Sports

Lucky for us, if the ponds remain unfrozen, kingfishers are fairly common around the East End during the winter months.

The Pierson and Bridgehampton High School boys basketball teams won county classification titles Wednesday at Westhampton Beach High School, the Whalers over Greenport and the Bees over Smithtown Christian.

The Pierson (Sag Harbor) Whalers, top seeded in Class C, defeated Southold 67-41 Saturday afternoon, and are now looking forward to another go at Southampton in the county B-C-D game on March 1.

The East Hampton High School boys swimming team placed well in the League II meet last week, the wrestling team tallied 30 points in a League V meet, while the girls track team struggled at the small schools indoor championships.

It’s gull season on the East End.

The Pierson (Sag Harbor) Whalers are headed for the county Class C playoffs, and Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees will play in the county Class D final.

In the past half-dozen years it has been a rarity to witness an East Hampton High School wrestling team win at home, but it happened last Thursday.

The East Hampton High School boys basketball team, without its star guard, Luke Reese, evened its league record at 3-3 with a 43-32 win over Sayville last week.

The yellow-rumped warbler, also known, colloquially, much to my 10-year-old’s delight, as a “butter-butt,” is our only regular winter warbler and our region’s most abundant.

In the Southampton-Pierson boys basketball game played at the Sag Harbor school’s gym last Thursday, the Mariners’ full-court press was suffocating, causing 30 or so turnovers during the 32 minutes of play.

In its final appearance at the RECenter here, the Bonac boys swimming team easily defeated Lindenhurst to finish third in League II, while East Hampton’s girls track team took seventh at Brentwood.

The first and most important thing to know about the purple sandpiper is that it’s not purple. It’s not even close. For the beginner, the best way to see this bird — the only sandpiper we tend to see here in winter months — is to know where it hangs out, because it absolutely doesn’t stand out.

When it took the court on Jan. 24, the East Hampton High School boys basketball team hadn't played a game in about a month because of Covid. For its star guard, Luke Reese, who injured his knee against Kings Park on Dec. 9, the layoff had even been longer.

Sunday’s weather was perfect for hockey, a fine day for Peconic Hockey Foundation-sponsored Wildcat youth travel teams to debut on the Buckskill Winter Club’s ice in East Hampton.

The East Hampton School District’s athletic director reported this week that his petition to Section XI that eight of East Hampton High’s teams play closer to home has been approved.

“Finally, some hockey weather!” Danny Roman said with a smile following Saturday morning’s 12-and-under hockey practice at the Buckskill Winter Club.

Nick Escalante, a wellness teacher at the Ross School, is headed to Buenos Aires to vie for a spot in a semipro soccer league. His brother, Charles, is busy building up the basketball program at Ross.

The screech owl is about the size of a brick, with big eyes, and ear tufts, but this adorable little owl is an efficient killer. Its howl represents pure death to a variety of critters. Nothing is safe, even other screech owls. It even takes bats on the wing.

The futsal (indoor soccer) season at the Sportime Arena in Amagansett is nearing the playoff stage, and it has been a lively season indeed.

Dylan Cashin, Melina Sarlo, Riley Miles, and Ryleigh O’Donnell set a distance medley relay record at the Zeitler Relays Saturday, and Juan Roque and J.P. Amaden showed grit in wrestling at 118 and 132 pounds.

Judging from the scores of skaters there Saturday afternoon, the Buckskill Winter Club is the place to be this season, and “the ice this year is the best ever.”

Evan Masi, an East Hampton High School senior who recently became a News 12 Long Island scholar-athlete of the month, has been through trying times in his high school career.

Why isn’t the long-tailed duck more celebrated? It’s crazy looking, gregarious, easily seen, cackles like a stuttering kazoo, hilariously belly-flops when it lands, and hangs out in bad little duck posses. It’s even controversial.

East Hampton High School’s boys and girls basketball teams were paused because of the pandemic this past week, while the boys swimming and wrestling teams remained active.

Richard J. Cooney Sr., the East Hampton School District’s athletic director from 1974 until his retirement in 1995, is to be a New York State Athletic Administrators Association “wall of honor” inductee at Saratoga in March.

The first two and a half quarters of the Holiday Classic boys basketball game that East Hampton High played at Southampton on Dec. 28 “were the best we’ve played all year,” East Hampton’s coach, Dan White, said following the 69-60 loss to the Mariners.

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.