Sports

Kevin Bunce Sr., who has been keeping the ball rolling for the Montauk Rugby Club, said that his 7s squad been a winner or a runner-up in a half-dozen U-23 tournaments. The goal now "is to get enough guys involved so that Montauk can field a 15s side again."

At daybreak, I went to check my lobster traps off to the east, but before we ventured forth, I wanted to do a bit of fishing on the east side of Gardiner's Island. Fluke and sea bass were the intended quarry. My expectations were very low. Let me explain.

At the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro on June 21, Summer Romeo told her fellow hikers that she could never do the climb again. “We were literally crying from sleep deprivation, agony, headaches, and nausea.” But by journey's end, she was already thinking ahead to her next adventure.

After finishing dinner on our outdoor patio overlooking Shelter Island Sound the other day, we noticed a canoe with a man, woman, and child in it moving rapidly on the strong incoming full-moon tide. It was getting dark and they were too far from the beach.

Edmar Nateras, a 17-year-old Sag Harborite who runs with East Hampton High School’s boys winter and spring track teams, won Jordan’s Run Sunday, a 5K based at Pierson High School in Sag Harbor, where he runs cross-country.

The East End Ospreys laid a hurtin’ on the Kraken at the Bridgehampton School’s field last Thursday evening, pummeling the former two-time champion 10-2 to win the deciding game of the Hamptons Adult Hardball League’s best-of-three final series.

The Jones Beach lifeguard team topped 17 other entrants from beaches all over Long Island, including half a dozen from East Hampton, in last Thursday’s Main Beach invitational tournament, winning both the men’s and women’s divisions.

Coming up this weekend are the two-mile, one-mile, and half-mile ocean challenge swims at Kirk Park Beach benefiting the Montauk Playhouse, and Jordan’s Run, a 5K road race in Sag Harbor that commemorates Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter.

Vanessa Rizzo, 14, and Matteo Somma, 17, won races here over the weekend. Somma, who lives in Malverne, topped a field of 443 in the Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon, and Rizzo of Sagaponack won the Hampton Lifeguard Association’s Run-Swim-Run at Amagansett’s Atlantic Avenue Beach.

We are in full-scale summer mode as August approaches. In Montauk stripers are still running, and the same is true for fluke and a plethora of undersize sea bass.

Some 80 young basketball players spent Monday afternoon at the Ross School in Bridgehampton drilling their footwork, practicing dribbling and ball-handling skills, shooting hoops, and simulating offensive and defensive tactics under the expert eye of a celebrity coach: John Wallace, a former Knicks player visiting for a junior basketball clinic.

The Kraken pitched well, fielded well, and hit well in Sunday’s Hamptons Adult Hardball League’s championship series opener against the East End Ospreys at the Bridgehampton School.

Sag Harbor United tightened the East Hampton 7-on-7 men’s soccer league race by defeating last fall’s champion, Maidstone Market, 4-3 at Herrick Park on July 9.

It’s appropriate that Michael Potts will be honored on Sunday afternoon as the Montauk Fishing Legend of the Year at the Montauk Grand Slam fishing tournament that Henry Uihlein has hosted at his marina for nearly three decades.

Every July for over two decades, Montauk has come together in the spirit of Rell Sunn, the surfing champion, to raise money for those in need. This year’s proceeds from the contest will benefit the Montauk Food Pantry and Concerned Citizens of Montauk.

I trapped 15 lobsters on July 8. That was the good news. The bad was that the Yanmar diesel engine on my Rock Water encountered problems on the return trip to Sag Harbor.

An estimated 150 I-Tri girls, members of Theresa Roden’s widely praised empowerment program that is in middle schools spanning Mastic to Montauk, participated Sunday in a youth triathlon at Noyac’s Long Beach.

The East Hampton Little League’s U-12 all-star baseball team suffered “a tough loss,” in its manager Chris Carney’s words, in the District 36 championship game versus the North Shore Nationals at Rocky Point on July 10.

John Kernell’s golfing efforts at Montauk Downs were immortalized in a Jack Graves column in 1999, plus a celebration of the late John Villaplana, Eastern Long Island Soccer League all-star.

With three East Hamptoners in the lineup, the Sag Harbor Whalers sailed to a 6-0 win over the South Shore Clippers in a Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League game at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Sunday afternoon. The Whalers were in third place as of that day.

My good friend Robert Cugini, who hails from Seattle, has served as a valued deckhand for many years when bay scallop season opens in early November. But lobsters are a different ballgame.

The 26th annual Rell Sunn Surf Contest benefit will happen Sunday at Ditch Plain Beach in Montauk, this time with sponsorship by Concerned Citizens of Montauk. 

East Hampton fire trucks and police cars greeted the Little League 10-and-under all-star softball team at around 9:30 p.m. on July 3 as the joyful players returned here after defeating their Riverhead peers 5-3 in the District 36 championship game played at Stotzky Memorial Park.

James Wood, son of the Bonac basketball legend Kenny Wood, has been billed as “the next face of the Washington Nationals’ franchise.” He lived up that billing in his debut last week.

The late Roy Lee Mabery, a gifted athlete of high character who drowned 52 years ago at Little Albert’s Beach in Amagansett, was remembered reverently at East Hampton Village’s Herrick Park Saturday morning as two new village-built basketball courts were dedicated to him. 

Colin Ruddy, coming off his sophomore year pitching for Monmouth University in New Jersey, reflects on the solid foundation he got pitching for Bonac, and what’s next for him on the mound.

Tim Garvin and the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett played host last Thursday to 66 young golfers and 22 pros from all over the Island in the Met PGA Long Island Pro Junior championship, a best-ball competition contested by foursomes.

I know that the East End is a well-known hot spot. I realize that nothing stays the same, but I miss the more simple days when courtesy, respect, and kindness ruled the road and water. Is it too much to ask for today?

As the school year comes to a close, accolades and achievements continue to roll in for student-athletes here, including college signings and Dellecave Award announcements.

Family members and friends of Roy Lee Mabery will be on hand Saturday to rededicate the newly renovated and relocated basketball courts at East Hampton’s Herrick Park in his memory.