There were a few items of interest left out of last week’s “A Look at Sports in the Year 2023,” one of which was the honoring in June at the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center of seven Black South Fork basketball coaches who, having been mentored by outstanding coaches of a previous generation, went on to similarly guide their young charges.
The honorees, Richard (Juni) Wingfield of Southampton, Howard Wood of East Hampton, Carl Johnson of Bridgehampton, Herm Lamison of Southampton, Nick Thomas of Center Moriches, Ron Gholson of Westhampton Beach, and Ron White of Bridgehampton, were cited in a Southampton Town Board proclamation for their “service to the youth of the East End and beyond.” Their efforts, the proclamation continued, “have changed lives on and off the court.”
“We’ve always wanted to honor them,” the center’s executive director, Bonnie Michelle Cannon, said of the group, all of whom in growing up honed their games at the center’s court, a crucible for the sport on the East End.
The master of ceremonies, Jeff Clay, said at one point: “It’s a lot more than the Xs and Os — it’s about counseling kids through moments of crisis and adolescent frustrations, it’s about dealing at times with whining parents and disrespectful fans. . . . Yet you guys show up and persevere in your calling, which is to make the community’s young men and women better people and productive citizens. . . . The kids do what they see you doing, not what you say to do.”
Wood, who could not attend because he was flying back that day from a graduation ceremony in Spain, said afterward that he could not have had a better mentor than the late Ed Petrie. “I wish he were still with us. He had an unbelievable knowledge of the game, and he always knew about our opponents. He called a timeout once, I forget who we were playing, maybe Hills West. We were behind, but when he called that timeout my sister turned to her friend and said, ‘It’s over.’ We came out with a new defense and shut them down. . . . He was respectful of us and he expected us to be respectful of others. We were like a family. We always did it right. If we blew out a team by 30, you would have thought we lost by 30. He always got us real, and we always did the best we could — as a team.”
Last week’s review also omitted the facts that Tim Garvin, the longtime head pro at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett, was honored in June by the Metropolitan P.G.A. for having been a mentor to more than a dozen assistant pros who had gone on to careers as head pros themselves, and that East Hampton Town’s men’s and women’s teams (with only nine competitors, rather than the customary 12) swept their divisions in the Hampton Lifeguard Association’s invitational at Main Beach, a tournament that drew a record turnout of
24 lifeguard teams from all over Long Island.