Sports

The warming rays of the sun have begun to perk up the local fishing scene, with holdover striped bass making the biggest noise in recent days.

Coco Lohmiller, an eighth grader who lit it up for the Pierson High School girls varsity basketball team in the winter, could have played girls lacrosse or softball this spring, but chose instead to stick to her first love, basketball, as a member of a Huntington-based Empire Amateur Athletic Union team.

Flounder is scarce, striped bass are not yet here in sizable numbers, so our columnist set about repairing his lobster traps.

The weather was, for the first time in a while, pleasant on Monday, as was East Hampton High’s 7-1 baseball win here over the Westhampton Beach Hurricanes that day.

The RECenter Hurricanes’ 200-meter medley relay team broke two team records last week in qualifying for the national final in that event in Greensboro, N.C., while the Bonac girls track team was defeated here by Westhampton Beach, a perennial power.

From a Bridgehampton Killer Bees championship run to a 2-mile run at a vineyard, it happened here, sports fans.

Killer Bees take to the diamond, boys lacrosse wins while the girls fight on, and a young softball team stays positive.

The Bonac boys track team opened the season with Comsewogue on March 29 and won 60-58 thanks to the 4-by-400-meter relay team of Isaac Rodriguez, Robert Stewart, Diego Rojas, and Brayan Rivera. The girls' meet with Comsewogue that same day ended in a tie.

The Bonackers pull off a thrilling victory over Sayville in the bottom of the seventh inning.

As of earlier this week, East Hampton High’s boys tennis team, arguably one of the top three in Suffolk County, was 2-2. But with two 7-0 wins against league opponents, things were looking up.

Carl Johnson, who played on three state-championship teams and won four as a coach under Bridgehampton High School’s banner, a feat that remains unique in state basketball history, was inducted into New York’s Basketball Hall of Fame at Glens Falls during the championship weekend two weeks ago.

Despite a “quick, tight turnaround,” in the coach Yani Cuesta’s words, East Hampton High’s girls track team began the season here last Thursday with a 76-64 win over Hauppauge.

The South Fork Islanders, the combined boys lacrosse team based at Southampton High School that has nine East Hamptoners on it, debuted here Friday in a nonleaguer against the Stony Brook School, and found the going easy.

Cardinals, among our earliest singer each spring, are so familiar you might forget to appreciate them, but a century ago they were rare in New York.

East Hampton High’s boys tennis team lost 6-1 at top-ranked Ward Melville in a nonleaguer on March 21, while the girls flag football team debuted at William Floyd on Friday, losing 31-13.

At the world amateur Strongman championships held recently in Columbus, Ohio, Montauk’s Cristian Candemir acquitted himself well in the lightweight division.

“We’re definitely aiming for the playoffs this year,” Annemarie Brown, the varsity softball coach, said of her team, which will play 19 games starting at Sayville on Wednesday.

As balls rocketed back and forth at East Hampton High School’s tennis courts during Friday’s practice, the coach, Kevin McConville, said this year’s team is the best he’s had since Johnny De Groot’s group in 2019. Perhaps even better.

The Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, repeated as New York State Y.M.C.A. champions at Erie Community College in Buffalo last weekend.

A girls flag football team is debuting this spring at East Hampton High School, which is particularly fitting because two East Hampton graduates, Teresa Schirrippa and Crystal Winter, have represented the United States in international flag football competition.

Turnout for East Hampton Town’s junior lifeguard and lifeguard training programs, which kicked off on March 5, was on the low side. About a hundred kids and teens had signed up, and 75 came for the youth evaluation and training, while only eight came for the first session of lifeguard training.

Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School got off to a slow start, but tied the game with under three minutes left before losing to Haldane of Putnam County 57-53 Friday night.

Hunter Eberhart, Jack Dickinson, and Will Darrell, seniors, will lead the East Hampton High School pitching staff this spring.

I’m not sure if Leonard Cohen was into birds, but if he was, he might have appreciated the mess that is the European starling.

The spring sports season may be a few weeks off, but there’s plenty of news for and about local athletes.

The final score was 58-53 in favor of Chapel Field Christian of Orange County over Bridgehampton's Killer Bees on Tuesday night in a New York State Class D semifinal boys basketball game. It reminded Ron White, the Bees' head coach, of last year's game — same opponent, same playoff round, same outcome.

Last Saturday's Katy’s Courage daylong fund-raiser included an ice show, pickup hockey games for 10-through-14-year-olds and for adults, as well as raffles, a silent auction, and a bake sale.

Saturday’s game, which the Mariners won handily, 69-52, was the third time Southampton had defeated Sag Harbor this winter, though Pierson’s coach could take heart in the fact that at times his players looked pretty smooth in breaking a vaunted run-and-jump press.

Kids here who swim, and who play hockey, soccer, baseball, and softball, have been active of late honing skills at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, the Buckskill Winter Club in East Hampton, the Sportime Arena in Amagansett, and at the Hub 44 building on the way to Springs.

It looked as if the Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School Whalers were going to blow out Port Jefferson in the early going of the county Class C boys basketball championship game played at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue on Feb. 15, but the Royals came back in the third quarter to make a game of it.