Sports

“Most of our clientele is older and somewhat frail, and some of them have chosen not to come in,” but then one day “an 80-plus-year-old lady did. She said her balance training was more important to her than coronavirus worries . . . that if she fell and broke her leg things could be even worse.”

"It's been a very rough couple of months -- but at least now there's a sliver of light," said Claude Okin, who owns the Sportime club in Amagansett and numerous other tennis clubs in the metro area.

Fitness studios here have been offering online personal and group training sessions since the early days of the Covid-19 shutdown, and given the uncertainty of the coming months, they’re likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.   

This was the third winter that Heather Caputo, Spencer Schneider, Mike Bottini, and Jeremy Grosvenor have been swimming three or four times a week at various spots in the ocean and in the bay.

The state-owned Montauk Downs golf course, which had been open, closed, open, then closed again, reopened for play on Monday, having been so directed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Bobby Hopson, the Bridgehampton High School basketball team's career scoring leader and a Wagner College standout, died on Tuesday. The cause was diabetes-related.

Nassau and Suffolk Counties’ Athletic Councils pulled the plug on high school springs sports, a “heartbreaking decision,” in the words of Section VIII’s executive director, Pat Pizzarelli, but one that was not surprising given the coronavirus pandemic.

The world’s top-ranked female triathlete, Katie Zaferes, an Olympic silver-medalist cyclist, Mari Holden, and Ally Friedman, a Ross School senior who in February was cited by the United States Tennis Association as its junior volunteer of the year, mentored Theresa Roden’s I-Tri girls on Saturday.

Private golf clubs, while still deemed nonessential, have been allowed to reopen to their members, the governor said, with restrictions.

Yani Cuesta, who coaches East Hampton High’s girls track team, said during a telephone conversation on Friday that she thought there would be no spring season, at least insofar as girls track was concerned.     

Golf is apparently the last game in town, and, according to the head pro at Montauk Downs, Mark Fretto, new rules have enabled the beautiful public course there to remain open for play during the coronavirus siege.

The way it was, sports fans, from a mountain climber’s close call to happier roller hockey days to good times with the Killer Bees.

All of a sudden, it seems everything is off-limits. With no high school sports for three weeks — and who knows for however long after that — I am at loose ends.

On Friday as Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, announced that Section XI, the governing body for public high school sports in Suffolk, had postponed all games and contests through April 3.

Eddy Quiroz, a native of Puebla, Mexico’s fourth-largest city, has been obsessed with sports from an early age. Soccer, golf, tennis, platform tennis, bowling, boxing, taekwondo, and rowing are among those at which he’s become adept.

Down in San Antonio, Matthew Griffiths is a National Sporting Clays Association Krieghoff all-American.

“We’re taking it day by day — things are changing every day,” said Claude Okin, the owner of Sportime in Amagansett. “Hopefully, if we’re smart, we can all get through this together.”

Gino Fava has for a while been a proponent of the underhand serve, the use of which often is viewed as an underhanded tactic by receivers.

“We can either win everything or we can bomb,” Kevin Bunce said of the Section XI Warriors the other day.

Kal Lewis, Shelter Island High School’s star long-distance runner, topped all public high school contestants in the state’s 1,600-meter indoor race at the Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex on Staten Island Saturday.

The weather was fine Monday as East Hampton High’s teams — boys and girls track, girls lacrosse, baseball, softball, and boys tennis — engaged in inaugural spring practices.

Boys tennis plays at Half Hollow Hills East Tuesday, and the girls lacrosse team is home Wednesday for a scrimmage.

Sophia Swanson, who signed a letter of intent to attend Marist College on a partial athletic scholarship Tuesday and swims the year round, said that she had not tired of looking at the Y pool’s black lines.

Sydney Wood, a daughter of Kenny Wood, who led East Hampton High School to a state boys basketball championship in 1989, and her Northwestern University teammates earned at least a share of the Big 10 title with a 75-58 win over Illinois Saturday.

The state meet for swimmers is Friday and Saturday at the Nassau County Aquatic Center, and the Pierson girls play East Rockaway Monday for the Long Island Class C basketball title.

The Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School girls basketball team was looking to upset Westhampton Beach Saturday at St. Joseph’s College, but fouls and an injury didn’t help their cause.

Wrestling is not only good for the body, but also for the mind and spirit, said Ethan Mitchell, East Hampton’s assistant coach, the best sport for preparing one for life.

The day the world champion double Dutch rope-jumping team visited East Hampton High, and memories of Paul Giardina’s thoroughbred training days.

A fund-raiser for the Katy’s Courage Foundation, a nonprofit in memory of Katy Stewart, who at the age of 12 died of a rare form of liver cancer nine years ago, is to be held at the Buckskill Winter Club in East Hampton Sunday.

It’s been 40 years since Brid­gehampton High fielded a baseball team, but now one’s in the making.