Sports

American oystercatchers, which congregate in the marshes of our barrier beaches before flying south, are about the size of crows, and stout, with heavy white bellies, chocolate-colored wings, and pale pinkish legs. They wear a black executioner’s hood and have a long blood-orange oyster knife of a bill and yellow eyes circled by red eye rings.

Homecoming weekend here begins Friday with East Hampton High’s field hockey team facing off against Sayville on the high school’s turf field at 4:30 p.m. Saturday's games and festivities include Hall of Fame inductions, soccer and volleyball matches, cross country meets, a fall festival in the afternoon, and a football game under the lights.

Last Thursday was a thrilling day for Laura Hayward of Sagaponack, a hypo-birthing doula and practitioner of reiki. She helped deliver a baby, then she competed in the Hampton Classic for the first time. Here's how it all went down.

Led by Charlie Corwin, its junior quarterback, Finn Byrnes, a senior running back, Will Darrell, a senior tight end, Danny Lester, a senior wide receiver, and Richie Maio, a senior offensive and defensive lineman, the team looked quite good in a scrimmage with Oyster Bay. They are among 24 varsity players on East Hampton's football team this year.

Diane O’Donnell, who coaches East Hampton High School’s girls cross-country team, had all of her charges running in the Great Bonac 5K in Springs on Labor Day, and they did well, as did a Bonac alumnus, Erik Engstrom, in the 10K.

“Plenty of action around,” Sebastian Gorgone of Mrs. Sam's Bait and Tackle in East Hampton said of the local fishing scene. “You name it, you can probably catch it.”

Karl Cook, a 31-year-old Southern Californian who had not competed at the Hampton Classic before, not only won Friday’s $74,000 Grand Prix Qualifier, which entitled him and his 12-year-old Belgian Warmblood mare to go last in Sunday’s $410,000 Grand Prix, but won that class too, a very rare feat.

While the media’s dining room was loaded with high-caloric foods like doughnuts and fried chicken wings, it was a different story for the players, who were offered prepared proteins, carbohydrates, fruits, nuts, protein shakes, and sushi.

Though the East Hampton Soccer Club couldn’t muster a complement of six field players because of several absences, the five who contested a 7-on-7 league semifinal with Sag Harbor United, the playoffs’ top seed, at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Aug. 30 acquitted themselves very well in a 4-1 loss. In the night’s other semifinal, a hotly contested struggle between F.C. Tuxpan and Liga De Gulag, Tuxpan prevailed 4-3.

The horse show was in full swing from 8 a.m. on opening day in Bridgehampton, with action in most of its six rings, the 2-to-4 and 5-to-7-year-old leadline divisions in the newly redone Grand Prix ring being the biggest draw.

Sag Harbor United, the 7-on-7 men’s soccer league’s leader, and Maidstone Market, which has been the league’s power year in, year out since 2007, were to have met in a regular season-ending game at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Aug. 23, but the latter, because it could muster only four players, was forced to forfeit.

Dream became reality on Saturday in Amagansett for those willing to pay between $10,000 and $20,000 to play with John McEnroe, Mats Wilander, Mary Joe Fernandez, the Bryan twins, Gigi Fernandez, and Patrick McEnroe.

There are about a dozen locals, the most in recent memory, playing for Kevin Bunce Sr. and Mike Jablonski in regional 7s tournaments now.

Lucky enough to once again secure media credentials to cover the U.S. Open tennis tournament, I needed to do a bit of fishing myself to see who is really hooked on fishing.

The crowd of children and adults early on Friday afternoon, hours before its official reopening, were a clear indication that the renovated Lars Simenson Skatepark in Montauk is a hit. "What happened was a very organic process of people just building enthusiasm, community coming together . . . until we ended up with something that is world class," said a member of the Montauk Skatepark Coalition.

Sergey Avramenko, 37, of Hampton Bays, Jenny Grimshaw, 31, of San Francisco, and her mother, Judi Donnelly, 65, of Southampton and Wellesley, Mass., the first among breast cancer survivors, were winners at the 27th Ellen’s Run in Southampton Sunday to benefit the Ellen Hermanson Foundation. Another worthy organization, Hoops 4 Hope, benefited from a pleasing turnout at its inaugural 3-on-3 basketball tournament at East Hampton High School Saturday.

The 46th weeklong Hampton Classic Horse Show, one of just nine five-star-rated shows in the country, is to begin at the 60-acre Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds on Sunday at 8 a.m. with leadline classes for children judged by Joe Fargis, an Olympic gold medalist, in the Grand Prix ring.

The Town Police Benevolent Association squad had high hopes going into the East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch softball league final with the pennant-winner — and defending playoff champion — East End Land Planning, but the P.B.A.’s forward movement was arrested in the end.

“Lots of weakfish are around, plus there are porgies, blowfish, fluke, sea bass, snappers, kingfish, and even some black drum being caught,” reports Sebastian Gorgone of Mrs. Sam’s Tackle in East Hampton.

The Lars Simenson Skatepark, on South Essex Street in Montauk, will reopen Friday after an extensive renovation made possible through a public-private partnership.

On Saturday, the eighth annual Johnny Mac Tennis Project's Pro Am in the Hamptons will be held at the Sportime Amagansett Tennis and Swim Club on Abraham's Path. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Johnny Mac Tennis Project, a nonprofit founded by tennis legend John McEnroe that aims to introduce tennis to thousands of under-resourced children by helping to remove racial, economic, and social barriers that often face them.

"We joke and say it's the world's second oldest profession," said Ike Birdsall, owner of Birdsall's Hotshoe, a farrier based in Sag Harbor. Farriers, who tend to horse hooves, are an essential but unheralded segment of the $122 billion horse industry, and the job hasn't changed substantially since 400 B.C. when the earliest horseshoes were made.

Leif Hope has always painted his Artists team as devil-may-care when it comes to winning and losing and the Writers as self-loathing loners obsessed with winning, and so, in the end, at the 74th meeting of the rivals at East Hampton’s Herrick Park Saturday afternoon, all went according to form as the Writers, who had trailed 18-2 — yes, 18-2 — entering the bottom of the ninth inning, wound up winning in storybook fashion 19-18.

Two South Fork standbys, the Artists and Writers Softball Game at East Hampton’s Herrick Park and Ellen’s Run, now based at Southampton’s Intermediate School, are slated for the coming weekend.

Again the Hampton Lifeguard Association, a team comprising guards from East Hampton and Southampton Towns, enjoyed a strong outing at the United States Lifesaving Association’s championships, which were held last week at Hermosa Beach, Calif.

For boat owners, the fact that diesel has dipped below $6 a gallon is welcome news, even if it's still expensive. As any owner of a power boat knows, fuel is just one part (actually a very small part) of the overall expense of the craft. Other expenditures like dockage, insurance, maintenance, and other factors, significantly overshadow the bill at the fuel dock.

Despite the confusion and tragedy of American life in 2022, they somehow return each spring; like flying foil-wrapped gifts come to life. And now, as early as this week, the males will depart from our area to begin their largely daytime migrations south. This is one of the most entertaining weeks to “feeder watch,” as they defend their last sips.

We’re hot and then we’re not,” Erin Abran said with a smile after last Thursday night’s women’s slow-pitch playoff softball game. The Police Benevolent Association, led by its pitcher, T. Schirrippa, and its shortstop, Nicole Fierro, downed Groundworks 9-4 in the third game of a best-of-three semifinal series, advancing the P.B.A. to the final round with East End Land Planning, the defending champion.

The July 23 crossing from Montauk Point to Block Island was the 12th for Paddlers for Humanity, an event that to date has raised more than $2 million to help local children and families in crisis.

Hoops 4 Hope, a nonprofit founded by Mark Crandall of Amagansett to work with young people in Zimbabwe and South Africa, is now also working with youngsters here, using basketball as a means by which to teach them how to be a good teammate.