The invitational East Hampton ocean lifeguard tournament is to be held Thursday, July 27, at East Hampton Village's Main Beach and will be bigger than it's ever been, what with 14 men's and nine women's teams.
A captains' meeting at 3 p.m. will start it off.
John Ryan Jr., the chief of East Hampton Town's lifeguards, said during an interview at the Amagansett Life-Saving Station Friday morning that the tourney would be a challenge to manage, given all the contestants — men's and women's events, for instance, would have to be held separately, he said, rather than jointly, as in the past. "We'll probably have to limit the entries in the future," he acknowledged. "We're a victim of our own success, you could say."
Distance swims, landline rescues, rescue board relays, beach run relays, run-swim-run relays, and beach flags are to be contested. East Hampton's 10 town and village entries will vie with teams from Hempstead, Robert Moses State Park, Jones Beach, Southampton, Smith Point, Westhampton Beach, and Islip.
An invitational junior lifeguard tournament at Jones Beach, to which the Hampton Lifeguard Association sent a team of 47 whose youngest members were 9-year-olds, was contested on July 19. And a coed lifeguard beach volleyball tournament that drew eight teams from the town and eight from the village, and which was witnessed by several hundred spectators at Main Beach last Thursday, was won by a team comprising Vincent Buscareno, Devin Coy, Hailey Duca, and Chris Cinque. The runners-up were J.P. Amaden, Anthony McGorisk, Ryan Burns, and Carolina Condon.
Those tournaments and tomorrow's are the first in a number of lifeguard-related events in the offing.
Among the junior lifeguards competing for the H.L.A. at Jones Beach, Peter Stacom, one of Ryan's assistant captains, said that, in the A (older) group, Daisy Pitches won the distance swim and run-swim-run back to back. In addition, Liam Knight, Miles Menu, and Christian Duryea-Kelly were "top finishers in many swimming events." Lilah Metz was the distance swim's runner-up. Hudson Goulart finished third and Dylan Smith fourth in the distance run, and Lizzie Daniels "placed fifth in multiple events."
The H.L.A. is sending men's and women's teams to the Smith Point invitational tournament — held in memory of the late Joe Dooley — on Monday. Also that day, at Albert's Landing Beach in Amagansett, and on Tuesday, at Amagansett's Atlantic Avenue Beach, the 6-to-8-year-old Nipper guards overseen by Haley Ryan and Sophia Swanson are to vie in a tournament of their own.
Bella Tarbet, Ryan's lieutenant, who is the association's coordinator for the national lifesaving tournament that is to be held in Virginia Beach, Va., from Aug. 9 through 12, said that an East Hampton women's team is to compete in an all-female regional tournament at Lido Beach on Wednesday. "We're sending 10 or so female guards, and we expect to do well," said Tarbet, a Washington and Lee senior, who, along with Swanson, competed in the world lifesaving championships in Durban, South Africa, in 2019.
East Hampton's junior lifeguard tournament is to be held at Atlantic Avenue over the Aug. 5 and 6 weekend, and then the H.L.A. will send over 40 guards, a good number of them teenagers, to the national tourney in Virginia Beach. East Hampton, whose team includes the Amagansett Beach Association and Southampton guards, placed third in that tournament two years ago when it was held at South Padre Island, Tex.
The team's traveling expenses are considerable, "around $800 to $900 per person," said Ryan. Donations to the trip can be made through the Hampton Lifeguard Association's website and are also accepted via Venmo. "It's like herding cats," he continued. "But it's inspiring. It's amazing to see our kids competing at that level. . . . We've always done well at these national tournaments."
As for the summer thus far, Ryan, who oversees 14 lifeguard stands on ocean and bay beaches here, said, after consulting his cellphone, "We've had 10 yellow flag and three red flag days — the rip's been strong. In the Montauk district there have been 22 rescues and three aided cases, and in the Amagansett district there have been 27 rescues and five aided cases."
Sharks, of course, were a concern, "but we've got drones to spot them — we're getting a new one from the state this week. They're feeding on bunker 500 yards off the beach, and we don't have people swimming that far out. . . . We've not closed a beach yet."
"Waterproofing" the community, an effort that his father launched some years ago, continued to proceed apace, Ryan said, noting that "the number-one cause of accidental death between the ages of 1 and 4 is drowning, and the number-two cause of accidental death between 1 and 14 is drowning."
That the Montauk Playhouse is to break ground Wednesday for an aquatics center was good news, he said, as was the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center's plans for a gym with an Olympic-size pool, whose construction the center's director, Bonnie Cannon, expects will come to fruition within the next several years.
Three ocean races benefiting the aquatic center, under the Montauk Ocean Swim Challenge banner, all of which finished at Ditch Plain Beach, were held Sunday morning. There were 63 competitors in all. Matthew Raske, 40, who the week before had won the Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon, won the 5K in an hour, 15 minutes, and 16.39 seconds — a 24:14-per-mile pace — followed three minutes behind by Lori King, 48, an Amagansett resident who has many long-distance swims to her credit, including a historic 23.9-mile Block Island-to-Montauk crossing in eight hours, 39 minutes, and 45 seconds last August.
The one-mile race was won by Tyler DiMarco, 20, in 26:47.58, with Carolyn Casey, 20, second, in 27:12.91. Kira Garry, 30, of Montauk, was fifth, her father, William, 63, was seventh, and Kira's sister, Katrina, 27, the women's winner in the sprint triathlon, was 14th. Tom McGlade, 59, of Amagansett, the Old Montauk Athletic Club's male athlete of the year, was eighth.
The half-miler drew entrants ranging in age from 12 — Molly Grande, who was the runner-up to 48-year-old Lars Merseburg — to 80, Art McCann of Springs.