Sports

The East End Blaze, an entry in the Professional Inline Hockey Association’s Northeast Division, is to make its one-and-only appearance at its home Sportime Arena rink in Amagansett Saturday.

Spring began for a few of East Hampton High School’s teams last week, and the results, from baseball to girls lacrosse, were good all around.

The eastern phoebe is just starting to show up on the East End after a winter down South, bringing with it the promise of coming warmth and humidity — and bird song.

Last year, for the first time in more than a decade, an East Hampton High School softball team, a very young squad with only two senior starters, earned a berth in the county playoffs, convincing the coaches, Annemarie Brown and Melanie Anderson, that “we’re starting to get back on track.”

Last weekend, for the first time in its 19-year history, the Hurricanes, the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s 8-to-19-year-old swim team, won a state championship.

In the last two weeks, ospreys have started to return to the East End from their wintering grounds in Central and South America. They’re a sign of spring, and a constant visual reminder that our actions directly affect birds.

Having got off to a slow start in Friday’s state Class C semifinal, the Pierson High School boys basketball team came on strong in the second quarter, erasing an 11-point first-quarter deficit, taking a 4 point lead into the halftime break, and pulling ahead by 9 points in the fourth quarter. Alas, it was not enough to advance to the finals.

The American woodcock knows a thing or two about a good display. No bird on the East End of Long Island comes close to rivaling its spring show.

Bridgehampton, with virtually the same team that posted a 14-1 record in jayvee competition last spring, will play in a league with Pierson, Hampton Bays, Port Jefferson, Southold, Greenport, and Shelter Island.

Leo Butler’s last-second fallaway bank shot sends the Sag Harbor school to the state Class C basketball semifinal in Glens Falls on Friday.

While the great blue heron, the largest heron in North America, is not our only winter heron (black-crowned night herons roost locally all winter), it’s the only one you’re likely to see.

Bridgehampton High School’s young boys basketball players fought to the end against their taller Chapel Field Christian School counterparts in a state regional semifinal game at Westhampton Beach Tuesday, losing 56-47.