The junior varsity rugby 7s team that Kevin Bunce coaches fared well, he said, in a tournament in Pelham, N.Y., this past weekend, winning two and losing one.

“We shocked some people,” Bunce said during a conversation Monday at The Star. “These were good teams we played.”

But initially it was Bunce’s team that was shocked. “We were whomped 36-0 in our first game by French American Academy after a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride. It was kind of embarrassing, we weren’t paying attention, we were holding the ball on the ground. . . . We picked it up after that.”

“I’ve got a lot of ninth graders, but they’ve been playing together for a while and practicing with the men’s team at Herrick Park on Tuesday and Thursday nights. They have skills, they’re good. We picked it up in our second game, against Pelham High School. We beat them 18-10, and then we beat Thornton-Donovan 15-12.”

Five more tournament weekends loom, said Bunce, whose son, Kevin Jr., an East Hampton High School freshman, is on the team, as are Christian Soloviev, a Bonac sophomore who would have played football had East Hampton fielded a squad this fall, Craig and Jake Jablonski, sons of Mike Jablonski, a former Montauk Rugby Club player who lives in Mattituck, Jalal Sawas, Chris Vedder, and Tristan Costello, all of Shoreham-Wading River, and Mac Taylor and Connor Pearce, of Mount Sinai. Another Bonac sophomore, Devon Merrick, who Bunce said would have played football this fall, is to join the team this week.

“Most of our players are ninth graders. . . . But, as I said, they’re good. We turned it on against some good teams, teams that had a lot more kids than we did on the bench, but that’s actually better for us because all our kids get to play.”

“We go back to Pelham this week — most of the tournaments are there. Our last tournament is November 5th at Stony Brook University.”

Bunce, who, with Paul Cleary, proposed rugby as a viable contact sport alternative to football in these pages recently, said he was still hoping for recruits from the high school. “There are a lot of kids up there who’ve been in the weight room for three straight months getting ready for football who don’t know what to do. There are no intramurals. We’re hoping they’ll try rugby. They won’t know whether they like it or not until they play. I think it’s going to take off — every new kid who comes down to play likes it. They like the freedom of not having to put pads on, and they like it that they all can get the ball and run.” 

“We tell them to run until they’re taken down, and then to get the ball out to their teammates. Sevens is such a possession game. There’s a lot less kicking than in 15s. You keep on your feet and keep moving it and the next thing you know you’re in the try zone.”

As for the men’s squad, which plays in the Empire Geographical Union’s third division, “its numbers are down, but we’ve got some good young players on it — Brandon Johnson, Jordan Johnson, Axel Alanis, and George Calderon. Brandon and Axel are going to Suffolk Community now. Brandon plans to return to Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland after the new year, in time for their 7s season. They were the national 7s champs in Division III last spring. Josh King is a starting prop for A.I.C. [American International College in Springfield, Mass.] now. They’re ranked seventh in 15s. I’m hoping that maybe Axel can go to Stony Brook, where Jerry Mirro, who used to coach us in 7s, when we went to the national championships, is the coach.”

Rugby here, he reiterated, offered a springboard, because of his and other veteran coaches’ connections, to college scholarships, and to wide-ranging travel. 

“But first they have to be seen,” he added. In that regard, Bunce said he hopes to enter a college-age team in New York’s Thanksgiving weekend 7s tournament on Randalls Island. “When we go to these tournaments and the coaches see them, they’re all over these kids.”

EventPower’s staff had to step lively this past week inasmuch as it had, because of a slightly high blue-green algae reading in Fort Pond, to cancel the swim legs of Sunday’s three-part triathlon festival in Montauk. 

“We’ve been tracking the readings in Fort Pond since June,” Chris Pfund, the race director, said, “but, with a slightly high reading at the end of last week, we decided discretion was called for and therefore we announced on Facebook on Friday that we were canceling the swims.”

Thus what were to have been three triathlons, of Sprint, Olympic, and Half-Ironman distances, became three (run-bike-run) duathlons. “It’s the first time we’ve had to do this in our 14-year history,” Pfund said.

Despite the last-minute change, “we were prepared — we’ve had course maps taking this eventuality into account for some years now.”

So, rather than waves of swimmers, waves of runners were released one after the other in downtown Montauk, beginning at 6:50 a.m. (When this writer arrived, at around 7, he wondered at first if he hadn’t arrived very late inasmuch as triathlons usually end with runs of varying lengths — 5Ks, 10Ks, and, in the case of a Half-Ironman, a half-marathon.)

There were 769 finishers in all (there were 900 registrants) — 299 in the Olympic (1.9-mile run, 24.8-mile bike, and 6.2-mile run), 284 in the Sprint (1.2-mile run, 10.6-mile bike, and 3.1-mile run), and 196 in the Half (1.9-mile run, 56-mile bike, and half-marathon).

Kenny Moore, a 42-year-old builder from Sayville, won the Sprint, in 56 minutes and 4 seconds. Caitlin Dowd, a 27-year-old pro cyclist from Smithtown, was the women’s winner (and eighth over all). Moore and she are trained, Dowd said, by Mike Monastero.

“I’ve never won here before — I’ve been in the top 5 in the Olympic and in the top 10 in the Half,” said Moore, who rates himself as a better swimmer than runner. His 8-week-old daughter, Evelyn, was at the finish line with his wife, Suzanne, to greet him. 

When Moore mentioned during the course of the conversation that he was a mountain-biker, this writer said he should race in Mike Bahel’s mountain-bike duathlon at Ed Ecker County Park on Sunday, Oct. 8. “No,” he said, glancing at his wife and infant daughter, “I’m done.”

Dowd, a nurse in Stony Brook University Hospital’s medical intensive care unit, also said she was a better swimmer than runner, though she came in first among the women on the initial run before speeding off from the Fort Pond transition area on her bike.

Pfund said that following Friday’s no-swim announcement, he had been urged to hold the swims elsewhere . . . in the ocean, in Fort Pond Bay, in Lake Montauk . . . but each proposal, he said, posed significant problems having to do with logistics and safety. 

The length of the initial runs, he said, was keyed to turnaround points — at the Second House Museum in the case of the shorter one, and South Elroy Drive in the case of the longer one.

Jonathan Joyce, a Drexel University senior from Chicago, posted the fastest Olympic distance time, 1:49:08, though he and his fellow collegians — there were teams from West Point, Northeastern, Cornell, Bentley, Coast Guard, the University of Massachusetts, Hamilton, Columbia, and Penn State — were apparently considered a separate Olympic distance category.

Three Tims — Timothy Clarke, at 4:05, Timothy Smith, at 4:08:28, and Timothy Walton, at 4:11:47 — topped the Half-Ironman field. Bahel, Body Tech’s owner, was in that race too, finishing 25th, in 4:58:40. John Broich of Sag Harbor was 31st, in 5:01:30. Krystal Shearer of New York City, 24th over all, in 4:58:24, was the Half’s women’s winner. Elizabeth Pratt of Bronxville was the women’s Olympic winner, in 2:05:21.

The Garrys, Kira and her father, William, carried Montauk’s banner, he finishing 13th in the Sprint, in 1:02:16, and she finishing second among the women in the Olympic distance, in 2:07:21. Kira, 24, who will compete with the Central Park Track Club’s indoor track team in the 5,000, ran the last three miles barefoot, her feet having become numb as the result of the 25-mile bike leg.

The races also drew 40 members of TriAchilles International, based in New York City, whose young French-born director, Charles Catherine, said triathlons were great therapy and confidence-boosters for Achilles club athletes who have lost their sight, or limbs, or who might be brain-injured or autistic. Besides building self-confidence, arduous triathlon competitions, said Catherine, helped to build trust among athletes and their guides, and provided a springboard for friendships as well. 

Catherine, who is blind, said he hopes to make France’s Paralympic triathlon team. He and another Achilles athlete, Abbey Lanier — who competed in the Sprint that day, as did Catherine — have competed in a national triathlon, in Santa Cruz, Calif. He’s to compete next week in a nationwide event in Sarasota, Fla. Lanier, 26, a three-year triathlete whose guide was Michael Alcamo of Huntington, ran with him her fastest 5K that day, a 26:05.

Swimming was the toughest event for visually impaired athletes, Catherine said, when asked, “because you have no point of reference — you can’t hear, you can become disoriented. . . . Most of us didn’t learn how to swim when we were young. It’s an acquired skill.” 

Still, said Alcamo, “we were a little disappointed that the swims were canceled, but better safe than sorry. Most of us liked the duathlon format.” 

On their tandem bike, he said, in answer to a question, “I’m the ‘pilot,’ and Abbey’s the ‘stoker,’ the engine. I tell her when we’re coasting and when we’re pedaling, and I alert her to turns. There was a 180-degree turn on the bike course today — we practiced that turn at 6 o’clock this morning!”

Homecoming Schedule

East Hampton High’s homecoming athletic schedule is as follows:

Thursday — golf versus Westhampton Beach at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett, 4 p.m.; boys soccer versus Mount Sinai, 4:30, and boys volleyball versus Sayville, 5.

Friday — pep rally, 1:55 to 2:20 p.m.; girls soccer versus Harborfields, and girls volleyball versus Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30.

Saturday — Hall of Fame breakfast, 8:30 a.m., followed by induction ceremonies; field hockey versus Hampton Bays, 11; color run, 11:30; field hockey alumnae game, 1:30 p.m.; flag football game, 3, and boys volleyball versus East Islip, 6.

Baseball Fund-Raiser

The East Hampton High School baseball team will benefit from a casino night at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett on Saturday from 6:30 to 10 p.m.

Vinnie Alversa, the varsity coach, said the money raised will go to the team’s spring training trip to Florida. “We will be practicing at the Rays’ former spring training complex, the Walter Fuller Complex in St. Petersburg, we could be playing at Eckerd College there as well, and also we might possibly play a game at the Phillies’ former spring training stadium” in Clearwater.

Youth Football

East Hampton’s fifth-and-sixth-grade football team will play a home game on the high school’s turf field on Sunday at 10:30 a.m.

Young Rider Wins Gold

Phoebe Topping, the daughter of Jagger and Amanda Topping of Swan Creek Farms in Bridgehampton, recently won the individual gold medal and was a member, as well, of the gold-medal-winning team in the United States Hunter Jumper Association’s finals in Princeton, N.J.

“Phoebe and her horse, Epic, competed in four classes from Friday through Sunday, all of which were clear rounds,” her mother said in an email. “She not only helped her team win the gold medal in the Nations Cup format, but also won the individual gold. Needless to say, we are tremendously proud of her. She’s worked very hard and loves her sport — especially her horses.”

Thursday, October 12

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

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

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

Friday, October 13

HOMECOMING PEP RALLY, East Hampton High School gym, 1:55-2:20 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

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

Saturday, October 14

HALL OF FAME, breakfast and induction, East Hampton High School, 8:30-10:30 a.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, Hampton Bays at East Hampton, 11 a.m.

FRESHMAN CLASS 2K, color run, East Hampton High School, 11:30 a.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, alumnae game, East Hampton High School, 1:30 p.m.

FLAG FOOTBALL, game, East Hampton High School, 3 p.m.

DANCE TEAM, and band performance with Homecoming King and Queen ceremony, East Hampton High School turf field, 5 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Islip at East Hampton, 6 p.m.

CASINO NIGHT, to benefit East Hampton baseball team’s spring training trip to Florida, American Legion Hall, Amagansett, 6:30-10 p.m.

Sunday, October 15

YOUTH FOOTBALL, fifth-and-sixth-grade team home game, East Hampton High School, 10:30 a.m.

Monday, October 16

FIELD HOCKEY, Pierson at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

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

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

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Smithtown West, 5 p.m.

Tuesday, October 17

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Kings Park, 6 p.m.

Wednesday, October 18

FIELD HOCKEY, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

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

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

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Sachem East, 6:30 p.m.

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

October 22, 1992

Wedge blocking has been around since football began in America. Pudge Heffelfinger, Yale’s fabled left guard, solved the Flying V in the 1888 Princeton-Yale game by leaping and planting both feet in the point man’s chest after taking a running start, paving a path to the ball-carrier.

Heffelfinger’s zealous response is no longer allowed, though the wedge — a massed formation of linemen behind which the fullback plows forward — can come tumbling down if the defensive linemen stay low and cut the legs out from under the point man.

Sad to say, East Hampton’s defensive line did not do enough of that on Saturday. Coupled with Babylon’s success at running the option play — faked handoffs to the fullback followed by quarterback sweeps of the flanks — the wedge did the Bonackers in 40-25.

. . . The season is now really on the line for East Hampton. The team, it appears, must win all of its remaining games — with Hampton Bays, Stony Brook, Port Jefferson, and Mount Sinai — to make the playoffs.

The Springs Youth Association hopes to attract fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade boys and girls from all over town to play flag football behind the Springs School from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Kelly McKee, Jeff Brown, and Steve Scott will be in charge.

Lara DeSanti scored both goals as the Smith College field hockey team defeated Babson 2-0 Saturday, while her high school coach, Ellen Cooper, watched. Cooper’s daughter, Becky, an East Hampton senior, also came to the game.

Carolina Vargas, another Cooper protégée, played an inside forward position for Babson. “I think the Babson coach will find that Carolina will play better at left wing,” said Cooper. “She’s like an eagle with her wings clipped.”

October 29, 1992

Kathleen McManus and Hannah Smith, East Hampton High School’s doubles entry in the Suffolk County girls tennis tournament, won the school’s first county title in doubles on Tuesday by defeating Patchogue-Medford’s Meredith Dragonette and Eileen Thompson 6-3, 6-0.

“Kathleen and Hannah played terrifically,” said John Goodman, a veteran boys and girls coach, who helps Jeff Yusko with the girls team. “Any coach would have been proud of the way they played — they kept the ball low, made the others hit up, played sequences of shots that led to putaways, and didn’t make too many errors. They were confident and had fun, which is what playing sports is all about.”

As they have all season, the senior team breezed through the tournament without losing a set, extending their match skein to 18-0. Dragonette and Thompson were also undefeated going into the final.

East Hampton’s field hockey team was not to be denied Friday, as it shut out Southold-Greenport 5-0 to close out the season as the undefeated League Five champion.

Bridget Behan, a junior, smacked in two goals, and Ellamae Gurney, a junior, Heather McCormack, a sophomore, and Kelly McMahon, a freshman, each had one. Gurney also had two assists. “We played the whole second half with our second-stringers,” Ellen Cooper, the coach, added.

The East Hampton High School boys cross-country team, which has been something of a pleasant surprise for its coach, Kevin Barry, has finished the regular season as the league champion, at 6-0, defeating previously unbeaten Shoreham-Wading River at Sunken Meadow on Oct. 3.

“It was a very exciting meet given that both teams ran their best times over the 2.8-mile course,” said Barry in an emailed report. Ryan Fowkes, East Hampton’s number-one runner, won, in 14 minutes and 52 seconds, followed close behind by Shoreham’s Joey Krause, in 14:58. Geo Espinoza, Bonac’s number-two, placed fourth, in 15:19, followed by a Shoreham runner, after which came Omar Leon, Ethan McCormac, and Frank Bellucci, all Bonackers. 

Moreover, Robert Weiss, Avery Martinsen, and Nicolas Villante, who placed 12th, 13th, and 14th over all, “ran personal best times,” said Barry. The team is to compete in the Brown University invitational this Saturday, and will run in the county’s divisional meet at Sunken Meadow on Oct. 24. The state qualifier is to be contested on Nov. 3.

“Four of us will probably be contending to go upstate,” said Barry, “us, Shoreham-Wading River, Southampton, and Westhampton Beach.”

Leon, who had come over from boys soccer, Weiss, who had come over from football, and Martinsen, who had come over from boys volleyball, helped to strengthen Barry’s squad this fall.

East Hampton’s girls cross-country team, coached by Diane O’Donnell, did well too, finishing the regular season at 3-2 thanks to “a dramatic double win over Westhampton Beach and Islip” on Oct. 4. The Bonackers swept the top three spots, with Isabella Tarbet, a ninth grader, in 18:07, Liana Paradiso, a senior, in 18:12, and Ava Engstrom, a ninth grader, in 18:15. “The next nearest finisher was a Westhampton runner, at 18:34,” O’Donnell said in an emailed report. Danielle Lackner and Sydney Salamy were East Hampton’s fourth and fifth scorers.

Recently, in the Suffolk coaches’ freshman race at Sunken Meadow, Engstrom placed third, in 9:21, and Tarbet eighth, in 9:29. Paradiso was eighth in the varsity race, a 5K, in 23:18. On Sept. 26, the Bonac girls, racing against Harborfields and Rocky Point, lost to the former, 25-36, and defeated the latter, 22-33. Paradiso was the overall winner on the 2.8-mile course, in 18:23, Tarbet was fourth, in 19:15, and Engstrom was sixth, in 19:22. Lackner, at 21:48, and Aveen Hallissey, at 23:31, were East Hampton’s other scorers.

In related news, Erik Engstrom, Ava’s older brother, who runs for the University of Massachusetts, was named the Atlantic 10 Conference’s performer of the week of Sept. 18-24. The sophomore was the Minutemen’s top finisher for the second time in his career, with the 25:32 (a 5:08-per-mile pace) he ran over an 8K course in the Coast-to-Coast Battle in Boston, a meet contested by 18 teams. UMass placed 13th.

In other fall sports news, the girls swimming team continued to lead its league at 3-0 as of Monday, and the girls volleyball team, coached by Kathy McGeehan, defeated Harborfields 3-1 in a match played Friday, boosting its record to 6-4. One more win, McGeehan said Monday, and the team will be in the playoffs. Mikela Junemann had 20 kills versus Harborfields, Elle Johnson had 30 assists (and four service aces), and Molly Mamay had 27 digs. The match marked the return to the lineup of Zoe Rae Leach, a defensive standout, who finished with 10 digs. Madyson Neff had four blocks.

In other recent matches, East Hampton lost 3-1 to Sayville, and 3-0 to Westhampton Beach, the league’s top teams. The Bonackers dropped the third set with Westhampton 26-24 after having taken a 24-23 lead on a kill through a double block by Neff.

The visitors sided out when an outside hitter rather than swing through the ball dinked it over the net, and took the lead with a well-timed block. A hard kill that zipped by Neff at midcourt finished East Hampton off.

Leach, because of a nagging back problem, did not play that day — nor did she play much in the Sayville match. “Their ball control was better than ours,” McGeehan said by way of explanation afterward. Her team had led 23-20 in the fourth set at Sayville, she added, “but couldn’t finish — it’s a sign of immaturity.”

Friday marked the first time in her 37-year coaching career, McGeehan said, that she’d been red-carded, for having protested “very late double-hit calls” on her setter, Johnson.

Several other East Hampton teams, namely boys soccer, field hockey, and golf, sported winning records as of Monday. Boys soccer defeated Sayville 1-0 on Oct. 4, its goal having been scored by Jean Paul Palacios. It was the boys’ fifth win in the six games played since the team lost 3-2 here to undefeated Amityville.

The field hockey team, coached by Robyn Mott, as of Monday had won three in a row, over Greenport-Southold, Hampton Bays, and Sayville, after losing 1-0 to Bayport-Blue Point on Sept. 27. And golf was 4-2 as of Monday, behind Pierson (6-0) and Westhampton Beach (5-2). Westhampton is to play here today, at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett.

As for the rest, boys volleyball, coached by Josh Brussell, was 3-4 as of Monday, girls tennis, coached by Katie Helfand, was 2-8, and girls soccer, coached by Cara Nelson, was 0-11.

A brigade of 20 or so golf carts shuttled behind U.S.G.A. officials at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club one bright, breezy day last week to view some of the changes made since the U.S. Open was last played there in 2004.

A brisk wind was blowing out of the southwest — the prevailing wind direction here — and gusting up to 25 to 30 miles per hour. The wind can often be a defender of par at Shinnecock, as it was in 1986, when only Raymond Floyd wound up under par, by one stroke.

In 2004, the greens were the bogey, especially on the final day when, water-starved, they became exceedingly quick. The only one who wasn’t complaining was the winner, Retief Goosen, who finished at 4-under. For the rest, including Phil Mickelson, the runner-up, they were hellish. Mickelson said they were so hard that cleats would not have penetrated them. 

The low-scoring amateur, Spencer Levin, likened them to the asphalt on Tuckahoe Road, and Jim Furyk and Joe Ogilvie bowed on being given a standing ovation by the five-deep gallery after they’d parred the Redan, the notorious par-3 seventh hole, one of a half-dozen stops on the U.S.G.A.’s media tour, one of which was just about where, in 1995, Corey Pavin fell to his knees after hitting a 200-yard approach shot with a 4 wood up and onto the 18th green that won him his first-ever major championship. 

Could what happened in 2004 happen again, Mark Herrmann, Newsday’s golf writer, asked the chief tour guide, Jeff Hall, the U.S.G.A.’s managing director for rules and Open championships.

While the U.S.G.A. would want the greens to be firm and fast, he was “very confident,” said Hall, that what happened in ’04 would not be repeated. In fact, he added, there had been no such problem at any of the Opens played since that year. 

Firmness, speed, and the health of the grass can all be regularly monitored now, by three different tools, it was said, whereas only one — the Stimpmeter — was available in 2004. They would do their best, Hall said, to leave nothing to chance.

“The major changes,” this writer’s golf expert, John Kernell, said, “are that they’ve lengthened the course since 2004 [from 6,996 to 7,445 yards], and it’s treeless, presumably the way it was when it was built in 1891.” That, said the club and U.S.G.A. officials, was their intent — to return the course to the way it was when it was first laid out.

“With the deforestation — some, as you heard them say, by nature, some by design — they’ve made it more links-style. I think the players will like it. It’s one of the iconic courses in the country. There will be no buffers anymore. I think the U.S.G.A. is hoping the deforestation will really challenge them.”

“The landing areas are still wide, though the changed angles — 10 new tees attest to that — on some holes will effectively narrow them, and, of course, the rough will be rough.”

“As with any Open,” Kernell said, “it will come down to who’s hitting the fairways and who’s putting. It looks like they’ve done a wonderful job.”

Tickets for the 118th U.S. Open, to be played at Shinnecock from Thursday, June 14, through Sunday, June 17, can be had online through usga.org.

Chris Daily, 58, of Farmingdale and Florida, won Mike Bahel’s Serpent’s Back Duathlon (2.3-mile run, 11.5-mile bike, and 2.3-mile run) in Montauk’s Hither Hills Sunday, in 1 hour and 34 minutes, bettering a longtime rival, Joe Amato, a Pierson High School cross-country coach, by a little less than six minutes.

Daily, who last won this race in 2005, said afterward that “the last time I was here, about three or four years ago, I broke my foot on a rock with about a mile and a half to go. I was so happy to finish second.”

So happy apparently that it took him 11 days to go to the hospital to have the foot looked at. There were myriad opinions. The foot has since healed, as has, Daily added, a badly hurt back and shoulder, which he injured in a mountain bike crash. Sunday’s was the first combined run and mountain bike race he’d done in the past three years.

“He’s a warrior,” said Amato. “We’ve raced against each other for 30 years. Sometimes I can catch him on the bike, but he’s an outstanding runner. . . . I didn’t catch him on the bike today. I’ve got to get in shape.”

The race, which never draws a large crowd, but always an enthusiastic one, is in its 14th year, and during that span the bike course has periodically been changed a bit, once so radically that Dan Farnham, who had laid it out the day before, made a wrong turn owing to the fact that Bahel had rethought it the morning of.

Farnham, who demurred when this writer told him people were always telling him he was the best mountain biker out here, and Paul Hamilton won the male relay division — and the race, for that matter — in 1:29:00. Peter Goldwasser of Glastonbury, Conn., was third, in 1:42:57.

Caroline Cashin, who recently did the three-day, 300-kilometer Epic Israel mountain bike race with her husband, Ed, in Tel Aviv, after which she raced up and down Vermont’s Mount Ascutney, winning her Category 1 age group, teamed with Beth Feit and the Cashins’ 11-year-old daughter, Dylan, to win the women’s relay division. 

Gabriella Vides-Barry, 16, of Queens was the sole female to do the entire run-bike-run, in 1:52:25. Omar Leon, 18, an East Hampton High School junior, was the fourth-place finisher over all, in 1:46:47. 

“You’ve got to raise your seat,” Sharon McCobb, the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s president (and a competitor that day in the relay), said to Leon. “That way you’ll get more power.”

“If East Hampton goes upstate in cross-country, he’ll be the reason,” she said to this writer. Cut from the boys soccer team earlier this fall, Leon went out for boys cross-country, much to his teammates’ and Kevin Barry’s delight. He’s been its number-three runner ever since.

Leon’s initial run time, of around 13 minutes, was Sunday’s fastest.

Two of the contestants, Tim Treadwell and Walter Cooke, eschewed running for swimming as their last leg, with Bahel’s approval. He thought that three-quarters of a mile in Fort Pond Bay would be the equivalent of a 2.3-mile trail run, and so they swam instead.

On emerging from the placid water — they’d swum down to Navy Beach and back to Ed Ecker County Park off Navy Road, where the duathlon’s transition area was — Treadwell said he would suggest to Bahel that next year an upside-down triathlon (run-bike-swim) be added to the duathlon. There were such races, he said, elsewhere in the country, and they were, assuming lifeguards were willing to stay out in the water for an hour or so longer than they ordinarily would to make sure everyone was safe, the better way to go, given the fact that health crises are more likely to occur in the swims owing largely to hyperthermia. 

The upside-down format made more sense, said Treadwell, “because you’ve got fresh legs for the run and can go all out on the bike before stretching out in the water, which felt very good today. That’s the way God intended it to be,” he said, with a smile. “Again assuming you can keep the swimmers, who will be greatly spread out rather than bunched in waves, safe.”

McCobb chose the event to announce that one of its competitors, 56-year-old John Broich (who had been at his daughter Olivia’s wedding on Shelter Island the night before), was the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s pick as male athlete of the year. He will be so acknowledged at OMAC’s holiday dinner in early December. 

She added, in answer to a question, that its female athlete of the year, community service award, and male high school athlete of the year recipients had been picked too, though they, she said, had not been notified yet.

Broich, a retired biology teacher who lives in Sag Harbor and is in his 30th year coaching cross-country and track at Westhampton Beach High School, has been triathloning, he said, since 1984, a span that has included “seven or eight Lake Placid Ironmans.”

“I’m better at the short distances, but I always pick the longer ones because of the challenge.” 

“I’m trying to qualify for Hawaii,” he said in answer to a question.” That’s on my bucket list.”

Next up for endurance athletes is the Brewathlon at the Montauk Brewery on Saturday, Nov. 4, at 2 p.m.

Four-person relay teams are to row (on machines), bike, run, and row. Chugging had been one of the legs (and a reportedly crucial one) in the past, but had since been chucked, said McCobb, “because of insurance concerns.”

The Section XI Warriors, a young rugby 7s side with players spanning East Hampton and East Islip, continue to impress, according to one of their coaches, Kevin Bunce, who said that the junior varsity side won two games and tied one at a tournament in Pelham, N.Y., this past weekend.

“This was the second of a five-tournament series, and our kids played really, really well,” Bunce said Monday morning. “They’re spreading the ball out, moving it from side to side and finding the gaps, and they’re also tackling well, hitting low with their heads out and wrapping up the arms, taking the ball carriers down quickly and playing the ball out. You don’t have to be big in rugby; if you’re doing things correctly technique-wise, it’s anybody’s game.”

“Since we’re not the biggest team, we’re staying away from scrums and lineouts and not kicking much. We’re keeping the ball in our hands, which translates into points.”

The Warriors, who play fellow high school junior varsity teams, from Westchester County by and large, defeated Thornton-Donovan 19-0 to begin with, after which they played to a 20-20 tie with Pelham High School, and edged a combined Keio Academy and French American Academy team 25-23. “We took it to them — that was a terrific win,” said Bunce. “They beat us 36-0 the week before. Their coach was kind of surprised, not too happy. I gather they hadn’t lost in a while.”

“Our kids tackled hard, they passed the ball, they’d learned their lessons. The key was the tackling. We were scoring every time we touched the ball.”

Among the Warriors’ scorers, Bunce said, were Christian Soloviev, Jake Jablonski (Bunce’s fellow coach Mike Jablonski’s son), Kevin Bunce Jr., Chris Vedder (who wrestles at 126 pounds for Shoreham-Wading River), and Jacob Ehrens, a St. Anthony’s student from East Islip.

“We’ve been getting about 20 at our practices” at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and at Shoreham-Wading River on Wednesdays and Fridays. “Fourteen made the trip. We’ve been renting a 15-person van from A-Car Auto Rental in Blue Point, which gave us a good deal.”

The winner of the series will be determined at the end of it, using win-loss records and points for and against. “At the moment, we’re a solid second,” said Bunce.

He added that Jablonski and he plan to pick Long Island select 15s and 7s sides in the spring, teams that will enter regional tournaments, “where college coaches see you. . . . We’ll send out letters to the some seven high schools on Long Island that play rugby and have tryouts in the spring, probably at either Calverton or Stony Brook. We’ll see what happens.”

The “Killer Bees” documentary film that premiered recently at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, a film by Orson and Ben Cummings that followed Bridgehampton High School’s 2015-16 boys basketball team for the better part of a year, was, by and large, well received, though there were some demurrals from former members of that storied team, Nick Thomas and the Bees’ present head coach, Ron White, among them, who maintained there was more to the story.

“I appreciate Orson and Ben’s effort,” White said following a lively four-hour reunion of Killer Bee alumni Friday night at the school, a free-flowing discussion of what it was like to be a part of the school’s rich tradition of state and county championships dating to 1946. “But they could have elaborated a little bit more.” 

White said he had seen the film twice, and had as a result tempered somewhat his initial criticism, to wit, that the overall effect of the hour-and-22-minute documentary, which the Cummingses hope will be distributed nationally, had been melancholic. “I still think, though, that you were left wondering where the direction was, where was the perseverance.”

“I thought the movie didn’t encapsulate the entire legacy,” said Thomas, who, with The Southampton Press’s editor, Joe Shaw, moderated the ad hoc round-table discussion. He, too, appreciated the documentarians’ effort, he said, “but there are more pieces to the puzzle. . . . Perhaps some of this, what you saw and heard tonight, could be added.”

During a question-and-answer session following the premiere, the Cummingses, who were not at Friday’s session, said their major focus had been to follow the fortunes of the Carl Johnson-coached 2016 team, which, as it turned out, wound up one game shy of advancing to the state’s Class D Final Four in Glens Falls. 

Bridgehampton basketball served as a lens through which such issues as race, income inequality, a skewed judicial system, and the gentrification of a cohesive neighborhood, a neighborhood in which they grew up and knew well, could also be treated, they have said.

Had Roger Golden and John Niles, two of the Bees’ former coaches, lived to be interviewed, and had Charles Manning, who led them to a state championship the year before, not transferred to Long Island Lutheran, the compelling story of how the Bees had come to be that the Cummingses have told undoubtedly would have been fleshed out even further. 

“I had no problem with it,” a former Killer Bee, Tim Jackson, said in a separate conversation following East Hampton High’s Hall of Fame induction ceremonies Saturday morning. “I thought they did a good job — they did the best they could with what they had.”

At any rate, the panel at the school, attended by 13 former Bees (or, in some cases, “Bridgies,” as they were known before the early 1980s), was, as aforesaid, lively, and, presumably for the participants (Thomas, White, Carl Johnson, Andre Johnson, Raymon Charlton, Jerry Jones, Bobby Hopson, Darryl and Michael Hemby, Nathaniel Dent, Courtney Turner, Maurice Manning, and Ray Gilliam), cathartic.

They spoke of the rigorous proving-ground pickup games they played at the Bridgehampton Child Care Center on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, and in the school’s gym on Sunday mornings, trials by fire that the younger aspirants took very seriously. Would they survive their rite of initiation? Would the older players acknowledge that they had game? Would they get a chance to wear the black-and-gold uniform and represent the tiny school at the highest levels, at the county and state tournaments? (Bridgehampton has won nine state titles to date, and is the only Class D public high school to win a Federation title to boot, in 1980.)

Charlton, a Deer Park resident and Marist College graduate who worked full time for the Long Island Lighting Company while coaching Central Islip’s team for 17 years and Bay Shore’s for five, said Bridgehampton had done a lot for him; it had helped him get started. People had to buy tickets to attend the home games then, and the gym, he said, was always packed. Afterward, he told this writer that the late John Niles had entrusted him with the keys to the school on weekends so that he, “obsessed by the game at the time,” could practice.

Carl Johnson, recently retired from coaching — the only coach in the state to win three championships as a player and four as a coach — recalled idolizing Gordon Johnson and Jerry Jones’s ’74 team, which he still maintains was Bridgehampton’s greatest. He was so into it, he said, that he asked its players if he could carry their bags. “I lived and died with them,” he said. “I cried when they lost in the playoffs.” As for his own team, which won state championships in 1978, ’79, and ’80, “We lost maybe nine games in three years.”

All agreed that they had come from a culture of winning, that the older players in passing the baton, as it were, expected the younger ones to excel.

“I was embraced by Bridgehampton,” said Thomas, a New York University graduate who coaches Center Moriches’s team and a powerful A.A.U. team at the Southampton Recreation Center. 

“I was awed to be part of this program,” said Bobby Hopson, a Wagner College alumnus who is Carl Johnson’s brother and a member of Wagner’s Hall of Fame. He still holds the school’s single-game scoring record of 52 points. “It’s hard to explain if you’re not an athlete,” said Hopson, who finished, if memory serves, with 1,776 points. “It’s hard to relate what we had to go through. . . .”

And Alexander Hamilton — the high school in Westchester County — continued to haunt his dreams, he said. The Bees’ narrow losses to Hamilton in state regional playoff games in the early 1990s “have bothered me more than anything. . . . I’ve got a brother who has won three titles as a player and four as a coach. He has five titles and I don’t have one. I can’t take it anymore!” he said, with a broad smile.

Hopson and others who spoke that night tipped their hats to their coaches, Golden, Niles, and William Hartwell Jr. among them, each of whom, they said, had helped to shape their lives.

On the subject of low points, even Maurice (Mo) Manning, certainly one of Bridgehampton’s best players ever, could recall one, to wit, the time he missed two crucial free throws that would have nailed down a win over William Floyd — a far larger school — in the final seconds of the 1997 overall county championship game. Floyd was to win it 41-40 thanks to a buzzer-beating 3-pointer that literally felled the Bees’ star, who lay prostrate on the Stony Brook University gym floor as Floyd and its fans celebrated.

Manning, a two-time national junior college champion when he attended Suffolk Community College-Selden, is to assist White, who played with him on one of those national-championship teams, in coaching the 2017-18 Killer Bees. Manning, whose basketball I.Q. was off the charts, everyone acknowledged, said afterward that he would do his best to get the players to think on the court. He was happy, he added, to be able to give back.

As are White and Johnson, who will focus henceforth, he said, on the younger kids. 

Giving back, everyone agreed, was essential in life, and imperative if the proud river of Bridgehampton basketball is to keep flowing.