Classic’s Coming

    The weeklong Hampton Classic Horse Show opens at the 60-acre Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds on Sunday with a day of competition for local riders, beginning with leadline and short stirrup classes in the Grand Prix ring from 8 a.m.

    The Opening Day ceremonies are to take place in the Grand Prix ring at noon, after which the $20,000 Nicolock Time Challenge, the Classic’s first high-level class, is to be held.

    The finals of the Long Island Horse Show series for riders with disabilities are to be held Monday. Tuesday will feature the $30,000 7 and 8-year-old Young Jumper championship, the Newsday Open Jumper class, and the Brown Harris Stevens Open Jumper class.

    Among Wednesday’s featured events will be the SHF Enterprises 5-year-old and Split Rock Farm 6-year-old Young Jumper championships and the Pilatus Open Jumper class.

    Among the professional riders expected are McLain Ward, Margie Engle, Joe Fargis, Chris Kappler, Leslie Howard, Peter Leone, Norman Dello Joio, Mario Deslauriers, Federico Sztyrle, Hillary Dobbs, Jeffrey Welles, Debbie Stephens, Laura Bowery-Falco, Candice King, Todd Minikus, Callan Solem, and Shane Sweetnam.

A.A.U. Tourney

    Nick Thomas’s 15-16-and-under traveling all-star boys basketball team won a six-team Amateur Athletic Union tournament at the Montauk Playhouse this past weekend, topping the Long Island Lightning, a team from Brooklyn, 87-85 in overtime in the championship game.

    Thomas said the winning basket was scored by Shaundell Fishburne, who tipped in a miss by Brandon Tolliver. Besides Fishburne, who’s from Southampton, and Tolliver, who’s from Riverhead, others on the Kendall Madison Foundation’s championship team were Thomas King of East Hampton, Tyrell Thomas of Center Moriches, Devin Burney of William Floyd, Isaiah Cousins of Center Moriches, and Mike Guzzardi of Mount Sinai.

    Winning is nothing new for this team, which plays in tournaments throughout the summer. “We won the Atlantic City Shoot-Out, were in the Final Four of the Hall of Fame Classic in Springfield, Mass., and we qualified for the Division 1 championships in Little Rock, Arkansas,” said Thomas, who learned Tuesday that he had been made the head boys varsity coach at Center Moriches High School.

    Dr. Charles Melone, a hand surgeon to dozens of professional athletes, who lives in Montauk, put the tournament on and coached the Long Island Lightning entry. Brandon Kennedy, an East Hampton eighth grader who led Thomas’s undefeated 13-and-under team to a summer league championship, played for Montauk’s team, as did Thomas Nelson, a Bonac 10th grader.

Bad News Bubs Win

    The Bad News Bubs, a team in whose lineup were many of the same players who had last Thursday won the East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league’s playoff trophy for Schenck Fuels, also won the Travis Field tournament, besting the surprising Mighty Midgets entry 26-12 in the championship game at the Terry King ball field Sunday night.

    The champions’ lineup included Vinnie Alversa, Brendan Fennell, Adam Gledhill, Ethan King, Garret King, Brian Turza, Steve Turza, Mike Rodriguez, and Doug Dickson, the pitcher.

Saturday, August 27

PADDLING, Paddlers 4 Humanity’s 18-mile open water paddle from Montauk to Block Island, Montauk Lighthouse, 6:30 a.m.

Sunday, August 28

HAMPTON CLASSIC, opening day, beginning with leadline classes in the Grand Prix ring at 8 a.m.; opening ceremonies, noon, with $20,000 Nicolock Time Challenge to follow in the Grand Prix ring, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

XTERRA TRIATHLON, half-mile lake swim, 11-mile mountain bike leg, and 5K trail run, Schiff Scout Reservation, Wading River, 8 a.m.

Monday, August 29

HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS, first day of practice for fall high school sports, from 6 a.m.

HAMPTON CLASSIC, finals of Long Island Horse Show Series for riders with disabilities and A.S.P.C.A. animal behavior clinic, from 8 a.m., Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Tuesday, August 30

HAMPTON CLASSIC, featured events to include $30,000 7 and 8-year-old Young Jumper championship, Newsday Open Jumper class, and Brown Harris Stevens Open Jumper class, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

Wednesday, August 31

HAMPTON CLASSIC, featured events to include SHF Enterprises 5-year-old and Split Rock Farm 6-year-old Young Jumper championships and Pilatus Open Jumper class, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

    When the first roughly 20 people first worked their way across the open ocean as part of Paddlers for Humanity back in 2005, most were in kayaks or prone paddling on boards, and only one woman, Marilyn Suder, made the trip.

    “In 2008, we started seeing paddleboarding springing up, literally,” said Fred Doss, co-president of the organization with Ed Cashin of Weekend Warrior Tours in Sag Harbor.

    This year when the paddlers take off for the 18-mile trip to Block Island, there will be 32 participants, six of them women. And almost all of them will be standing.

    Participants need to raise at least $1,500 each in sponsorships. Some of them go far above that figure, and with additional donations Paddlers for Humanity hopes to raise about $90,000 from this event alone. The money will go to local causes like the East Hampton Food Pantry and the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, along with the Prasad children’s dental health program, among other beneficiaries.

    Since its founding, Paddlers for Humanity has distributed close to $600,000 to causes focused mainly on bettering the lives of children both locally and internationally.

    The paddle itself takes off from near the Montauk Lighthouse, and ventures the 18 miles to Block Island. From there, paddlers ride the ferry back.

    When standing up and paddling across a long stretch of open waters, said Mr. Doss, “safety absolutely comes first.”

    Participants in Saturday’s outing, which starts at 6:30 a.m. and is expected to take approximately five hours, are surrounded at all times by support boats, which monitor the progress, both of the team and the individuals, manned by the heads of the support team, Dan and Sue Farnham. “If someone can’t continue, we get them on a boat,” Mr. Doss said. But that is a rare occurrence.

    In addition to the Block Island paddle, Paddlers for Humanity has already hosted a Wahine paddle this summer, geared solely to women. “There’s no doubt that more women are getting into this,” Mr. Doss said. He mentioned three women in particular, in addition to Ms. Suder, who have been enthusiastic paddlers in the events — Dianne Ryan of Napeague and Evelyn O’Doherty of Montauk and Jessica Bellofatto of East Hampton. The latter two are  yoga instructors.

    There are five male paddlers who have participated in the event every year, and Mr. Doss acknowledged them as well: David Lys, Ed Cashin, Scott Bradley, Lars Svanberg, and Michael Bahel.

    Mr. Doss looks forward to good weather for Saturday’s paddle to Block Island. “We saw a submarine once,” he said. “There are moments out there of pure bliss.”

    The Paddlers for Humanity Web site is p4h.org.

    Mike Bunce, who plays on Boston’s Super League rugby side, won the Pump and Run contest Mike Bahel put on at the Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett on Aug. 17, pressing 125 pounds (60 percent of his body weight) 55 times, an effort that resulted in almost three minutes being deducted from  his subsequent two-mile run time.

    Bunce’s net time of 8 minutes and 45 seconds bested Bahel’s net time by 3 seconds, an outcome that Bahel greeted with some relief inasmuch as “it wouldn’t look too good to win my own contest.”

    Though the final results provided by the Old Montauk Athletic Club were jumbled, it appeared that Neil Falkenhan, a former Quinnipiac University lacrosse player, placed third, in a net 9:02, with Caroline Cashin, the women’s winner, who had 92 reps, fourth, in 9:28.

    Brook Perkin was fifth, in 9:57; Jason Hancock was sixth, in 10:06; John Ripley, who had 67 reps, was seventh, in 10:27; Connor Miller was eighth, in 10:28; Mike Bottini was ninth, in 10:43, and Thomas Brierley was 10th, in 10:46.

    “The men pressed 60 percent of their body weight, the women 35 percent,” Bahel said afterward. “For every rep you got three seconds taken off your run time. The run was close to two miles.”

    Bahel’s 11:09 appeared to be the quickest run, with Hancock and Bottini each recording an 11:15.

    The event, which benefited the Montauk Playhouse project, is held in memory of Erin Giaime, who died at the age of 24 in 2003, struck by a car on Three Mile Harbor Road as she apparently was retrieving her glasses.

    Nearing graduation at Long Island University at the time, the young woman had helped Bahel set up his Body Tech Fitness Center in Amagansett.

    “Southampton Hospital owned this place before I did, and Erin was at the front desk,” Bahel said. “She helped me make the transition — she was a big part of it.”

    A photo of Giaime hangs over Body Tech’s counter.

August 7, 1986

    This season, Howard Wood, who does his own salary negotiating now, and who has “played every position except guard,” returns to Spain’s “A” professional basketball league, with Valencia.

    “The directors at Burgos fed me a lot of lies — they still owe me quite a bit of money,” he said without bitterness during a stroll on Newtown Lane the other day. “They’d say, ‘Howard, you’re the American so you must score 40 points and get 20 rebounds.’ I said I would if they’d pay me on time.”

    He noted in this connection that he had had a 49-point game last season, and had scored a career-high 56 points in a tournament in Italy.

    “. . . At least I know that with Valencia I’ll get paid,” he said with a laugh. “The team’s sponsored by a bank.”

—

    Rob Nicoletti of Ecker Insurance leads the East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league in home runs, with 10.

August 14, 1986

    When it comes to name recognition the Writers have already won the annual Artists-Writers Game that is to be played Saturday afternoon at East Hampton’s Herrick Park for the benefit of the East Hampton Day Care Center.

    Managed by Ken Auletta, a nonfiction writer and newspaper columnist, the Writers boast a lineup of heavy hitters in the literary field such as John Irving, George Plimpton, Peter Maas, Avery Corman, and Bruce Jay Friedman, not to mention journalism’s equivalent of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance — Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, and Ben Bradlee.

August 21, 1986

    Mike DePalmer Sr., who coached Paul Annacone at the University of Tennessee, and who gave a clinic with the 23-year-old touring pro at the Bridgehampton Tennis and Surf Club throughout last week, said, “If they [the clinic-takers] left with improved footwork and with a better general knowledge of the game, we accomplished what we set out to do.”

    “It was excellent — very enjoyable,” said one of the enrollees, Ken Ferrin, who plays at the East Hampton Tennis Club. But one couldn’t be expected to vastly improve one’s game in such a brief period, he added. “Tennis isn’t easy,” said Ferrin. “If you took piano lessons for a week, would you expect to play well enough to give a concert?”

—

    John Scanlon, the emcee of the Artists-Writers Game, outscored both teams with his wry remarks. When Ben Bradlee, editor of The Washington Post, strode to the plate, Scanlon said something to the effect that “he’s played football with the Kennedys, golf with President Ford, hackey sack with President Carter, and he’s been playing softball with the Reagan administration for the past six years.”

    “Up for the Writers now is John Paul Newport of Fortune magazine,” Scanlon said at another point. “Newport was the most valuable player last year in the Sag Harbor Saturday morning softball game. He’s from Texas, a country boy. It took him five years to find out that Hanukkah wasn’t a duck call.”

August 28, 1986

    The name of Paul Annacone, not heretofore a household word, echoed around the nation Tuesday night and Wednesday morning in the wake of his first-round 1-6, 6-1, 6-3, 6-3 upset on Tuesday afternoon of John McEnroe in the United States Open tennis tournament.

    It was the first time that McEnroe, a four-time Open champion attempting a comeback after a seven-month layoff, has been put out of the tournament so early, and the first time since 1969 that the preceding year’s finalist had been unseated in the Open’s opener.

    . . . It was his son’s “biggest win so far,” agreed Paul’s father, Dominic, who added that “McEnroe is perhaps the greatest player of all time.”

—

    The Hampton Classic, now North America’s largest hunter-jumper show, which 10 years ago was hit by a hurricane, and which four years ago was assaulted by a tornado the week before it opened, got off to another shaky start on Sunday as horses and ponies, apparently unnerved by gusty winds that swept over the 60-acre site, refused, bucked, and in one case ran wild. A dozen or so young riders were dumped, one reportedly suffering a broken arm and dislocated shoulder.

Thursday, August 18

SWIMMING, showing of “Raiders Of The Lost Ark,” benefit East Hampton Y.M.C.A. RECenter Hurricanes swim team, Havens Beach, Sag Harbor, 6 p.m.

SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, game three of women’s final, if necessary, 7 p.m., and game five of men’s final, if necessary, time to be announced, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Saturday, August 20

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field tournament, quarterfinal round games from 8:30 a.m., home run derby final, 11, tournament final, 7:45 p.m.

ARTISTS-WRITERS GAME, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 2 p.m., preceded by batting practice at noon.

ROAR FOR A CURE CARNIVAL, East Hampton Indoor/Outdoor Tennis Club, Daniel’s Hole Road, Wainscott, 2-6 p.m.

POLO, Hampton Cup, Certified vs. KIG, Two Trees Stables, Bridgehampton, 4 p.m.

Sunday, August 21

RUNNING, Ellen’s [5K] Run, Southampton Hospital, 9 a.m.

Monday, August 22

CAMPS, for rugby, East Hampton High School, and squash, Southampton Recreation Center, through Friday, September 26.

    Justin Kulchinsky, 38, who 15 years ago recorded the 1996 Montauk triathlon’s fastest 10K run split, covering the hilly 6.2-mile course in 34 minutes and 2 seconds on his way to a fourth-place finish, reappeared on the race scene in the Miss Amelia’s Cottage two-miler Sunday, and, not surprisingly, wound up winning it in 10 minutes and 59 seconds.

    In doing so, Kulchinsky, who owns Mayfair Jewelers in East Hampton, and who has had a long layoff, broke the 37-year-old former Harvard miler Amar Kuchinad’s local winning streak at two. Kuchinad had predicted he’d run the Amagansett course, which spans Old Stone Highway, Deep Lane, Town Lane, and Windmill Lane, in around 11 to 111/2 minutes, and he was pretty much right, finishing a few yards behind Kulchinsky in 11:05.

    Kulchinsky, whose 61-year-old father, Dan, also ran, placing 18th among the 35 entrants in 14:02, said that after the ‘96 triathlon here a long layoff ensued, “though I did one triathlon last year.”

    The women’s race was an even closer duel, though the two who fought it out, Ashley West and Diana Fitzpatrick, were separated in age by 37 years, West being 16 and Fitzpatrick, who met her husband, Tim, at this race in 1987, being 53.

    A serious cross-country and track competitor at East Hampton High School, West, who’s being trained by John Conner and Bill Herzog this summer, had a stronger kick at the end, finishing in ninth place over all in 12:42. Fitzpatrick, who runs 100-milers now, and who once ran in the Olympic marathon trials, was just a second behind.

    “She pushed me and passed me on Town Lane,” West said afterward. “So, I figured, ‘If I have to die, I die!’ ”        

    Fitzpatrick, who has a daughter two years older than West, and who was visiting from San Francisco, said, with a smile, she could imagine West thinking, when she passed her on the long straight, “Oh my God! It’s a race!”

     A frequent winner of races when she lived here, Fitzpatrick said that while visiting here over the July 4 weekend she arrived at one of Conner’s Wednesday evening workouts at the high school track in time to hear him say, “ ‘Okay, we’re going to do a mile time trial.’ ” That was when this extremely long-distance runner told Conner she had to go.

    “This race,” Fitzpatrick said, “is as hard as a 100-miler — it’s just different.”

    Whereupon Conner, who had made a point of publicizing Miss Amelia’s this year in light of last year’s dismal turnout, began to advise Fitzpatrick on how to train for a Marin County mile that she plans to do soon.

    Reciting the progression of alternate jog and sprint intervals he wanted her to do in order to pick up her mile pace, Conner said, “You think you’re going to die on that last 100, but,” he added, brightening, “the body remembers.”

    “I love this race,” said Fitzpatrick. “Almost everyone gets something, a raffle prize if not a ribbon. I have a friend, Sara Pearl, who spins now, who still has on her refrigerator the ribbon she won here 10 years ago.”

    “You’re going to get a medal for best-looking,” Charlie van der Horst, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said to Mike Bottini, a fellow trainee of Conner’s.

    Actually, Bottini, who’s 56, and who was one of last year’s two entrants — “the other was Paul Fiondella’s wife” — got one for winning his age group, in 12:20. Bottini was sixth over all, behind Kulchinsky, Kuchinad, 17-year-old Robert Beit, a Deerfield Academy cross-country and track runner, Mike Bahel, and Brandon West, Ashley’s older brother.

    Ashley’s younger brother, Nicholas, whose 5:12 set a record at the East Hampton Middle School this past school year, and who said he’s run a 4:48 mile since, was the eighth-place finisher in 12:28. The West brothers, however, are soccer players first and foremost. Brandon’s to matriculate at national Division III-champion Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., this fall. Nicholas, a center midfielder, will soon be a freshman at the high school.

    It rained on Sunday, for the whole day, but runners don’t mind the rain. “Fortunately,” said John Conner’s wife, Henrika, who thanked the timer, Bob Beattie, for having donated his services, “there was no lightning or thunder.”

    The race was a collaboration between the Amagansett Historical Association and the Old Montauk Athletic Club, whose beneficiaries have included the Bonac on Board to Wellness program and race, the Great Bonac foot races, the East Hampton Coaches Association, various high school varsity teams, including cross-country and lacrosse, East Hampton’s Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad, the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, the I-Tri program, the East Hampton junior lifeguard program, the Hamptons Track Club, the Montauk Rugby Club, the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, Spokespeople, an advocacy group for cyclists, the Springs Youth Association, and the Springs School scholarship program.

    The road race season continues this Sunday with the 5K Ellen’s Run at Southampton Hospital. It is to start at 9 a.m., “rain or shine.”

    Before he entered Gardiner’s Bay early Saturday morning for the Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad’s half-mile swim John Conner, who was an international-class miler and 800 runner before being struck by a truck on a bicycle training ride here 10 years ago, recalled Glenn Cunningham, the great American miler, as having said, “In running it’s you against yourself — the cruelest of competitors.”

    Well, with some help from his Ocean Rescue friends on paddleboards, Conner, who is 76, and was among 77 or so competitors, swam the half mile, though Craig Brierley, one of those who guided him from buoy to buoy, said, “John probably swam a mile all told. . . . He was an inspiration.”

    Actually, walking through the water toward the finish line was probably the most difficult part for Conner, who said on the way to the Fresh Pond Park beach that he no longer has a good sense of balance, one leg being significantly longer than the other as the result of the accident.

    The Ocean Rescue Squad had turned out in numbers to oversee the swims (there were also one and two-milers), making sure that everyone would be safe. While he wasn’t among Saturday’s competitors, Rod McClave, who earlier this summer won two-milers in the bay and in the ocean in Montauk, and who competes in long-distance swims all over the world, has said that the swims here are the safest he’s ever been in.

    The first swimmers to reach the beach that day were two 9-year-olds, Mackenzie Licata and Jack Neiberg, members of East Hampton’s junior lifeguard program. They did a third-of-a-mile buoy swim just to get their feet wet, as it were, in anticipation of doing a half-miler next year.

    “It’s to entice them,” said John Ryan Sr., who has overseen the junior lifeguard program here for the past 25 years. While scores weren’t kept, East Hampton’s junior guards had acquitted themselves exceedingly well at the recent national tournament in Cape May, N.J., he said.

    “In the final of the junior lifeguard beach flags, for example, there were five Monmouth County guards and five from East Hampton, and when it was over it was all East Hampton  — Lucy Kolhoff, Carly Drew, Amanda Calabrese, Alyssa Bahel, and Marikate Ryan. We took one, two, three in the distance swim . . . that’s how it went. We figured everybody enoyed it, and you have to win to enjoy it!”

    “This is the Ocean Rescue Squad’s main fund-raiser,” said Richard Monahan, a national-class age group swimmer who was working the beach that day. “It raises money for the equipment we need and so that we can continue to guard other swims.”

    Before plunging in, Jennifer Ford, a stand-up paddleboarder with Paddle Diva, plugged the next Paddlers 4 Humanity event, an 18-mile Montauk-to-Block Island open water paddle on Aug. 27. Ford oversees fitness workouts on paddleboards throughout the town, at such spots as Georgica Pond, Cove Road in Sag Harbor, and Hand’s Creek on Three Mile Harbor. On Aug. 27, she said, the paddlers are to leave from the Montauk Lighthouse at 6 a.m.

    Among other charities, Paddlers 4 Humanity events benefit the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, the Long Island Communities of Practice, the P4H East End Catastrophic Fund, the Montauk Playhouse Community Center, and the Retreat.

    Kevin McCann, who ran up the beach with Ford, after doing the one-miler, said, “It was fun — no jellyfish, the water’s warm. . . . This young lady,” he said, turning to Ford, “beat me.”

    “It’s a great event,” continued McCann, who lives not far from Fresh Pond Park in Barnes Landing. “If I can stand at the end, and not drown, I figured, ‘Why not?’ What John Ryan has done for this town has been huge.”

    Both his children, one in Argentina now, the other on Wall Street, began in the elder Ryan’s junior lifeguard program, said McCann, who was a lifeguard himself when growing up in Atlantic Beach, “between Long Beach and Rockaway.”

    “Lifeguarding is a big character builder,” McCann continued. “It’s about more than swimming. The caliber of kids we have here is wonderful. It’s a great community. You’re endorsing John’s work when you come out for these events.”

    Matt O’Grady, 50, of New York City and Sag Harbor, the winner of the two-miler, in 44 minutes, said “the course was perfect today, though there were some sea lice. But once you figure they’re not going to go away, you get used to them.”

    When McClave’s name came up, O’Grady said, “He’s my swim coach — my inspiration. He would have finished a couple minutes quicker.”

    “He’s younger, though,” he added with a smile, “I’d like to beat him.”

    “I survived — I think I drank half of Gardiner’s Bay,” Conner said on exiting the water, and then, to Charlie van der Horst, a University of North Carolina medical school professor who is a member of a group of 16 runners he coaches every Wednesday evening at the high school track, Conner added, “It’s not nice getting old.”

    But van der Horst, 59, preferred to look on the lighter side of life. “This is a sportsman’s paradise!” he said. “And one of the reasons is John Conner. It’s not the land of couch potatoes.”

Thursday, August 11

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament begins, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 5 p.m.

Friday, August 12

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 5 p.m.

Saturday, August 13

SWIMMING, East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad swims, Fresh Pond Park, Amagansett, 7 a.m.

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 9 a.m.

POLO, Monty Waterbury Cup final, Two Trees Stables, Hayground Road, Bridgehampton, 4 p.m.

BENEFIT SPIN, B-East Roar, benefit Max Cure Foundation, $75 per bike/per hour, with free “boot camp” obstacle course for children, Amagansett Square, 4:30-6:30 p.m.

Sunday, August 14

RUNNING, Miss Amelia’s Cottage 2-miler, benefit Amagansett Historical Association, Amagansett railroad station, 9 a.m., registration from 8.

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, from 9 a.m.

Monday, August 15

SQUASH, elite camp with Mike Weston at Elmaleh-Stanton courts, Southampton Recreation Center, 9 a.m., through Friday, Aug. 19.

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game three of best-of-five final, Schenck Fuels vs. Stephen Hand’s Equipment, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, August 16

SLOW-PITCH, game two of women’s best-of-three final, Bostwick’s vs. Men at Work, 7 p.m., with game four of men’s final, if needed, to follow, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Wednesday, August 17

PUMP AND RUN, Indian Wells Beach, Amagansett, 5:50 p.m.

SLOW-PITCH, game five of men’s best-of-five series, if needed, 7:30 p.m., followed by game three of women’s series, if needed, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

    It may be summer here, but it’s winter in New Zealand, a country to which Joe Mensch, whose father, Mark, is a former East Hampton High School assistant football coach and trainer, headed this week for a month of professional snowboarding competition.

    The 19-year-old Mensch, who has his eye on the 2014 Olympics, said during a conversation at The Star the other day that American snowboarders were dominant in the sport, to which his father, now the athletic director at William Floyd High School, added, “but the Japanese are starting to catch up a little.”

    The elder Mensch, who co-owns Sports Therapy physical rehabilitation centers in Amagansett and Moriches with East Hampton High’s present trainer, Randi Cherill, and Michele Cordova, said he began taking his son to Okemo Mountain in southern Vermont when Joe was 3 years old.

    Starting on skis, he switched to snowboarding at the age of 6. Asked why he’d done so, Joe said, “It was so much cooler, I guess, and a lot more fun. I liked the flow of it. . . .”

    “Every weekend, after I’d finish a basketball game or a wrestling match in East Hampton,” said Mark, “I’d pick him up, we’d catch a ferry, and drive up for the weekend. It’s like Joe said, the flow of it is a great feeling. It’s the same experience as in surfing [a sport the father also learned from the son]. In surfing, you’re working with the wave, and there’s creativity. Also the conditions, both on the water and on a mountain, can change at any time. . . . Snowboarding also is a lot easier on your legs too.”

    It’s been nice for the son to have an experienced sports trainer as a father. Asked if he’d broken some bones, Joe said, “Oh yes — it’s dangerous, at least the way I do it. . . . The courses are very similar to skateboarding courses, with halfpipes and long trails with jumps and rails.”

    He has trained in Vermont — at Okemo, Mount Snow, and Stratton — for more than a decade of winters, snowboarding in the morning and going to school in the afternoon and competing in freestyle events throughout New England. He still found time, though, in his sophomore year, to quarterback the William Floyd football team to a Long Island championship.

    “He learned the game by coming for practices here in East Hampton when I was an assistant coach,” said the elder Mensch. “I coached with David MacGarva and Mike Burns and Eddie McGintee. Dick Cooney hired me. Joe was a ball boy. He played P.A.L. football at William Floyd. In the 11th grade he moved over from the Mount Snow school to the Stratton Mountain school. The staff recruited Joe to go there.”

    Then, in his senior year, a decision between snowboarding and football had to be made, though apparently the young man, who had won a national snowboarding championship in his junior year, qualifying him for the Olympic trials, didn’t have much trouble deciding. He spent his entire senior high school year at Stratton, with about 30 others, some of whom are competing today and most of whom are doing other things.

    Winning a national championship vaulted him to the next level, into competition versus professionals. Joe has been a pro for a year now, based in Colorado.

    Recently, he won the Gatorade Free Flow Tour, a nationwide series, which, in turn, earned him a berth on the Mountain Dew Tour, “a big [televised] pro tour that’s going to be held in the U.S. this winter.”

    The prospects of his being one of four to represent the United States in snowboarding at the 2014 Olympics in Russia apparently are good.

    “In March,” said Joe’s father, “everybody here got to see him on television in the Mammoth Mountain Grand Prix. It was on NBC, Channel 4. Joe [who ultimately finished seventh] was in the finals. For a long time he was second on the leader board. People were going crazy!”

    Yes, Joe said in reply to a question, the money was good in professional snowboarding. Flow Snowboards is his major sponsor, and, consequently, he doesn’t have to do anything else nowadays but train and compete.

    His best trick thus far, the curly-haired, broad-chested interviewee said, was a frontside 1080 — three full rotations with a cork and an off-axis grab of the board.

    “It’s like a whirlybird,” said his father, who added that freestyle snowboarding also had things in common with figure skating, too, inasmuch as “you’re traveling while rotating.”

    “You go up in the air off the wall of a halfpipe,” said Joe, “and you’re spinning and flipping while you’re traveling down it . . . you want to create momentum that will carry you into the next wall.”

    A slope style routine would last perhaps two minutes, he said, and, yes, it was a great concentrator of the mind.

    “He’s like a fighter pilot, knowing how to push the envelope,” said his father.

    “It’s an adrenaline rush — you live for it,” said Joe, whose coaches, all of them former top-ranked snowboarders themselves, have said his team sports background gives him an edge.

    Though 5 feet 10 inches and 160 pounds, he can bench-press 250 pounds and presses 400 with his legs.

    Pro snowboarders, Joe said, generally retire at around 30, “about the same as in football.”

    “You take a pounding in snowboarding, the ice is hard,” said Mark Mensch. “You’re going 25 to 30 miles per hour up and down walls that are 15 to 20 feet high and landing on that hard surface. . . . One good thing for him is that the snowboarding industry is just beginning. It will continue to grow, and there will be opportunities for Joe to stay involved in the sport after his competitive career is over.”

    The competition, though, was becoming tougher and tougher every year, said Joe, who’s always trying to add to his freestyle repertory.

    Asked if he had ever skateboarded, the pro snowboarder said, “I’ve done a little, but I’m not that good.”

    “He’s pretty good at golf,” said his father.

    Apparently he is putting aside that obsession, though, for another day.