Sports

On a “Big Day,” birding is just about numbers. It is spent, dawn to dusk, in search of birds; the goal to see as many different species as possible. May 13 was Global Big Day. The goal is always to find 100 species: We’ve never gotten there.

As the Bonackers battle on in the tennis playoffs, the Ross School Ravens won the county’s small schools championship last week, defeating the top seed, Bayport-Blue Point.

The top-seeded Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School baseball team was ousted from the county playoffs 6-3 by the Port Jefferson Royals in the May 19 finale contested before a large crowd at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park.

Gator-sized bluefish thrashed about near the surface one day; two days later it was spunky striped bass.

Seeded sixth in the county's Class A double-elimination bracket, East Hampton beat Comsewogue 13-5 here on May 17. It was possibly the first playoff win since the Ross Gload days of the 1990s. Bonac exited the playoffs the next day.

The best-of-three county Class C series opener went the Pierson Whalers' way in a 6-5 nail-biter.

Yani Cuesta, East Hampton High’s girls track coach, reported that Meredith Spolarich, Leslie Samuel, Ryleigh O’Donnell, and Dylan Cashin will be among those competing in the upcoming county meet.

When I’m out pursuing codfish, I always start off using a diamond jig. I also use a diamond jig when I fish for weakfish, sea bass, and bluefish. The same lure is also used when I pursue striped bass from my boat. Old habits are hard to break.

Three South Fork high school baseball teams, East Hampton, Pierson, and Bridgehampton, have made the county playoffs. Bonac’s girls lacrosse team narrowly missed out.

The Bonackers, with Will Darrell, their strong left-hander, pitching the whole way, prevailed 3-1 in the baseball game played with Eastport-South Manor here on Wedneday, earning Vinny Alversa and Henry Meyer's crew a berth in the county playoffs, which are to begin Tuesday.

Three senior East Hampton High School athletes — Jack Dickinson, Cami Hatch, and Claire McGovern — as well as two adults, Kim Covell and Tom McGlade, were honored by the Old Montauk Athletic Club at a dinner at the Springs Tavern Friday evening.

More than 800 participants turned out for Sunday’s May Day 5K here, a race founded last year by two East Hampton High School track teammates, Dylan Cashin and Ryleigh O’Donnell, to raise money for organizations addressing mental health problems.

Striped bass limits will be changing again this year, as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board voted last week to approve an emergency measure to lower the upper end of the striped bass slot size to 31 inches.

The best boys tennis team Kevin McConville’s overseen since he began coaching at East Hampton High School five years ago is about to enter the postseason this weekend in the conference individual tournament, with the county team tournament to follow next week.

The May Day 5K, a charitable run and walk initiated by Dylan Cashin and Ryleigh O'Donnell, two East Hampton High School students, will return for its second year on Sunday. Participants will set out from Main Beach at 9 a.m. rain or shine. Registration is $30 in advance at bit.ly/44dOmH4 or $35 on race day.

Noah Avallone, who will turn 16 on May 16, returned briefly to Montauk recently to tally up his snowboarding successes and plan for what lies ahead.

“The striped bass have arrived in Montauk,” said Capt. Rob Aaronson of the Montauk charter boat Oh Brother! Both diamond and bucktail jigs have been the lures of choice for the linesiders. 

Family members, schoolmates, and administrators looked on as Leslie Samuel, a Bridgehampton senior who has had an outstanding track career under East Hampton High’s aegis, signed a letter of intent to attend the University of Hartford, where she will run and study nursing.

East Hampton's girls lacrosse team took two last week, while the South Fork boys squad honored five seniors before a game with league-leading Ward Melville.

The East Hampton High School softball team extended its winning streak to four by mercying Southold-Greenport-Mattituck 18-0 on the North Fork Friday. The Bonackers are now 5-8.

The East Hampton High School boys tennis team continued undefeated in league play last Thursday, easily turning back the Ross School here 6-1.

With East Hampton having stranded nine runners during the first four innings of Friday’s high school baseball game here with Comsewogue, it looked as if the visitors might steal a win, and thus the three-game series that the teams played last week, but, wonderful to tell, the Bonackers came back with a vengeance in the fifth, plating eight runs on the way to a satisfying 9-1 victory that kept them in playoff contention.

Sergey Avramenko, a native of Belarus and a frequent winner of road races here, won the Katy’s Courage 5K in Sag Harbor Saturday. The new season will continue with the May Day 5K at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach on May 7.

Kieran Hildreth, a 13-year-old Montauker who spends about five months of the year in northeastern Vermont, where he is a member of the Burke Mountain Academy Junior Program, continues to clean up in alpine skiing.

Striped bass have shown up en masse in local waters, and many casters are very pleased with their early, bountiful showing. “It’s wonderful to see,” said Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor.

It’s hard to mistake the great egret: lengthy yellow bill, long black legs, large white body in between. They have sinewy necks, sometimes stretched straight, other times tucked into a squat S, as when they’re flying.

Annemarie Brown started five ninth graders in East Hampton's softball win over Hampton Bays Saturday, while the girls track team blew out Eastport-South Manor to improve to 2-1-1. And more in Bonac sports.

Fueled by Jack Cooper and Tinley Edwards’s face-off wins, the South Fork Islanders boys lacrosse team took a seemingly insurmountable 16-6 lead into the fourth quarter on Saturday, but the next 12 minutes were to be agonizing if you were a South Fork fan.

Friday’s exciting 4-3 win was the third in a row in East Hampton’s league-opening series, and improved the team’s overall record to 6-3.

The Katy’s Courage 5K, the first road race of the season, is to be held Saturday morning in Sag Harbor. Then, at 2 p.m. that day, the two newly built turf Little League fields off Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton are to be dedicated.