Sports

Early in the morning of Aug. 7, four swimmers — two with considerable open water experience and two with much less — met at the Ship Ashore Marina in Sag Harbor, shook hands, and, in the company of two support boats, set off at 5 a.m. from Cedar Point toward Gardiner’s Island, eight and a half miles away.

Brianne Goutal-Marteau, a three-time Grand Prix runner-up at the Hampton Classic Horse Show in Bridgehampton, said, as she was preparing to take her 2-year-old daughter, Clea, into the Grand Prix ring to be judged by Joe Fargis Sunday morning, that the leadline division, in whose sections 2-to-4-year-olds and 5-to-7-year-olds compete, was “the most important class.”

An East Hamptoner is longboard champ, Red Devil ocean swims are Saturday at Atlantic Avenue Beach, and two youngsters rake in karate trophies.

It was a result that shook the tennis world. In the late summer of 1986, in the U.S. Open’s first round, Paul Annacone of East Hampton defeated John McEnroe, handing the champion of seven Grand Slam singles tournaments a shocking loss.

The horse action at the Hampton Classic continues through Sunday, while Monday brings the Great Bonac 10K and 5K benefit road races and high school sports start on Tuesday.

When the dust had cleared on the Artists’ 10-8 win in the Artists and Writers Softball Game Saturday at East Hampton’s Herrick Park, Ed Hollander, basking in the glow of victory, said that, surprisingly, the Game had “smacked of competence.”

The Long Island Ducks, coming off a four-game winning streak and now leading the Atlantic League’s Liberty Division, will be at home all week in Central Islip.

Preparing the Bridgehampton grounds for the horses, riders, and thousands of people who will return to the weeklong Hampton Classic starting Sunday began almost the minute last year’s show ended.

Kal Lewis, a Shelter Island High School miler and cross-country runner, led a field of almost 800 over the Ellen’s Run 5K course in Southampton Sunday, breaking the tape in front of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Parrish Hall in 16 minutes and 15.90 seconds.

Swimmers ages 7 through 79 churned the water in Bill and Dominique Kahn’s 25-yard pool here Saturday, raising money for pancreatic cancer research and evoking the spirit of the late Dr. Charles van der Horst, a retired University of North Carolina medical professor internationally known for his work with AIDS patients.

It's the Johnny Mac tennis legends exhibition at Hampton Racquet on Saturday, while Sunday kicks off the weeklong Hampton Classic Horse Show in Bridgehampton.

This coming weekend will be a busy one sports-wise, with the Artists and Writers Softball Game at East Hampton’s Herrick Park Saturday afternoon and Ellen’s Run at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital Sunday morning.

In the end, Leif Hope, who has been an integral part of The Game for a half-century, said, it’s all about entertainment and raising money for four local charities — the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center, Phoenix House, the Retreat, and East End Hospice.

The Hampton Lifeguard Association, as it did last year, placed sixth in the United States Lifesaving Association’s national tournament in Virginia Beach this past weekend.

The recent graduate of Messiah College in Pennsylvania, who was the nation’s leading scorer in men’s soccer in the fall, has signed a contract with Stumptown Athletic of Charlotte, N.C., an entry in the newly formed National Independent Soccer Association.

The Strides for Life 3-miler in Southampton Sunday morning drew a field of around 600 and made significant fund-raising strides as well for the Lung Cancer Research Foundation, to the tune of about $365,000.

Aside from the big-ticket Artists and Writers Game and Ellen's Run, there's plenty of slow-pitch softball and a tennis pro-am in Southampton Saturday.

The Pink Panthers, a team made of up the late Travis Field’s schoolmates and friends, made it four in a row at the popular softball tournament played in his name this past week at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett.

A hotly contested five-on-five basketball tournament at the Sportime Arena in Amagansett and 3 and 6-mile paddleboard races off Havens Beach in Sag Harbor Saturday morning left their contestants spent, while at the same time raising money to be spent on Down syndrome and breast cancer research.

Julie Ratner has from the beginning seen to it that nearly all of the money raised by the race, put on by the Ellen P. Hermanson Foundation, has been put to good use here. Ellen’s Run happens on Aug. 18, starting from Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

Block Island paddle leaves from the Montauk Lighthouse early Saturday, while East Hampton lifeguards hit the national competition in Virginia Beach this weekend and men's and women's slow-pitch teams take to the Terry King field in Amagansett.

Town and village ocean lifeguard squads from East Hampton to as far as Jones Beach gathered at Main Beach last Thursday to compete in the 33rd annual Main Beach Ocean Lifeguard Tournament.

The Sag Harbor course of Jordan’s Run, a 5K in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter, who lost his life in saving those of 150 fellow servicemen in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2008, took its 448 participants by Pierson High School, from which he’d graduated, across the bridge to North Haven named after him, and along Oakland Cemetery, where he is buried.

At dawn on Aug. 10, a Paddlers 4 Humanity fleet of 50 or so paddleboarders and kayakers is to set forth for Block Island from the foot of the Montauk Lighthouse, and it goes without saying that the roughly 18-mile crossing is challenging.

East Hampton Soccer Fever and Maidstone Market played to 1-1 ties in two games in the 7-on-7 league’s regular season, but in the playoff final at East Hampton’s Herrick Park last week, it was all Maidstone.

Bonac's 11-and-under softballers take third place upstate, and an East Hampton paddler embarks on a 25-mile race around Manhattan on Saturday.

It's Travis Field benefit softball tourney time, while a benefit paddle happens at Havens Beach on Saturday. And don't forget the junior lifeguarding competition at Indian Wells this weekend.

The day the N.F.L. pros came to visit East Hampton High, and the story of the Bonacker who became Denver's TV sports guy, covering the Broncos and John Elway.

After Tom Cronin and Toby Green, both Shelter Islanders, circumnavigated Long Island, a distance of about 250 miles, last Sept. 11 on Jet Skis, Green suggested that their next run be to Key West, so they turned the trip into a world record attempt and a fund-raiser.

No sooner had East Hampton’s 11-under softball players celebrated their regional championship “mercy rule” win over the Bohemia-based Sunrise Hawks here on Sunday than they were called back to resume play, so they promptly wrapped it up, 22-7.