“It’s definitely a balanced team — we’ve got depth,” Craig Brierley, the East Hampton High School girls swimming team’s coach, said after sinking Sayville-Bayport, the defending league champion (and the county champion two years ago), in an away meet on Sept. 13.

“And we did it even though we had to give up [13] diving points,” he added.

There are 25 on the squad, which practices daily, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter (and from 6 to 7 a.m. Saturdays), comprising seven seniors, two juniors, eight sophomores, and eight ninth graders.

Vanessa Betancur, Lucy Emptage, Madison Jones, and Isabella Swanson, all seniors, are the captains. 

Brierley reported that until the penultimate event, the 100-yard breaststroke, East Hampton had held the lead at Sayville. “But going into the final event, the 400 free relay, we were trailing 85-84. We had to win it.”

And indeed East Hampton did, with Catalina Badilla  (ninth grader), Emma Wiltshire (junior), Oona Foulser (junior), and Olivia Brabant (sophomore) finishing first in 4 minutes and 4.86 seconds, with Bonac’s B team of Caroline Brown (ninth grader), Angie Jeffrey (senior), Darcy McFarland (sophomore), and Kiara Bailey-Williams (ninth grader) finishing third. The final score was East Hampton 94, Sayville 89.

Badilla and Bailey-Williams are Pierson students, as is Eva Doyle, a sophomore. Bridgehampton has two, Patricia Figueroa, a senior, and Jade Maldonado, also a senior, on Brierley’s team.

East Hampton won the other two relays at Sayville too — the 200 medley relay, which led the meet off, with McFarland, Julia Brierley, Sophia Swanson, and Jones, and the 200 free relay, with Sophia Swanson, Badilla, Jones, and Brierley. 

Other winners were Sophia Swanson, in the 200 individual medley and the 100 free, and Brierley, in the 50 free. Bonac runners-up were Badilla, in the 200 free, Jones, in the 50 free, Badilla, in the 100 butterfly, Foulser, in the 500 free, McFarland, in the 100 backstroke, and Brierley, in the 100 breaststroke.

Third-place finishers were Caroline Brown, Betancur, Isabella Swanson, and Brabant in the 200 medley relay; Bailey-Williams in the 200 individual medley; Isabella Swanson in the 100 butterfly; Brabant in the 100 free; Bailey-Williams in the 500 free; Brabant in the 100 backstroke and the 400 relay team (Caroline Brown, Jeffrey, McFarland, and Bailey-Williams).

Craig Brierley reported further that Jane O’Dwyer, a sophomore, had been named by the captains as the swimmer of the meet for having out-touched the anchor of Sayville’s C team, with whom she’d entered the water side by side, to capture fifth place among the six teams competing in the 200 medley relay.

The coach added that Sophia Swanson, in the 200 individual medley, Julia Brierley and Jones, in the 50 free, Isabella Swanson and Sophia Swanson, in the 100 butterfly, Brabant and Sophia Swanson, in the 100 free, and Brierley, in the 100 breaststroke, had all swum county-qualifying times. 

Moreover, the elder Brierley said the following had done personal bests: Brown, in the 50 backstroke; Brabant in the 50 free, the 100 free, and 100 back; Stephanie Palchisaca, in the 50 back; Tiana Treadwell, in the 50 breast; Jeffrey, in the 100 and 200 free; Sophia Swanson, in the 200 i.m.; Jones, in the 100 fly; Betancur, in the 50 free, and Anna Carman, in the 50 free.

East Hampton opened its season on Sept. 8 with a nonleaguer at Connetquot, losing 100-88, though Brierley noted that absent its 13 diving points (East Hampton has no divers) the home team would have lost to the Bonackers by 1 point.

Winners that day included Brown, Betancur, Isabella Swanson, and Bailey-Williams in the 200 medley relay; Sophia Swanson in the 200 individual medley and in the 100 butterfly; Brabant in the 500 freestyle, and Julia Brierley in the 100 breaststroke.

The runners-up were Bailey-Williams, in the 200 individual medley; the 200 freestyle relay team of Sophia Swanson, Isabella Swanson, Brierley, and Jones; Caroline Brown in the 100 backstroke, and the 400 free relay team of McFarland, Jeffrey, Brown, and Foulser.

The team’s first home meet is to be on Tuesday, with Ward Melville.

East Hampton High’s cross-country teams made their debuts here at Cedar Point Park on Tuesday, Sept. 12, in a meet with a number of other schools from up the Island, Amityville being the farthest-flung.

“Everybody agrees once they get out here that this is one of the prettiest courses on Long Island,” Kevin Barry, the boys’ coach, said, though, apparently because the woodsy 2.8-mile loop with bay views is so distant, the Sept. 12 meet was the first and last to be held at Cedar Point this fall. Bonac’s teams are to run at Sunken Meadow State Park in Kings Park, the site of the county championships, from here on in.

East Hampton’s boys ran away with the boys meet as Ryan Fowkes finished first, in 15 minutes and 26 seconds, Geo Espinoza second, in 15:32, Omar Leon (about whom more later) fourth, in 16:06, Ethan McCormac fifth, and Frank Bellucci seventh. East Hampton, then, had five of the top seven in a field of 70.

The teams that vied with East Hampton’s boys were Amityville, Sayville, and Mount Sinai. “At 3-0, we’re halfway to a league championship,” said Barry, who added that Shoreham-Wading River was “the team to beat.” On Tuesday, East Hampton’s boys are to run against their Miller Place and Bayport-Blue Point peers at Sunken Meadow. Shoreham, said Barry, has wins over them.

Leon, who had recently been cut from the boys soccer team, was, Barry agreed, “a very pleasant surprise. “He’s a competitor — he runs with a lot of heart.” Leon is a junior, as is Fowkes. Espinoza’s a senior, as is Robert Weiss, a sprinter in track who nonetheless does well in distance races. He placed 10th in the Sept. 12 race. “We’ve only got two seniors among our 16,” Barry said.

McCormac, a standout swimmer, is a junior, and Bellucci is a sophomore.

East Hampton’s girls, vying with Kings Park, which boasts a squad of 38, but had only 25 on hand that day, did not fare as well as the boys, though Ava Engstrom, a ninth grader whose older brother, Erik (now at the University of Massachusetts), was a county champion, placed a strong second, with another ninth grader, Bella Tarbet, not far behind, in fifth place. Liana Paradiso, a senior and the team’s captain, was East Hampton’s third runner — and eighth over all.

Last Thursday, both teams were at it again, in the 5K Peconic Invitational at Red Creek Park in Hampton Bays. The boys placed second in a 10-team field, behind Fordham Prep, though ahead of everyone else, which is to say Westhampton Beach, Southampton, Pierson, Hampton Bays, Comsewogue, Central Islip, Mattituck, and Southold.

Bonac’s top two flip-flopped that day, with Espinoza the overall winner, in 18:01, and with Fowkes, who, according to Barry “went out too fast,” second, 10 seconds behind. Leon was ninth, in 19:44, Bellucci 10th, in 19:49, McCormac 16th, in 20:24, and Weiss 17th, in 20:50.

“I’ve actually got [in Fowkes and Espinoza] two number-ones,” said Barry. “They’ll be very close all year — that will be good for both of them.”

Paradiso placed third in the varsity girls race. Engstrom won the freshman race, “handily — there was no one else in sight,” said the girls’ coach, Diane O’Donnell. “She looked a lot like her brother,” said Barry. Tarbet was third in the freshman race.

Among the spectators at Cedar Point on the 12th was John Conner, a former recordholding age-group half-miler and miler who is recovering from a stroke he suffered last winter. Conner has coached some of Barry’s older charges in summer track workouts at the high school in the recent past, and undoubtedly he was pleased with what he saw. 

Conner’s wife, Henrika, reminded this writer that the Great Bonac Foot Race, presumably the oldest continuous race on Long Island, had been founded by her husband, along with Howard Lebwith and the late Ed Hults. 

The Hamptons Marathon and Half Marathon were held in Southampton Saturday, and Barbara Gubbins, who is 57, made news inasmuch as she finished third over all among the half-marathon’s female entrants.

Her time of 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 19 seconds — which, age-graded, pretty much equaled her best-ever half of 1:13 and put her very close to the top 10 percent in her age group worldwide — was just 6 seconds slower than the women’s runner-up, Erin O’Brien of Brooklyn, who is 34.

“She was behind me for most of the race,” said Gubbins, who admitted she was more bothered by a headwind near the end of the 13.1-miler than by the heat, which affected pretty much everyone’s times. 

“At the 10-mile mark I looked behind me and saw her. From mile 11 we ran together. I was hoping to put some distance between me and her when we made the turn at the hospital. . . . She outkicked me in the last leg, from the hospital to the middle school, in the final 100 yards or so.”

Had Gubbins been included among the women’s 55-to-59-year-old place-winners, she would have bested the woman in first place by about 26 minutes.

“I was very pleased,” she said, “especially considering that I haven’t been running long distances this summer. I’ve been running about five miles a day.”

In the only game in (the vicinity of) town this past weekend, Hampton United, an over-30 men’s soccer team that plays in the Suffolk league, defeated Manorville 5-2 in Eastport Sunday, thus advancing to the second round of the league’s cup tournament.

Olger (Quique) Araya, the goaltender, said that Jose Almansa, who recently joined the over-30s after John Romero decided to no longer field an East Hampton team in the top division of the Long Island Soccer Football League, scored three of the goals. Luis Barrera also scored.

Hampton United’s lineup has been further bolstered by Romero’s withdrawal from Islandwide play by the addition of Tonio Gonzalez and Jorge Alvarado, Araya said.

The team has yet to be beaten, though the Celtics and Hampton United played to a 4-4 tie on Sept. 17. “I wasn’t at that one, that’s probably why,” said Araya, with a laugh. 

Hampton United’s home field is at the Hampton Bays High School. It is to play S.F.C. Newcastle there on Sunday at 5 p.m.

By contrast, things are not faring as well for the Montauk Rugby Club, which was in past reincarnations one of the metro region’s strongest Division II entries. 

As of Monday, the Sharks, who play in Division III now and whose first home game is slated for Saturday, versus Suffolk, were listed as the Empire Geographical Rugby Union N.Y. South division’s cellar dweller, at 0-3-0.

George Calderon, one of the side’s young players, said Montauk barely fielded 15 recently at Rockaway. Presumably the same was true at Brooklyn this week. A better turnout can be expected at East Hampton’s Herrick Park for Saturday’s game. Suffolk is coming in with a 1-2 record. 

Kevin Bunce and Paul Cleary have been trying to get former high school football players — as well as soccer and volleyball players who were cut from East Hampton’s varsity teams — to come out for rugby, a safer game, they maintain, and a door-opener when it comes to college scholarships and to international play. 

Calderon said that Brandon Johnson, rated among the nation’s top-50 rugby players when he went to Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland last year, and his cousin, East Hampton High’s former quarterback, Jordan Johnson, are playing for Montauk now.

The East Hampton High School boys soccer team had won three in a row as of Tuesday, improving its overall record to 4-5.

Don McGovern, the coach, said, however, that there was still much work to do. The boys shut out Mount Sinai 2-0 on Sept. 15, defeated Miller Place 3-1 in the rain here on Sept. 19, and shut out Babylon 1-0 at Babylon Saturday. 

The Miller Place game would have been a shutout too had not the goalie, Kurt Matthews, in the final minutes misplayed a bouncing ball that landed on the foot of a Panther forward, who tapped it into the empty cage. 

Marco Gutama was the star of that game, scoring goals in the 23rd and 56th minute. Brian Gonzalez, who came off the bench, scored the other, in the 64th minute.

The final could just as easily have been 6-0 had the Bonackers not missed so many chances. 

“We’re progressing,” McGovern said while walking off the field. “We’re almost halfway through the season.”

Justin Carpio scored the lone goal at Babylon. Again, said McGovern, “We had many scoring opportunities, but Justin’s goal proved to be enough.”

This year’s team has no go-to guy as in past years — a Nick West or Mario Olaya or Ernesto Valverde, for instance — but it moves the ball well and is competitive. Bayport-Blue Point was to have played here yesterday, a game that was to have begun the second half of the season. The last time out, Bayport bested the Bonackers 1-0.

The field hockey team on Monday was upset 1-0 by Pierson at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park. East Hampton went in at 4-1 and the Whalers went in at 1-4. But Pierson’s players were more aggressive — hungrier, as it were — than East Hampton’s throughout the 60 minutes of play. The Bonackers, who came in boasting a win over Shoreham-Wading River, could get nothing going on Pierson’s well-mowed grass pitch. The Whalers were awarded 10 penalty corner plays vis-a-vis East Hampton’s five, and scored on one of them, 12 minutes into the second half, as Mahlia Hemby tapped in a Paige Schaefer shot headed for the right corner of the cage. Charlotte Johnson, Pierson’s goalie, made seven saves that afternoon; Maddie Schenck, Bonac’s keeper, made six.

“Schaefer’s shot would have gone in anyway,” Gavin Menu of The Sag Harbor Express commented.

“It seems like they’re asleep out there,” an East Hampton fan said near the game’s end. Robyn Bramoff, East Hampton’s coach, obviously stung by the loss, demurred when asked afterward to account for it.

In other high school sports action this past week — a slow one news-wise given the Rosh Hashana holidays — the golf team on Monday defeated Westhampton Beach, a perennial rival, as Turner Foster, the defending county champion, shot a 2-under 32 on the South Fork Country Club’s front nine; the girls volleyball team that day improved to 5-2 by shutting out Mount Sinai 3-0, its fourth win in a row; the boys volleyball team likewise defeated East Islip, 3-1, improving its overall record to 3-4, and the girls tennis team’s record dropped to 2-5 in league play and to 2-7 over all as the result of losing 4-3 to Eastport-South Manor. East Hampton’s singles players having been doing well by and large, though the doubles teams have not.

Finally, Joe Vas, the school district’s athletic director, announced this week the homecoming schedule for Oct. 14. The field hockey team is to play Hampton Bays that day at 11 a.m. A field hockey alumnae game is to be played at 1:30. There’s a flag football game at 3 and a boys volleyball game, versus East Islip, at 6.

Golf, boys soccer, and boys volleyball are to play at home on Oct. 12, a Thursday, and girls volleyball is to play the next day. On the 14th, a Hall of Fame breakfast is to be held in the cafeteria at 8:30 a.m., following by Hall of Fame inductions in the auditorium at 9:15. 

Thursday, September 28

GOLF, Pierson vs. East Hampton, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 4 p.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, East Hampton at Mattituck, 4 p.m.

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

GIRLS SWIMMING, East Hampton at Deer Park, 5 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Miller Place, 5 p.m.

Saturday, September 30

RUGBY, Suffolk Rugby Club vs. Montauk R.C., Herrick Park, East Hampton, 1 p.m.

Sunday, October 1

TRIATHLONS, MightyMan Olympic and Half Ironman, 6:50 a.m.; MightyMan Sprint, 7:15, Fort Pond, Montauk.

MEN’S SOCCER, over-30 league, S.F.C. Newcastle vs. Hampton United, Hampton Bays High School, 5 p.m.

Monday, October 2

GIRLS TENNIS, Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

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

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Connetquot, nonleague, 7 p.m.

Tuesday, October 3

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

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

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

Wednesday, October 4

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

GIRLS SWIMMING, Hauppauge vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, East Hampton at Hampton Bays, 4:15 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Northport, 6:15 p.m.

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 league, Maidstone Market vs. Bateman Painting, 6:30 p.m.; East Hampton F.C.-Bill Miller vs. Tortorella Pools, 7:25, and Sag Harbor United vs. F.C. Tuxpan, 8:20, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

George Velmachos, an experienced fisherman, was gazing from Montauk Point out toward Block Island one day in late August, wondering why no one had yet attempted to swim that span (14 miles as the crow flies).

Two days later, he was told by his friend Dennis Loebs that, on Sept. 2, Spencer Schneider, a 57-year-old long-distance swimmer and corporate attorney who lives in Northwest Woods, would try, and was asked if he’d like to come along.

“It’s the local Everest of swimming,” Sinead FitzGibbon, Loebs’s wife and a strong endurance athlete herself (in addition to being a physical therapist with a Ph.D.), said during a telephone conversation Monday.

“It’s not just about endurance, training, strength, or conditioning — it’s about logistics,” she explained.

Schneider’s team also included Bonnie Schwartz, a well-known coach of open water swimmers who has swum the English Channel. It was she, said FitzGibbon, who timed his electrolyte and carbohydrate feedings, kept track of his stroke rate, and, through periodic questioning, kept track of the state of his mind.

As it turned out, primarily because Block Island Sound was several degrees colder than usual for the time of year, Schneider abandoned the attempt about four and a half hours into it, somewhat more than halfway to his goal. 

“He was disappointed initially, but just for a moment, which tells you a lot about him,” FitzGibbon reported. “In a matter of minutes, we were talking about a new plan for next year. And I have no doubt he’ll do it. You know, people think long-distance swimmers are super tough. Spencer’s got a different kind of toughness, an emotional resilience, a mental flexibility that enables him to adapt. It’s easy to be happy when everything’s going well. In defeat you see what people are made of.”

Two years ago at this time Schneider swam 17.3 miles from Ditch Plain, Montauk, to Amagansett’s Lazy Point, on the bayside — a swim that was authenticated by the Marathon Swimmers Federation.

“But swimming in the ocean is a lot different than swimming in the bay,” said Schneider. “I was expecting 71 or 72 degrees rather than 67 or 68. I was shivering, I felt as if I could have swum more . . . it was the cold more than anything, I wasn’t exhausted.”

“If the water had been three or four degrees warmer, he could have stayed in — he could have done it in nine hours, maybe eight if there’d been less of a chop,” said FitzGibbon, who, in a 20-foot oceangoing shell rowed along beside him, about 10 yards off, as Loebs piloted his former Maine lobster boat, Sandy, with Schwartz, Velmachos, and Kenneth Bernstein, the official observer, aboard.

FitzGibbon herself has made the crossing a number of times, with Paddlers 4 Humanity, in a shell and on a stand-up paddleboard. “It’s 14 miles as the crow flies, though we [Dan Farnham, a commercial fisherman and top-level mountain-biker, had plotted the route] were projecting 18 to 19.”

“Dennis brought the boat over from Sag Harbor. We met at a Lake Montauk marina at about 4:40 a.m. and went over to Turtle Cove from there. Spencer set off at about 5:30. It was choppy. The swells were out of the southwest, but the wind was north, off his shoulder. The waves and the wind were against each other. It was challenging. I rowed so I could always keep him in sight, and yet there were times, because of the chop, when he would disappear.”

Were a swimmer’s stroke rate to drop by five-plus per minute, say, his coach would know fatigue was setting in, said FitzGibbon, “but that didn’t happen in Spencer’s case. His strength wasn’t waning, he was mentally competent, but the cold numbs you. . . . A couple of degrees when you’re immersed can make a big difference. Brown fat helps your body retain heat, but in cold conditions it can burn rapidly and that can be critical metabolically over a five-hour span.”

While he had trained seriously for the crossing attempt, Schneider, who is a member of the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad and has also swum around Manhattan and has done three stages of the 120-mile 8 Bridges swim in the Hudson, said he would obviously have benefited from cold water training.

“I did the Ditch Plain to Lazy Point swim in 10 hours, but the water temperature was 72 degrees.”

Adding to the difficulty, FitzGibbon said, was the fact that the changing tide “would have swept him south of Block Island had we kept going. This swim is very technical. You’re pushed north initially by the incoming tide and, later, you’re pushed south by the outgoing tide. But the real killer was that the ocean was colder. Next year, Spencer may try it from mid to late August.”

“Absolutely, my hat’s off to him,” she said in answer to a question. “It was a valiant try. Once he does this, it will open the floodgates.”

Schneider said, “We’ll probably have to start earlier in the day next year so that we can time the tides better. . . . I learned a lot. It was uncharted water really when it comes to swimming. It’s trial and error. There was no history, as there is with the English Channel and the Catalina crossing.”

“Nobody lost heart,” Schneider added. “It will be more exciting next year. I could have swum more, but I was really, really cold. I said that was it. They said, ‘You’re almost there, just a few more hours.’ ”

“ ‘No, no,’ I said. I got no argument. . . . This was my first attempt. I won’t surrender next time.”

October 8, 1992

There’s no doubt now that the East Hampton High School football team can play.

The Bonackers proved it with a stunning 26-6 win over Bayport-Blue Point in the home opener Saturday. East Hampton’s coach, David MacGarva, had been hopeful going in, though not overly optimistic given Bayport’s 35-0 whitewashing of Mercy. But after his team dominated the first half, tallying three touchdowns and obstructing the opponent’s offense, the coach had to be a believer.

Perhaps there is something, after all, to the magic rock that Pat Bistrian Jr. donated last summer. “I picked out the biggest boulder in the yard,” said MacGarva. “I wanted to start a tradition, like they do at Clemson, where they touch the rock before they take the field. . . . Kids need something like that. It helps give them confidence.”

While making no particular claims for the massive boulder’s strength-imparting qualities, MacGarva was pleased with his players’ “intensity” throughout Saturday’s game.

The popular Shelter Island women’s 5-kilometer road race and racewalk has a men’s division this year, for the first time. 

Costa Rica, behind balanced scoring and superb goaltending by Ramon Valverde, rolled to an easy 5-0 victory over Colombia-America Sunday, a win that enabled it to capture the Montauk Friendship Soccer League’s round-robin playoff tournament.

. . . Following the icebreaker, by Marco Flores, Costa Rica’s backers launched into a cheer that would be echoed four more times: “Chiquitibun, a le bin bon ba, Costa Rica! Costa Rica! Rah, rah, rah!” A spectator loosely translated the cheer as, “Go for it, Costa Rica!”

. . . Two Costa Rica players, Carlos Vargas, who led the league in scoring with 13 goals, and Valverde, who allowed only 9 goals all season, received awards.

The excitement of the competition had been overshadowed in weeks leading up to the playoffs by neighbors complaining that the Sunday afternoon matches monopolized Lions Field and attracted a sometimes rowdy crowd that drank alcohol, played loud music, blocked traffic, and caused other problems. A petition sent to the East Hampton Town Board has asked that the games be moved elsewhere. Just a week ago, there was a confrontation between baseball and soccer players who wanted to use the field at the same time.

That Sunday’s matches would be played without trouble was assured Friday when the Town Board granted the league the necessary permit to reserve the field. The town also assigned at least six police officers to the match, who directed traffic and watched the contests. The crowd policed itself as well, with no music, barbecues, or alcohol in sight. 

Jose Bolivar, a Montauk landscaper who organized the tournament, said, “Now it’s better. There are plenty of kids, and families are bringing their picnics. . . . Montauk doesn’t have a lot of places for playing sports. We need a field.”

Bolivar was given a plaque by members of the Costa Rican team for his work on the tourney. With his son, Edison, a fifth grader at the Montauk School, translating, Bolivar thanked Robert Cooper and Jobette Edwards, the Town Board members who helped the league get its permit, Town Police Chief Thomas Scott and members of the force, and “the players who participated and made these games the best of the season.”

Thursday, October 5

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

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

GOLF, East Hampton vs. William Floyd, Rock Hill Country Club, Manorville, 4 p.m.

Friday, October 6

BOYS SOCCER, Westhampton Beach at East Hampton, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

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

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Harborfields, nonleague, 5 p.m.

Saturday, October 7

MEN’S SOCCER, Hampton United in over-30 friendly game, Water Mill Community Club, noon.

Sunday, October 8

SERPENT’S BACK DUA­THLON, 2.4-mile run, 13-mile mountain bike, and 2.4-mile run, Ed Ecker County Park, Navy Road, Montauk, 10:30 a.m.

Tuesday, October 10

GOLF, Ross School vs. East Hampton, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 4 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, East Hampton at Amityville, 4:30 p.m.

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

Wednesday, October 11

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

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 6 p.m.

Hampton United, the local entry in the Suffolk (over-30) Men’s Soccer League, defeated S.F.C. Newcastle 4-1 on Sunday in a game played in Hampton Bays. Quique Araya, the goalie, said goals were scored by Miguel Munoz (two), Jimmy Bedoya, and Jose Almansa. Romulo Tubatan, the right wing, assisted on Munoz’s goals — “two beautiful crosses,” Araya said. 

“It wasn’t as easy as the score indicated,” Araya added. “It was scoreless at the half. In the second, we were able to take advantage of gaps in their defense and kept the pressure on.”

The team, at 2-0-1, with a first-round League Cup win as well, was as of this week one of three undefeated teams in the first division, the others being Massapequa F.C., at 3-0-0, and Sporting America, at 2-0-1. 

“We haven’t gotten that many guys who played for the [now-defunct] East Hampton Football Club,” said Araya. “Only Almansa, Jorge Alvarado, and Luis Barrera.” 

Exhibitioning in some events, which is to say forgoing points that had been won, the East Hampton High School girls swimming team dunked Hauppauge 102-63 at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter Monday.

It was the third straight league win for Craig Brierley’s crew, which, as of Tuesday, led League III with a 3-0 record. In other meets this past week, the Bonackers defeated West Babylon 83-73 last Thursday, and on Sept. 26 lost 92-76 to Ward Melville, a nonleague opponent, a team that Brierley thinks may wind up being tops in the county.

Sophia Swanson, in the 200 freestyle, Isabelle Swanson, in the 200 individual medley, Catalina Badilla, in the 100 butterfly, Madison Jones, in the 100 freestyle, and Vanessa Betancur, in the 100 breaststroke, swam county-meet-qualifying times in the Ward Melville meet. 

Sophia Swanson, in the 200 free, and Julia Brierley, in the 100 breaststroke, were winners that day, and their teammates, the coach said, swam well as well, but Ward Melville, he said, simply had too much depth.

In other East Hampton High sports, Ryan Fowkes, the boys cross-country team’s top runner, won the small schools race in the FLrunners.com invitational in Lakeland, Fla., this past weekend, topping a field of 200. Geo Espinoza, the team’s number-two, who finished seventh, held the early lead, running the first mile in 5 minutes and 7 seconds. Seeded seventh, Kevin Barry’s team finished third.

Boys soccer had a four-game winning streak snapped at Shoreham-Wading River Monday. The Wildcats won it 2-1. Earlier in the week, on Sept. 27, East Hampton defeated Bayport-Blue Point 2-1 here.

The visitor’s goal, which came late in the game, went in off an East Hampton defender. Gustavo Gutama saved the day, however, when he banged in the rebound of a shot he’d taken with two and a half minutes left to play. Wilmur Guzman, who appears to have the team’s hardest shot — the rebound of his rocketed kick off the crossbar landed at Gutama’s feet — treated East Hampton to a 1-0 lead 15 minutes into the fray.

Don McGovern, East Hampton’s coach, said his team, which was 3-5 in League VI play as of Tuesday, would continue fighting for a playoff spot. Amityville as of that day led the league with a 7-0 record, followed by Shoreham-Wading River (6-2), Sayville (5-2), Bayport-Blue Point (3-4), East Hampton, Mount Sinai (2-5-1), and Miller Place (0-8).

Girls Volleyball continued its winning ways this past week, bageling Miller Place 3-0 last Thursday. Kathy McGeehan’s team was 6-2 in League V as of Tuesday, behind Sayville (8-0) and Westhampton Beach (7-1). The Miller Place win was the team’s fifth in a row, Mount Sinai, Islip, and Shoreham-Wading River being among the victims, all by 3-0 scores. The team’s last loss came at the hands of Westhampton on Sept. 8.

Field hockey, which had lost twice recently, to Pierson and Bayport-Blue Point, rebounded with a 2-0 win over Greenport-Southold Monday, improving its record to 5-3, the league’s fourth best, though because of the power point system, which takes the relative strengths of teams and their opponents into account, East Hampton was in ninth place on Tuesday among Division II’s 15 entries.

Golf, the league champion in 14 of the past 17 years, will be hard put to win the title again, though its coach, Claude Beudert, said during a telephone conversation Tuesday that it could if it runs the table in its final six matches, the last of which, at the end of the month, is to be played with Pierson on its home course, the Noyac Golf and Country Club.

Pierson defeated East Hampton 6-3 at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett last Thursday, winning the 3 points awarded to the team with the low aggregate score by two shots. East Hampton’s top three, Turner Foster, Nate Wright, and Jackson Murphy, all won, though Pierson’s number-four, Gary Baum, was the difference-maker, shooting a 41, five strokes better than he normally does, according to East Hampton’s coach.

East Hampton’s record was 2-2 as of Tuesday, trailing Pierson (5-0) and Westhampton Beach (3-2). The team was to have played at Southampton, which was also 2-2, on Tuesday.