The Hamptons Lifeguard Association has its junior and senior teams competing in the national tournament at Daytona Beach, Fla., this week, and among its competitors will be Chasen Dubs, who recently recorded four national Y.M.C.A. qualifying times at a regional short course Y meet in Naples, Fla., and Amanda Calabrese, the two-time reigning beach flags champion who represents the United States in international lifesaving competitions.

“More than 1,000 competitors from across the country, ranging in age from 9 to 80,” 82 if John Ryan Sr. participates, “are to be in the event,” Colin Bradley of the U.S. Lifesaving Association said in an email this week. He added that the competitions are to include a two-kilometer beach run, Ironguard races, a beach relay, board rescue, landline rescue, a run-swim-run, a Surfski race, and a Taplin relay in which six-person teams — two swimmers, two board paddlers, and two ski paddlers — vie.

According to a description on the internet, “The athletes must race around buoys and back to shore before tagging a teammate, who completes the next leg. . . . Often the winning team will be the one which can best use the conditions to its advantage, by using rips to reach the buoys more quickly for example, and by successfully catching waves when returning to shore. The key is to avoid losing equipment (board or ski) on the way in and out.”

Calabrese was a member of the East Hampton women’s team that finished third (as it did last year) in the national women’s lifeguard tournament at Sandy Hook, N.J.

Paige Duca, who co-captains that team with Sophie Kohlhoff, said in an email that “we did even better than last year — we were only 1 point from second over all.”

Kohlhoff successfully defended her national title in beach flags; ditto Duca in the distance run. Dana Cebulski was the runner-up to Duca in the distance run.

Moreover, the 4-by-100 sprint relay team of Calabrese, Cebulski, Kohlhoff, and Duca placed second, as did Calabrese in the run-paddle-run. Abby Quin Nanci-Ross was fifth in the kayak competition; Alyx Tortorice and Amanda Nasti placed fifth in the dory surf boat race; the swim relay team of Maggie Purcell, Sophia Taylor, and Nasti placed eighth, and Purcell was eighth in the run-swim-run, as well.

Bella Swanson placed seventh in the run-swim-run and 11th in the Ironguard event; Taylor was 15th in the run-swim-run, and Duca was 19th in the Ironguard.

Back to Dubs, a 16-year-old East Hampton Town pool-bay lifeguard who lives now in Sarasota, Fla.

“Part of the reason for our move was to give Chasen access to a 50-meter long-course pool. This has provided him with the strength, endurance, and power to better compete in a short-course pool,” Chasen’s father, Christopher, said in a recent email concerning his son’s multi-qualifying performances — in the 100 butterfly, 100 freestyle, 100 backstroke, and 100 breaststroke — at the Area 5 meet in Naples. 

He added, “The astonishing part of this achievement is that Chasen made all four cuts at one meet. Swimmers work hours, days, weeks, months, and years to get one cut, but to make four at one time is noteworthy. Coaches and swimmers could only pray for it to happen in this way.”

The junior 9-to-15-year-old lifeguards and the under-19s were to have begun their national competitions in Daytona Beach yesterday. The male and female guards are to vie in the various lifeguard-skill events from today through Saturday. The championships are to be live-streamed on usla.org.

The defending champion — and winner of 28 national titles in the past 29 years — is the LA Surf Life Saving Association.

In related news, the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad’s “Red Devil” swims are to be held at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett on Saturday, Aug. 19. One can register online through active.com, or on the beach the day of the event from 4 p.m.

The one-mile swim is to begin at 5 p.m., the half-mile swim at 5:20, and the quarter-mile swim at 5:40. 

Friday, August 18

TENNIS, youth tournaments for 10 through 16-year-old players at the Buckskill Tennis Club in East Hampton, 1-5 p.m.

SQUASH, professional exhibition as part of event honoring Wally Glennon, Southampton Recreation Center, 5 p.m.

BASEBALL, talk by Geoff Gehman on Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, Bridgehampton Museum Archives, 5 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Artists and Writers pregame party, Schenck Fuels yard off Newtown Lane, East Hampton, 7-10 p.m.

Saturday, August 19

PADDLING, Paddlers 4 Humanity’s 18-mile crossing to Block Island from Montauk Point, 6 a.m.

ARTISTS AND WRITERS GAME, with skills challenge for 5 through 11-year-olds at 10:30 a.m., home run derby at 11:30, batting practice at noon, and The Game at 2, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

SAILING, ’Round Gardiner’s Island Race, Gardiner’s Bay, 2:30 p.m., with party to follow at the Devon Yacht Club, Amagansett. 

SWIMMING, East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad fund-raising mile, half-mile, and quarter-mile Red Devil ocean swims, Atlantic Avenue Beach, Amagansett, 5 p.m.

Sunday, August 20

ELLEN’S RUN, Southampton Hospital’s Parrish Memorial Hall, 9 a.m.

Monday, August 21

FALL SPORTS, practices begin for all teams, East Hampton High School. 

Tuesday, August 22

TENNIS, Paul Annacone book signing at BookHampton, Main Street, East Hampton, 5 p.m.

A number of sporting things are looming this weekend. 

First, tournaments for 10 through 16-year-olds are to be held on the Buckskill Tennis Club’s grass and Har-Tru courts tomorrow from 1 to 5 p.m. Also tomorrow:

• A professional squash exhibition matching the world’s 15th and 54th-ranked players, Mohamed Abouelghar and Mazen Hesham, is to be played as part of an event honoring Wally Glennon, at the Elmaleh-Stanton courts at the Southampton Recreation Center.

• Geoff Gehman (“The Kingdom of the Kid”) is to speak on the Major League Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemskis at the Bridgehampton Museum Archives building at 5 p.m., and the Artists and Writers pregame party will be held at the Schenck Fuels yard off Newtown Lane, East Hampton, from 7 to 10 p.m.

On Saturday, at 6 a.m., Paddlers 4 Humanity’s 18-mile paddle crossing to Block Island is to set off from Montauk Point. Lars Svanberg has said the six-hour crossing helps to underwrite Paddlers 4 Humanity’s charitable work here. 

• Also on Saturday, Artists and Writers Game events at East Hampton’s Herrick Park are to begin with a throw, bat, and run skills challenge for 5 through 11-year-olds at 10:30 a.m., followed by a home run derby at 11:30, and, from noon, batting practice, and The Game, at 2.

• At about that time, in Gardiner’s  Bay, the 48th ’Round Gardiner’s Island Race for sailboats from the South and North Forks is to get under way. Bill Lyons of the Devon Yacht Club, the host club, said more than 30 competitors are expected.

• Beginning at 5, there will be ocean swims to raise money for the East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett. The one-miler is to begin at 5, the half-miler at 5:20, and the quarter-miler at 5:40. 

The swims are for those 7 and up. According to a flier, “The first swimmer in each distance will receive a really cool beach towel. Families are encouraged to bring food for an after-swim meal on the beach. . . . The ocean rescue squad is made up of volunteer Suffolk County-certified lifeguards who respond the year round to 911-dispatched emergencies in East Hampton Town.”

Sunday’s main event will be Ellen’s (5K) Run in Southampton, a benefit for breast cancer patient support services. “Runners, walkers, women, men, and children are welcome!” a flier says. The start-finish line is adjacent to Southampton Hospital’s Parrish Memorial Hall. The start time is 9 a.m. 

Dr. Julie Ratner, who 22 years ago launched Ellen’s Run — and later the Ellen Hermanson Foundation — in memory of her younger sister, who died of breast cancer at the age of 42, said during a conversation at The Star the other day that she wanted everyone on the East End to know that no one is ever turned away at the Ellen Hermanson Breast Center at Southampton Hospital.

She wanted them to know, moreover, that all the support services available to recently diagnosed patients and to survivors — including support groups led by a certified oncological social worker, Reiki therapy, yoga, and nutrition counseling — were free as well. 

Looking back on almost a quarter-century of fruitful work in an area that has a high incidence of the disease and many people who are struggling to make ends meet, Ratner said, “We’ve changed the medical landscape here.” 

The Breast Cancer Center, which is said to combine the rigor of a teaching hospital with the warmth of a support group, has been cited for its technological excellence by the American College of Radiology. The lion’s share of the money the foundation has raised — in the $4 million range at present — “has stayed here,” and Ellen’s (5K) Run, based at the hospital’s Parrish Memorial Hall, annually attracts 1,000-plus participants.

The race, which is to be contested on Sunday, was won last year by Gustavo Morastitla (the runner-up in the recent Jordan’s Run), in 16 minutes and 46 seconds. He’s about to enter his senior year at Southampton High School. The women’s winner was a fellow Southamptoner, Hannah Connolly-Sporing, in 19:08. 

“It’s nice to know you’re doing something fun and also doing something good at the same time,” Ratner said. “There’s so much heart and soul in the run. You have gung-ho runners, but you also have a lot who come because they’re breast cancer survivors, and they come with their families. Some are even in treatment. The exuberance and spirit and camaraderie is stunning to see.”

“This race is about not just surviving, but thriving and embracing life. For me, it continues the meaning of Ellen’s life and what she cared about so much. It gives added meaning to a life that was too short.”

The foundation, she added, was “very careful about how the money we raise is spent, and it’s most important to note that the money we raise will stay here. . . . This year we want to have the Breast Center purchase a new stereotactic breast biopsy table, a special and very expensive table that enables the doctor to perform a more accurate, less invasive, and more comfortable biopsy. This table, believe it or not, costs more than $200,000. We’re hoping we can come close to purchasing it this year, and we’d also like to provide specially built chairs for people receiving chemotherapy at the Phillips Family Cancer Center, which is to be built in Southampton, as well.”

Once built, within a year or so, the Phillips Center would, Ratner said, come as a great relief to those who at the moment have to fight the traffic five days a week over the course of six weeks to receive chemotherapy and radiation treatments in Commack or Riverhead.

“So, yes,” she said in parting, “we are going strong, but we try to keep it interesting by not doing the same thing every year. We’re changing our color this year, we have a new logo, our website has been redesigned, we have a development director, Anne Gomberg, who’s really creative, we’ve got more sponsors, which hopefully will translate into more money. . . . It’s a rebirth of sorts. We’re 22 years young, but we need new people coming in and new ideas. . . . I would love it if someday we were told we were no longer needed. That would be the best news.” 

A 22-year-old squash and tennis player when he was at Dartmouth, Malachi Price, who can run pretty well, won Sunday’s Strides for Life 3-mile race in Southampton. Tara Farrell, 38, who won this race outright the better part of a decade ago, was the women’s winner — and third over all — in 18 minutes and 43 seconds.

Price’s winning time was 17:31. The race, in its 12th year, and noteworthy for the sheer fact that in that time more than $4.5 million has been earmarked for lung cancer research, was, as usual, a big draw. There were 498 finishers, most of whom ran, some of whom walked with dogs or with babies in strollers.

Nancy Sanford, the Lung Cancer Research Foundation’s executive director, said that “our teams [there were 18 this year] raise most of the money — more than $350,000 this year.” There are corporate and wealthy individual donors as well.

Speaking from a podium at the starting line, Sanford said that plans were in the works to have 32 similar races throughout the country. Lung cancer is said to be the number-one cancer killer worldwide. According to the foundation, lung cancer causes more deaths in the United States than breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, and prostate cancer combined.

Price, whose 20-year-old sister, Camille, is on the squash team at Princeton, said, when questioned, that he had majored in Russian area studies with a modification in economics in college, and was, he was happy to say, recently hired by the Boston Consulting Group. He and his sister, who finished 23rd, in 22:15, were members of Team Hope, an alliance of several teams that had competed at Strides for Life before.

A 16-year-old, Audrey Wisch, a junior cross-country and track runner (the 1,500) at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, was the runner-up to Farrell. 

Asked what they’d been talking about at the starting line, Wisch said she’d asked her what her pace should be.

Later, in a separate conversation, Farrell was asked what she’d told her. “I told her 6:14. Actually, it was,” she said, looking down at her watch, “6:18.”

Wisch was sixth over all, in 19:54. She ran the first mile, she said, in 6:06, but slowed down a bit after that. Farrell, she said, had led the whole way. Joe Brereton, 34, of New York City, was the runner-up to Price, in 17:41.

Farrell has been on a roll lately in local races, having won Jordan’s Run two weeks ago, and one on “the exact same course” the week before. It was cooler that day and rainy; thus her time was, she said, a bit faster — 18:25.

A former Gubbins Running Ahead employee who now works in the Southampton Town clerk’s office, Farrell said Gubbins would be well represented at Ellen’s Run on Sunday, a race whose start-finish line is adjacent to Southampton Hospital’s Parrish Hall.

Price said he too might be in Ellen’s Run.

Farrell, who lives in East Quogue, said she leaves there for Southampton at around 5:30 a.m., and runs, often on Meadow Lane, before work. Following the race, she was seen walking down a side street with her 8-year-old son, Seth. 

Asked if he ran, Farrell said, with a smile, “He does. He was second in his age group at Jordan’s Run.”

During a conversation at Poxabogue’s Fairway restaurant the other day with Leif Hope, the impresario of the Artists and Writers benefit softball game that is to be played here Saturday, this writer was asked if he could read what he was writing. 

What a question. Of course he couldn’t, he replied. Would that then qualify him to play on the Artists’ team? 

A query that evoked one of Hope’s fondest memories, the day in 1977 when the late Tom Twomey and he flew over professional fast-pitch softball battery mates C.B. Tomasiewicz and Kathy Neal from the Meriden (Conn.) Falcons, much to the Writers’ chagrin.

“The reason I did that,” Hope said, “was that the year before the Writers had on their roster two lawyers, and when I asked them what they’d written, they said, ‘Legal briefs.’ ”

The cradle of The Game, as it is known, is said to have been Wilfrid Zogbaum’s front yard in Springs where, beginning in 1948, antics ran rampant, and Philip Pavia, a heavy-hitting sculptor, smashed into smithereens a grapefruit painted to look like a softball. Though when it comes to verisimilitude, Hope has come to prefer a turnip.

Writers began filtering in in the early years, beginning with Barney Rosset, the publisher, and Harold Rosenberg, the art critic, and in the mid-1960s — now at Syd Solomon’s backyard in Georgica — the battle lines that continue unto this day were drawn.

Since 1967, the Artists and Writers Game has been played as a benefit, and while the Writers usually won in the early years, being more drawn to winning because of their tender egos, according to Hope, the Artists, despite his insistence that artists tend to be more fun-loving and insouciant, have fielded some pretty fearsome teams in recent years, so often, in fact, that it’s become a tossup each year as to which team will win.

You never know who will show up. Dick Cavett, Carl Bernstein, Paul Simon, Chevy Chase, Alec Baldwin, Gerry Cooney, Bill Clinton, John Irving, Jay McInerney, Kristin Davis, Rod Gilbert, Josh Charles, and Pele, among others, have in the past.

There will be new things this year, the 69th in which The Game has been played. First, the pre-Game party is to be held at the Schenck Fuels yard, behind Babette’s restaurant on Newtown Lane, tomorrow from 7 to 10 p.m.

The Game, which is to be played at East Hampton’s Herrick Park at 2, is to be preceded this year by a throw, bat, and run Future A&W Stars Skills Challenge for children ages 5 through 11 at 10:30 a.m., and at 11:30 by a home run derby whose pitcher-batter teams have been asked to donate $500 each. The odds-on favorite, should he come, as Hope said is rumored, would be the former Detroit Tiger and New York Yankee slugger Cecil Fielder.

Batting practice presumably will begin after the home run derby, and The Game, as aforesaid, is to begin at 2. 

This being the 100th-year anniversary of women gaining the right to vote in this state, Hope has asked New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul to come, as well as Bridget Fleming, a Suffolk County legislator, and Minerva Perez, executive director of Organizacion Latino-Americana.

Ellen’s Run

As he did at Jordan’s Run in Sag Harbor three weeks before, Troy Taylor, a 4:02 miler who has been working this summer at a Gubbins Running Ahead store in East Hampton, won Sunday’s Ellen’s Run 5K in Southampton, in 15 minutes and 40.96 seconds, breaking by 14 seconds the record that a former Gubbins employee, Nick Lemon, set in 2015.

Kira Garry, a former Yale University cross-country and track runner, was the women’s winner (and fifth over all) in 16:58.97. The popular race, which helps to fund breast cancer outpatient services here, drew 816 registrants. There were 713 finishers.

Not only Taylor, but the runner-up and third-place finishers, Dylan Fine, 20, of Water Mill, and Gustavo Morastitla, 17, a Southampton High School senior, broke the record with their 15:51.87 and 15:53.01 clockings.

Legends Pro-Am

John McEnroe, Patrick McEnroe, Chris Evert, Mats Wilander, and Pat Cash — tennis legends all — will be among those playing in a pro-am at the Sportime club in Amagansett from 3 to 7 p.m. on Saturday to raise money for the Johnny Mac Tennis Project, whose mission, according to the elder McEnroe, is to “bring tennis to New York City kids who could not otherwise get to play, and to develop some great New York players.”

“We have created an annual event with 128 players, which is the size of a Grand Slam draw — pretty incredible. This year, we have added Chris Evert and Pat Cash to the group, joining my brother and me, and Mats, with more players to come.”

“It’s a unique opportunity to play with some of the game’s greats or to watch great tennis right before the U.S. Open, and to support a great cause in doing so,” Patrick McEnroe added.

A party for players, guests, and fans, at which there will be hors d’oeuvres, a buffet dinner, an open bar, dancing, live entertainment, and a live auction, is to follow the tennis. Those looking to play or to buy tickets can do so online through jmtpny.org. 

Junior Tourney

A Hampton Cup singles tournament for junior players ages 5 through 12 — a benefit for Project Most — is to be held Saturday at Hampton Racquet on Buckskill Road, East Hampton, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“All levels are welcome,” said the club’s owner, John Graham. “It’s a family day that will include the junior tournament, a barbecue, and activities including an arcade, face painting, a bounce house, and an obstacle course. There will be trophies, raffle tickets, and more surprises.”

As for Project Most, Graham said, “We believe in the children of East Hampton and want to help to sustain programs that allow them to grow as individuals and find their way into adulthood. With programs like Project Most, which helps to create brighter futures and to develop future leaders for this community, children learn that anything is possible.”

Classic Arrives

The Hampton Classic Horse Show is to begin a weeklong stay at the 60-acre Snake Hollow Road showgrounds in Bridgehampton on Sunday with various competitions for Long Island riders.

Leadline classes for children as young as 2 years old in the Grand Prix ring will get the show going at 8 a.m. The $30,000 Boar’s Head Jumper Challenge, the day’s main event, is to be contested in that ring at 2 p.m. There will be hunter competitions, including the $10,000 Marders Local Hunter Derby in the Anne Aspinall ring at 2, from 8 a.m., as well.

There are no classes scheduled for the Grand Prix or hunter rings Monday, though the Long Island Show Series for Riders With Disabilities finals are to be held that day in Jumper Ring 2 from 10 a.m.

Beginning Tuesday there will be hunter and jumper action in six rings from 8 a.m. each day through Saturday, Sept. 2. The show is to end with the $300,000 Hampton Classic Grand Prix presented by Sovaro on Sunday, Sept. 3.

McLain Ward, Richie Moloney, Georgina Bloomberg, Callan Solem, Kevin Babington, and Shane Sweetnam are among two dozen top professional riders entered.

Fight Night

The Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor boxing match is to be televised at the Indian Wells Tavern in Amagansett Saturday, beginning with “prefight festivities” at 9 p.m. The fight is to begin at 10. 

According to a release, “There will be a $50 cover charge. The first 50 people will receive a free goodie bag with swag. There will be drink specials and giveaways throughout the fight. The fight will be displayed on five HD televisions and a 10-foot screen in the main dining room.”

August 6, 1992

Some say life begins at 40, still more would say it ends at 50, the half-century mark being the peak before the descent into old age. It’s an important milestone, as when an old table becomes an antique, when high school reunions become lonely events, when aging golfers join the senior tour.

But Loretta DeRose, who turned 50 on Sunday, doesn’t see it that way.

To celebrate her birthday, DeRose and Dean Webb, a Montauker who now lives in Port Jefferson, donned wetsuits and water-skied the 20 miles to Block Island.

. . . “What do you think of a grandma skiing to Block Island?” she asked. “I hope I can do it when I’m 60.”

“I used to jog when people would stop and ask if you wanted a ride,” she said. When not water skiing she enjoys snow skiing, bicycling, roller skating, and tennis.

Asked if she were afraid of being bitten by a shark, she said, “I’m too tough . . . a shark would never bite me.”

. . . When a birthday cake was served at Ballard’s restaurant overlooking Rhode Island Sound, DeRose hopped on the table and did splits for the benefit of the restaurant’s other patrons. She informed a surprised waiter that she was 50 years old and said something else that made him blush like a schoolboy and scurry away from the table. “Wrap him up and send him to my tent,” she said to her friends.

. . . “It was,” she said, “the best birthday I ever had.”

In what appears to be an ugly maneuver in the cold war between Lazy Point residents and visitors to the boardsailing mecca of Napeague Harbor, tires were slashed on five or more cars parked there Saturday.

While 20-knot winds raced over the low stretch of land between ocean and harbor, powering boardsailors across the water, air hissed out from under a Saab, a BMW, a Jeep Cherokee, and at least two other out-of-town cars, which slowly settled a little closer to the grass on the shoulder of Lazy Point Road.

Residents have complained that windsurfers have brought traffic, trash, and even environmental damage to their once-tranquil road end. Boardsailors respond that their quiet, pollution-free sport harms no one, and that its mostly 20 to 40-year-old devotees are thoughtful and clean.

August 27, 1992

Saturday’s Artists-Writers softball game began with a curveball thrown by the crafty Artists’ manager, Leif Hope, in the form of four members of the national-champion women’s softball team, who took the field in the top of the first inning. It was apparent from the first pitch, launched like a rocket by Pat Dufficy, that these young ladies could play. Their team, the Raybestos, of Stratford, Conn., went 51-1 this season. . . . Dufficy recently recorded her 400th win.

. . . “He’s playing with two artificial hips and a quadruple bypass,” John Scanlon, the play-by-play announcer, said of Ben Bradlee, who responded with a line single in the Writers’ third. 

Roy Scheider and Sam Cohn were to make the Artists’ precarious 3-2 lead hold up, thanks in part to several outstanding plays by Billy Hofmann, the illustrative second sacker. For those and for his true grit, Hofmann was named co-winner of the most valuable player award with Eric Ernst, who wrote finis for the Writers with his two-run single up the middle in the bottom of the eighth.

A group of Shelter Islanders ran away with the Montauk Mile on Saturday. John Kenney, 36, was the winner, in 4 minutes and 57 seconds; Rich Webber, 32, was the runner-up, in 5:02, and Kevin Barry, 30, took third, in 5:16. Barbara Gubbins, 32, of Southampton, was the women’s winner, and fifth over all, in 5:37.

Friday, August 25

TENNIS, grasscourt junior tournaments for 10 through 16-year-olds, Buckskill Tennis Club, East Hampton, from 1 p.m.

Saturday, August 26

TENNIS, Project Most junior tournament, Hampton Racquet, Buckskill Road, East Hampton, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., and Johnny Mac Tennis Project pro-am, with John and Patrick McEnroe, Chris Evert, Mats Wilander, and Pat Cash, Sportime club, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 3-7 p.m.

RUGBY, Long Island Rugby Club vs. Montauk Rugby Club, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 1 p.m.

BOXING, televising of Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight, Indian Wells Tavern, Main Street, Amagansett, from 9 p.m.

Sunday, August 27

HAMPTON CLASSIC, opening day, with leadline classes for 2 through 6-year-olds, hunter and equitation classes, the $30,000 Boar’s Head Jumper Challenge, and the $10,000 Marders Local Hunter Derby, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

Monday, August 28

BASKETBALL, Brooklyn Nets DRIBBL camp for pre-K through eighth graders, with appearances by Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and head coach Kenny Atkinson, Southampton Recreation Center, 9 a.m.-3 p.m., through Friday, Sept. 1.

HAMPTON CLASSIC, Long Island Show Series for Riders With Disabilities Finals, Jumper Ring 2, Snake Hollow, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 10 a.m.

Tuesday, August 29

HAMPTON CLASSIC, jumper, hunter, and short stirrup classes in six rings, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

Wednesday, August 30

HAMPTON CLASSIC, jumper and hunter classes in six rings, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Pierson-Bridgehampton at East Hampton, scrimmage, 5 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, East Hampton at Southampton, scrimmage, 5 p.m.

Thursday, August 31

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, Half Hollow Hills East at East Hampton, nonleague, noon.

Ready or not, the fall rugby season, apparently taking a leaf from pro football’s handbook, will begin here Saturday.

Charlie Collins, a Montauk Rugby Club spokesman, said league play had never started before Labor Day before. “It’s August, you know, people are working.”

Be that as it may, Collins, who will be in Ireland Saturday attending Shannon Tracey’s wedding, thinks the Sharks will be able to piece together a 15-man cohort to vie with the Long Island Rugby Club. Game time at East Hampton’s Herrick Park will be 1 p.m.

Among those in the core group, he said, are the Abran brothers, Jim and Scott, James Lock, Nick Lawler, Steve Turza, James Rigby, Kevin Brabant, “and the Irish guys” — Shane O’Keefe, Niall Toomey, Ronan Curran, and Graham Fynes among them — “and the young guys [George Calderon and, possibly, Brandon Johnson], and maybe Brenden Mott and maybe some Jamaicans. . . . We probably won’t know who we have until we get there.”

And then there’s always Rich Brierley, who’s pushing 60 and who would rather coach, though he saw quite a bit of action last season.

Montauk, a Division III side, went 5-2-1 in Empire Geographic Union play last fall, earning it a playoff berth as the seventh seed among eight teams.

 Collins thought the Sharks could make a run, but the end came quickly, in April, by way of a 45-17 first-round loss in Fairlawn, N.J., to the second-seeded North Jersey R.C. 

Montauk, which had been short-handed for that April game, doesn’t travel well, Collins agreed. (It’s the same problem that’s been haunting the otherwise-very-strong East Hampton Football Club, which has been playing in the premier division of the Long Island Soccer Football League.)

Collins said he was hoping that the side would come together in practices at Herrick Park this week, on Tuesday and Thursday, beginning at 6:30 p.m.   “A number of us are on Montauk’s softball team and it’s always seemed we’ve had softball games [at the Hank Zebrowski field in Montauk] on Thursday nights, so we’ve not been at the summer practices at Herrick very much,” Collins said.

The Sharks were playing in the Montauk league’s softball final series this week, versus the reigning champion, Gig Shack. 

As of Friday, the Gig Shack led the best-of-five series 1-0, by virtue of a blowout the previous night. “They hit well and we didn’t play great defense,” Collins said of the series opener. 

Among the ruggers on the softball team, he said, were himself, Turza, Rigby, Mott, Jim Abran, Brabant, and Brian Anderson (though Anderson recently returned to North Carolina, where he lives now). Others on the rugby club’s team, he said, are Kamal Jackson, the pitcher, Alex Tekulsky, the shortstop, and Patrick Harden.

The Rugby Club won Montauk’s playoff trophy two years ago. 

Asked if the league might return to the Terry King ball field in Amagansett, from which it has been absent for several years, Collins said, “I’ve heard that. There was talk that it might come back at the Travis Field tournament [played earlier this month at Terry King], which had a big turnout.”

Returning to rugby, Collins said the Long Island R.C. had moved down to Division III from Division II where it went 2-8 last season. “But their competition was stiff, so I’m sure they’ll be ready.”

Two bye weeks follow, after which Montauk is to play at Rockaway on Sept. 16, at Brooklyn on Sept. 23, and versus the Suffolk R.C. at home on Sept. 30. The locals have a bye on Oct. 7, play Long Island in Bayville on Oct. 14, play Brooklyn at home on Oct. 21, play away versus Suffolk, in Farmingville, on Oct. 28, and finish at home with Rockaway on Nov. 4.