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25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports

Thu, 04/06/2023 - 10:26

March 5, 1998

Ralph Epifanio’s Duck Walk Vineyard race in Southampton Sunday set two precedents presumably inasmuch as it was the first race in which contestants were asked to determine “to the nearest foot” the length of the course — around the 36-acre Duck Walk tract — and the first in which there was a wine, rather than a water, stop.

Forty-three runners, one baby, and one dog turned out for the season’s first run, which took the entrants in a looping fashion around the vineyard’s dormant vines, a distance that Epifanio later revealed to be 2.1625 miles.

The first finisher was Craig Gaites, a Pierson High School senior who competes with the East Hampton High School winter and spring track teams. Gaites’s time was 12 minutes and 27 seconds. Barbara Gubbins was the runner-up, because of a disqualification, in 13:06.

March 12, 1998

The Bridgehampton Killer Bees, their loss to Westhampton Beach in last Thursday’s county small schools championship game already receding into the dim past, regrouped at Marist College in Poughkeepsie Tuesday night, defeating Westchester County’s Class D champion, Millbrook, 65-57 in a state Class D southeast regional semifinal.

The Bees, whose star, Maurice Manning, accounted in one way or another for the bulk of his team’s points, did not exactly breeze to victory. Millbrook, a first-time tournament entrant, came back from being down by 14 points to pull to within two, at 55-53, with four minutes and 45 seconds left to play. But the Blazer fans’ excitement was momentary as, with Manning leading the way, the two-time-defending state Class D champions regained control of the tempo and the game.

Rob Balnis, a product of the Montauk Rugby Club’s youth movement, now a junior at Frostburg State College in Maryland, is playing rugby 7s on an international level.

A collegiate all-American, Balnis recently played with Atlantis, an East Coast all-star side that won a tournament in Argentina. “He, Artie Fitzpatrick, and Rob Anna played on that Atlantis side,” said Montauk’s spokesman, Frank Bistrian. “Of the 30 tries scored over the weekend, 18 were scored by Montauk players.”

Balnis was to have left last weekend for a 7s tournament in Fiji, a warmup for the World Cup that is to be played in Hong Kong. He was, said Bistrian, “the only East Coast player chosen for the 10-man squad,” which was to have flown to Fiji from California.

March 26, 1998

Carl Johnson, who coached the fabled Bridgehampton High School boys basketball team, the Killer Bees, to a third straight New York State Class D championship at Glens Falls last weekend, took his star player, Maurice Manning, out with 5 minutes and 24 seconds left to play in Saturday night’s final.

By the time he sat down, Manning, a man among boys on the basketball court, had clinched his third straight most valuable player award, a feat that may well never be duplicated, and the Bees, as the result of a devastating 39-6 tornado tear spanning the end of the second quarter and the first two and a half minutes of the fourth, had left the competitive but outclassed Jasper-Troupsburg team’s dreams in rubble. . . .

As aforesaid, it was the third straight state championship for Bridgehampton, which now has eight state titles, far more than any other school in the state. And it closed a circle of sorts, for Johnson himself, under Roger Golden, had played on the first Bridgehampton team to win three straight state titles, in 1978, ’79, and ’80. In between, John Niles coached the Bees to state championships in 1984 and ’86.


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