Sports

Registration opened last week for East Hampton Little League, including tee ball, baseball, and softball programs for kids as young as 5 and up to seventh grade.

Doug De Groot first had the idea of building a padel court accessible to the public here about eight years ago. Though it has taken a while — a puzzling permit denial prevented him from finishing one last year at the Buckskill Tennis Club, which he owns with his wife, Kathryn — he now, with Southampton Village’s blessing, has one up at the Triangle Tennis Club on Hampton Road. 

The 10-and-under Peconic Wildcat ice hockey team, coached by Jason Craig, played Saturday and Sunday at the Buckskill Winter Club here and won both games, improving to 9-0 in league play. Although, “because we can’t play as many games as the teams up the Island do, we’ll need to win most of our remaining league games to make the playoffs,” Chris Minardi, the scorekeeper, said. 

While the handsome high-ceilinged 6,000-square-foot building behind the popular Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton could have feathered a nest egg, Shelly Snyder Schaffer, its owner, preferred instead that it become a year-round hub for young ballplayers, boys and girls looking to up their baseball, softball, or lacrosse games.

On their return this week from the holiday break, the East Hampton, Pierson, and Bridgehampton High School boys basketball teams seem to have the playoffs in their sights.

A joyous, comradely feeling was evident at the East Hampton Hurricane swim team’s New Year’s Day plunge at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach and later at the annual plunge in Wainscott. Both raised money for food pantries here.

Year-round tennis in Amagansett: That’s the goal of the plan pitched by Claude Okin, who owns the Sportime facility and camp off Town Lane and Abraham’s Path, to the East Hampton Town Trustees in December.

During this Christmas/New Year’s interlude, I offer a fun challenge: Take a walk in the woods at night. Try it. You may hear a great-horned owl, who, despite the cold, is starting its courtship ritual. Its classic hooting call — offered in the cadence of “Who is awake? Me too!” — can be heard for miles, the song of the blue winter night.

Covid continued clinging when the 2022 winter sports season began here, but soon thereafter the constraints of the past two years were shrugged off as local athletes went toe-to-toe again in scholastic competitions, rubbed elbows again in road races, and, when it came to athletic ambitions, frequently put their best feet forward.

The temperature is predicted to be 51 degrees here on New Year's Day, virtually balmy when compared to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so expect big turnouts for the New Year's Day ocean plunges at East Hampton Village's Main Beach at 1 p.m. and at the Beach Lane road end in Wainscott at 2:30.

The Peconic Wildcats’ under-10 ice hockey team, coached by Jason Craig, took the ice at Doug and Kathryn De Groot’s Buckskill Winter Club, and took it to the UpIsland Police Athletic League Silver Knights.

The East Hampton High School wrestling team enjoyed a lopsided win over Deer Park, the boys swimming team evened its league record by defeating Sayville-Bayport, and the girls winter track 4-by-400-meter relay team set a school record in that event by almost 10 seconds at a crossover meet at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood.

Eighty young Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter Hurricane swimmers went to the three-day Cross Island and Flushing Y holiday invitational meet at the Nassau Aquatic Center, and their performances were impressive.

Cold and wind greeted the 45 participants of the 93rd Montauk Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, but the rough conditions didn’t stop them from tallying 131 different species, the highest total for the count in the last 10 years.

Twenty or so fifth and sixth-grade boys basketball players here were treated to an hourlong clinic by Frank Alagia, a Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award-winning guard when he was at St. John’s.

Montauk’s young Pleiades rugby 7s side that Kevin Bunce Sr. coaches did itself proud in the Thanksgiving 7s tournament on Randalls Island, sweeping through the social division without a loss.

Ellen Cooper, Kathy McGeehan, and Sandy Vorpahl — all of them East Hampton High School Hall of Fame members — are searching through old yearbooks and making phone calls to ascertain who among the school’s female athletes predating 1976 are worthy of being considered by the Hall of Fame committee.

East Hampton High’s wrestling team took four of five matches at Doc Fallot, the Southampton Mariners swept to the Kendall Madison championship, and the Bonac girls hoopsters finally won one.

“A couple of seconds is like a lifetime,” Jane Brierley said the other day about the breaststroke, her strongest event and the one she recently parlayed into a state championship in Rochester.

East Hampton’s boys basketball team is to play host to the revived Kendall Madison Foundation Tip-Off tournament here this weekend.

To borrow a phrase from the game of baseball, the fishing season is now in the bottom of the ninth inning. Striped bass season concludes Dec. 15, blackfish season comes to an end seven days later, and Dec. 31 is the final day to retain black sea bass.

Sas Peters of Amagansett won his sixth major Ultimate Disc championship — his second as an over-50 great grandmaster — in the Sarasota Sunset tournament, “the most prestigious of the fall season,” last month.

Soccer: the beautiful game. In the last two weeks, the World Cup settled over the East End like a butter pat on an English muffin, filling every nook and cranny. Stressed-out referees, solely responsible for maintaining order amid complete emotion and chaos, tatted-up players (not Morocco!), and grass (yes, grass, not turf!) have become a fixture on screens from Southampton to Montauk.

For the first time in two decades, East Hampton High’s wrestling team was a runner-up Saturday in its Frank (Sprig) Gardner invitational tournament, close behind the favorite, Ward Melville.

Dan White, East Hampton High's boys basketball coach, said the future looks promising for his team, which has three returning seniors.

Runners, especially those who had been confronted with strong winds and a deluge 11 days before at the Dock Race, couldn’t have asked for better conditions in which to run the East Hampton Town Recreation Department’s 3 and 6-mile Turkey Trots on Thanksgiving Day in Montauk.

East Hampton High’s wrestling program, which was on the ropes not all that long ago, continues to grow. The team’s coach, Ethan Mitchell, who is in his second year, said over the weekend that he has 50 out for the squad, a gratifying number, probably unparalleled in recent times.

A trip on the Cross Sound Ferry's Cape Henlopen brings to mind the ship's storied history. The humble ferry boat of today participated in the historic invasion of Normandy on D-Day in World War II, dropping off 200 men and 70 vehicles of the 29th Infantry Division.

A rundown of the honors bestowed upon East Hampton High School’s student-athletes this week.

After a mixed bag of a season, I happily climbed aboard the Elizabeth II, a charter boat out of the Montauk Marine Basin, for a trip for cod and bass, both of which I latched into within minutes.