Sports

I’ve lived here for 20 years under the Great American Robin Flyway and I had no idea, but recently started noticing them gathering en masse, as many as 5,400 of them, like black stars shooting against a white sky. Where were they headed?

High school sports made a stuttery recovery in the past year of Covid. The good news was that there were at the high school level two fall seasons in 2021, in which 11 mostly-playoff-caliber East Hampton High teams contended.

The first day of the new year was drizzly and drab, and, to some, depressing, though you wouldn’t have known it had you been at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach or at the Beach Lane road end in Wainscott for the New Year’s Day plunges that afternoon.

Asked this week if the New Year’s Day plunges were on, Colin Mather, who began the annual ritual in Wainscott in 1999, and John Ryan Jr., the Hampton Lifeguards’ chief, who followed suit soon after first in Amagansett and later in East Hampton, said they were indeed.

The swimmers’ win evened their league record at 2-2, while the basketball team’s was its second in a row since Luke Reese, its star junior shooting guard, suffered a knee injury during a Dec. 9 game.

During the 101st Audubon Montauk Christmas Bird Count, 125 species were spotted, the rarest a western kingbird found by Mike McBrien just off Fernwood Drive. The birds are great, but so are the people, some of whom have returned to take part in the count for 50-plus years.

All four of the East Hampton Soccer Club’s youth travel teams, one of which is an under-12 girls team coached by Luis Barrera, recently won the Long Island Junior Soccer League divisions in which they played, all of them going undefeated.

Dan White, the coach of East Hampton High’s boys basketball team, was in high spirits Sunday morning in reporting the team’s nonleague win the day before at East Islip. For the first time, the Bonackers were playing well in the absence of Luke Reese, their stellar junior guard, who has been knocked out of the season with a knee injury.

Chase Lieder, Chloe Coleman, and Tucker Coleman, Montauk surfers who attend East Hampton High School, are faring well in national surf competitions, fueling professional ambitions.

If you are lucky enough to encounter one of these visitors from the north, the number-one rule is to simply keep your distance.

The East Hampton High School boys swimming team knew that West Islip would be hard to beat in a meet that was held at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter on Dec. 15, , according to its coach, Craig Brierley, and indeed the visitors, whose depth proved to be a deciding factor, were.

The wrestling match that was held here Friday between East Hampton and Eastport-South Manor High Schools began early, as the Sharks had no junior varsity competitors, and ended early, as seven of the 11 matches wrestled ended in first-period pins, owing in large part to cross-wrist tilts.

The East Hampton High School boys basketball team may have lost its league opener with Kings Park last Thursday, but an even worse loss was that of Luke Reese, the stellar junior guard.

And the Turkey Trot winner was . . . Samantha Whitmore!

New baseball and softball fields, a competition-size track, new bathrooms and field lighting, maybe even a concession stand — that’s what may be on the horizon at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park.

Love birds? Love someone who loves birds? These gift ideas from The Star's "On the Wing" columnist will help to nurture that passion, support bird habitat, and perhaps spark a deeper understanding of our avian neighbors.

The East Hampton High School boys swimming team evened its League 11 record at 1-1 by winning at Deer Park last week, while the winter track teams got around a Section XI insurance snarl by hitting the track outdoors at Southampton.

The Frank (Sprig) Gardner tournament made an appearance here Saturday for the first time in three years, and, because of a new round-robin/scramble format, every wrestler from the six schools that vied was guaranteed four matches.

The East Hampton High School boys basketball team won a season-opening tournament at Mattituck High School over the weekend, and the boys swimming team, while it lost its season-opener by 3 points at Hauppauge last Thursday, would have won if diving had not been one of the events. East Hampton has no divers.

In baseball parlance, the fishing season is now formally in the bottom of the ninth inning. There are two outs and two strikes on the batter at the plate, or in this case a fisherman with a rod and reel in hand. For my part, I did not want to strike out by not fishing one last time before the end of the year.

The Carolina wren, not six inches in length, is a skulky bird that wants to hide out in a log or a pile of sticks, but its song distinguishes it immediately, and can be heard all year long.

Sas Peters, a 65-year-old Amagansetter who has persuaded this country’s Ultimate disk governing body over the past years to add divisions for 40, 50, and 60-year-olds in officially sanctioned national and international play, contended last month in the first 60-and-over Legends world championship tournament in Sarasota, Fla.

Cami Hatch, an East Hampton High School junior, swam close to her best time in the 100-yard freestyle at last week’s state girls swimming meet, and showed "a level of mental toughness and maturity beyond her years," her coach said.

The 847 participants in the East Hampton Town Recreation Department’s 3 and 6-mile races around Montauk’s Fort Pond on Thanksgiving Day constituted a record. That was the good news.

East Hampton High’s boys basketball team scrimmaged impressively twice last week, while the wrestling squad will have 22 competitors on the mats at the Frank (Sprig) Gardner tournament here Saturday.

The other night, I came across my first fishing logbook, started back in 1978, in which I began to inscribe my saltwater exploits when I was 15 years old. Back then I considered it a chore to take time to make notations of success or failure in my fishing excursions and wondered how it would ultimately serve me. But now I finally know.

In a new column about birds, The Star's Christopher Gangemi discusses the "spark bird," that bird that first makes you notice birds in general, sparking a deeper curiosity about the many birds around you. His, in December of 2001, was the tufted titmouse.

Besides the good right arm that recently won him a full athletic scholarship to play baseball at George Washington University, Colin Ruddy, a personable 17-year-old East Hampton High School senior, has a good head on his shoulders, which very well may be the most important thing when it comes to success in athletics.

East Hampton High School’s winter sports teams, namely boys and girls basketball, boys and girls indoor track, boys swimming, bowling, and wrestling — which was scratched last season because of the coronavirus pandemic — began practicing here Monday.

With my boat prematurely out of the water for the season with various and costly engine issues, I have to find other vessels to fish on. Many friends have already hauled out their crafts, so I’m resigned to fishing on open boats, and that’s just fine with me. Two weeks ago, I took passage on the Peconic Star 3 out of Greenport for blackfish. It is skippered by the ever-youthful Capt. Speedy Hubert, he of the age of 84. Spry and energetic as ever, he anchored us up on a wreck off Horton’s Point in Long Island Sound. I had not fished that area in probably over 35 years. It was nice to be back.