw waiting for them the Bridgehampton National Bank East End Cup, attesting to the fact that they’d bested nine other teams in a tournament that dates to 2002.

    The Bonackers shut out all three of their tournament opponents — Mattituck by 4-0, Hampton Bays by 3-0, and Center Moriches by 4-0.

    Still, there was an outside chance that Westhampton Beach, which played at Southampton Saturday night, might sneak in. Though, to have done so, the Hurricanes would have had to best the Mariners by four goals. As it was, Southampton won that game 1-0 and thus finished as the tourney’s runner-up with three wins and a goal differential of 9-2 vis-a-vis East Hampton’s 11-0.

    It was the second year that East Hampton had entered a team in this competition, which has, since the beginning, been overseen by Don McGovern, the former Pierson head coach who now is assisting Rich King with East Hampton’s squad.

    Mattituck, 2010’s Long Island Class B champion, had won the cup in 2008, ’09, and ’10, though last year’s win was owing to the fact that East Hampton had to forfeit its three wins on realizing it was carrying an ineligible player.

    As it turned out, King and McGovern’s charges clinched the East End Cup with a 4-0 win here over Center Moriches last Thursday in which Mario Olaya — Newsday’s player of the week — scored three goals, one in the first half and two in the second. Milton Farez scored the other.

    The Red Devils, a nonleague opponent — as were Mattituck and Hampton Bays — fought tenaciously, and though East Hampton clearly was the dominant team, Center Moriches used an offside trap to great effect in the first 40 minutes, causing one observer to say at halftime that the Bonackers must have been called for violating the offside rule more than 20 times in the first half.

    “We were undisciplined,” King said when asked about the visitors’ tactic afterward. “There are several ways you can counter that trap — we adjusted better in the second half.”

    Both teams’ goalies — East Hampton’s Esteban Aguilar and Center’s Jason Albert — came up with big saves early in the second half. Aguilar leapt up to the crossbar to bat away a 25-yard free kick in the 45th minute and recovered in time to parry the rebound. Two minutes later, Albert stopped Juan Carlos Barrientos, who had come in on him one-on-one. Albert came up big in the 52nd minute as well, preventing Olaya from making it 2-0.

    Olaya did make it 2-0, however, in the 56th minute, as he headed the ball he’d received from Esteban Valverde over the onrushing Center Moriches keeper, who, after coming out to the edge of the box, could only look back helplessly over his shoulder as the ball entered the nets.

    Bonac’s center midfielder capped his hat trick in the 77th minute, assisted by Esteban Vargas, and one minute later, Farez, assisted by Valverde, completed the rout.

    Afterward, King said to his players that “the preseason is over now. It’s all league games after this — you’ll be in a battle every single match.”

    East Hampton was to have begun the league season with Bayport-Blue Point here on Monday. The team was to have played at Shoreham-Wading River yesterday, and will be at home against Amityville on Saturday at 3:30 p.m.

    Used to fielding perennial powerhouses, Kathy McGeehan, East Hampton High School’s girls volleyball coach, may have one again, though this fall, because the team is young — there are four ninth graders who are making significant contributions and three sophomores — she will in all likelihood be able to savor the satisfaction that comes from watching her players grow over the course of the campaign.

    There will be few breathers this season inasmuch as the Bonackers are in a tough league, made all the more so by the addition of Elwood-John Glenn, and, as usual, are playing in large, hotly contested weekend invitational tournaments.

    How far will they go? Who knows, but win or lose, this team, McGeehan thinks, promises to be an exciting one to watch.

    In the week past, bouncing back from an almost-four-hour agon with Westhampton Beach, which the Hurricanes wound up winning 27-25 in the fifth game, East Hampton rocked Rocky Point in three and was a semifinalist Saturday in a 20-team tourney of mostly AA schools (East Hampton is an A) at Eastport-South Manor. The girls began playing at 8 a.m. and returned home at 7 that night.

    McGeehan said neither she nor her assistant, Sara Faraone, could remember having played in or having coached in a match that went as long as the one at Westhampton did.

    The Bonackers won the first game, lost the second and third, won the fourth, and, as aforesaid, lost the decisive fifth “when a mishandled ball dribbled over the net and hit the right sideline. We were wishing it out.”

    With the score 24-24 (East Hampton having rallied to overcome a 4-point deficit), “Westhampton’s outside hitter slipped on a wet spot on the court and dislocated her kneecap. There was a 25-minute delay while we waited for the ambulance.”

    The long wait proved to be a bit of a momentum killer, “though,” McGeehan said, “I’d rather take a loss than have my outside hitter out for a couple of weeks.”

    At 25-all, an East Hampton bid for a kill landed out of bounds, and the aforementioned wished-out shot that was in ended the marathon.

    Westhampton is to play here on Oct. 12, and McGeehan has circled that date on her calendar.

    Besides Westhampton, Glenn, which, according to McGeehan, “hasn’t lost a league game in 11 years,” and Rocky Point, other teams in East Hampton’s league, League VI, are Sayville, Miller Place, and Amityville, a team the Bonackers bested in three in their league opener.

    There were, the coach said in answer to a question concerning the playoffs, “a lot of good A schools this year — some of them are better than the double-As. Westhampton is certainly one of them, and then there are Sayville, Kings Park, Islip, Harborfields, Eastport-South Manor. . . .” Glenn is a B school.

    There are four ninth graders on the varsity squad this year — Lydia Budd, Jenna Budd, Carley Seekamp, and Katie Brierley — all of whom, as aforesaid, are contributing in one way or another. The returnees include four seniors — Katla Thorsen, Melissa Perez, Mariah Dempsey, and Sarah Johnson; three juniors — Melanie Mackin, Maria Rueda Montoya, and Charlotte Wiltshire, and three sophomores — Raya O’Neal, Maggie Pizzo, and Christina Cangiolosi.

    McGeehan said that Lydia Budd’s setting ability would increasingly enable the number-one setter, O’Neal, a talented sophomore, to be a part of the attack. Jenna Budd, Lydia’s twin, is, said McGeehan, “an outside hitter who serves and passes well.” Brierley is playing in the back row, and Seekamp “did a great job” at middle blocker in the tournament for Melissa Perez, a senior who had to sit out with a sore ankle.

    Pizzo, a national-champion lacrosse midfielder, “is playing aggressively at libero,” the position vacated by Kim Valverde, an honorable-mention all-American now at Baruch College.

    East Hampton won its pool, which included Smithtown West, Northport, Plainedge, and Walt Whitman, and defeated Bay Shore in three in a quarterfinal pairing. In the semis, Connetquot, which had upset St. Anthony’s, took two straight from the Bonackers, who didn’t get going until the second game, which ended at 25-23 in Connetquot’s favor.

    The six-foot Wiltshire, who plays opposite the setter, “came into her own as a blocker on Saturday” and was named to the all-tournament team. “Offensively and defensively, it was a personal-best day for Charlotte,” said McGeehan, who added that she was “really pleased with our team’s performance. . . . It’s an exciting team. We’re going to be playing everybody as hard as we can.”