Sergey Avramenko, 37, of Hampton Bays, Jenny Grimshaw, 31, of San Francisco, and her mother, Judi Donnelly, 65, of Southampton and Wellesley, Mass., the first among breast cancer survivors, were winners at the 27th Ellen’s Run in Southampton Sunday.
Avramenko, a Belarus native who lives in Hampton Bays, won the 5K race in 16 minutes and 46.78 seconds, despite being on the mend from having suffered a herniated disk last fall. He won it last year too, though the lead car took him the wrong way in nearing the finish at the Southampton Intermediate School. Recently, a wrong turn resulted in his finishing second at Jordan’s Run in Sag Harbor. This time, there were no miscues.
The winner attributed his back problem to the facts that his mileage had been up there, at around 75 miles per week, and that he is an Uber driver. The injury kept him out of last October’s Hamptons half-marathon, but now, he said, he is feeling better owing to physical therapy, to having reduced his mileage to a “not so crazy” 45 per week, and to the fact that he had gotten married in March. He is to visit his wife, Angelika, and his parents in Belarus this fall, he said.
Grimshaw, who ran cross-country and track at Yale, where she majored in computer science, is a member of San Francisco’s Impala Racing Team, and has been visiting her mother and father for the past couple of weeks. She was fourth over all among the 569 finishers, in 17:08.77. She has run Ellen’s “five or six times” before, she said, but until now had not won it. Her mother, a breast cancer survivor since 1995, has topped that category “four or five times.”
The race raises money for the breast cancer work of the Ellen Hermanson Foundation founded in the mid-1990s by Ellen Hermanson’s sister, Dr. Julie Ratner. The large turnout Sunday included Dermot Dolan, who topped the male 60-to-69 division, Mike Bottini, who placed third in that category, and Paul Maidment, who won among the 70-to-79 males. Jason Green, 19, of Shelter Island, was the runner up in 16:57.09.
Another worthy organization, Hoops 4 Hope, benefited from a pleasing turnout ats its inaugural 3-on-3 basketball tournament at East Hampton High School Saturday. Since the mid-1990s, Hoops 4 Hope has overseen centers devoted to the well-being of youth in Zimbabwe and South Africa, using basketball as the hook. It is now working with youngsters here as well.
Anthony Allison, who oversaw the double-elimination tourney, said afterward that 24 teams had shown up to play — 16 in the 13-to-17 bracket and eight in the 18-plus one — and that among the spectators had been Mitch Kupchak, the Charlotte Hornets’ general manager, Kevin Grevey, who had played with the Washington Bullets and Milwaukee Bucks, Nat Butler, a longtime photographer of National Basketball Association players, and Howard Wood, who led the late Bonac coach Ed Petrie’s 1977 team — of which Allison also was a member — to a state championship. The actor-director Ed Burns was among those who played in the 18-plus division.
There was half-court action for most of the day at four of the six baskets that border the court that has been dedicated in Coach Petrie’s name. Before the tournament began, Mark Crandall, Hoops 4 Hope’s founder, said Levy Mwanza, a native of Zimbabwe and longtime East Hampton resident who works with the organization, “led 150 people shoulder to shoulder in a circle in which the aim of ubuntu — that we’re all in this together, that we’re powered by people — was explained. He also led us in waves of clapping, the idea being that we had to work together as a team, which was quite beautiful. That circle — in which there’s no beginning and no end — set the tone.”
A team made up of Ben Zazula, Mike Locascio, and Jack Freel won the 13-to-17 championship. Zazula and Locascio are East Hampton High varsity players. Freel, a former Bonacker, is now at Fordham Prep.
The 18-plus division was won by the Larry Bottles team (Lawrence Edelstein, Nick Wiener, and Ryan Essner).