Sports

   East Hampton High School’s boys and girls basketball teams are to begin the playoffs this week, with the sixth-seeded boys playing at third-seeded Islip at 5 p.m. today, and with the fifth-seeded girls playing at fourth-seeded Islip tomorrow at the same time.

   Mike Ritsi was almost in Delaware in December on his way to Florida, where he hoped he would find work, when a call came in from Sportime’s general manager, Sue de Lara, whose help wanted ad in The Star he’d answered.

    He turned right around, the 28-year-old Montauk resident said during a conversation Friday, was interviewed, and was hired as the director of Sportime’s well-appointed multisport arena in Amagansett.

Thursday, February 14

BOYS BASKETBALL, county Class A playoffs, first round, East Hampton at Islip, 5 p.m.; county Class D championship game, Bridgehampton vs. Shelter Island, 4 p.m., and county Class C championship game, 6, Westhampton Beach High School.

Friday, February 15

GIRLS BASKETBALL, county Class A playoffs, first round, East Hampton at Islip, 5 p.m.

Saturday, February 16

WRESTLING, Division II county championships, Center Moriches High School,  9:30 a.m.

    Leaving East Hampton High School’s gym the night of Jan. 29 following Bonac’s exciting 64-62 win in overtime over Shoreham-Wading River, Keith McMahon said, “Wow, what an exciting game . . . almost too exciting. Shoreham got hot there — they must have had ten 3s.”

   A small group gathered around L.C. Nelson during the girls basketball game here last Thursday night as he received on his iPhone periodic updates of the boys’ score from Elwood-John Glenn High School — a game that, unlike the girls’ contest, which Glenn was to win 64-21, went down to the wire.

    “It was a big game for both teams,” Bill McKee, the boys’ coach, said following the 80-75 victory. “By winning we earned a playoff spot and knocked them out of contention.”

   The East Hampton High School boys swimming team, which easily bested League II’s least successful teams, Deer Park and North Babylon, this past week to finish in second place, at 6-1, behind 7-0 Sayville-Bayport, will have 15 of its 33 competitors in the county swim meet on Feb. 16.

    “That’s far more than we’ve ever had before,” said Craig Brierley, the fourth-year program’s coach, before Monday’s practice session at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter.

Heine Qualifies

    Kevin Heine, a 185-pound Pierson senior who competes at 220 pounds for the East Hampton High School wrestling team, qualified for the county tournament as the result of his third-place finish in the league tourney at Westhampton Beach High School Saturday.

    Heine, who plans to attend the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on Cape Cod in the fall, pinned his consolation-round opponent, Amityville’s Joseph Torres, midway through the second period.

Thursday, February 7

 BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Bayport-Blue Point, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, February 8

BOYS SWIMMING, League II championships, Hauppauge High School, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Bridgehampton at Ross, 4:30 p.m., and Stony Brook at Pierson, 6:15.

Sunday, February 10

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton boys and girls at state qualifier meets, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 11 a.m.

Tuesday, February 12

   It wasn’t just the fact that his boys basketball team was one step closer to making the playoffs that contributed to Bill McKee’s sunny mood this past weekend; it was also the gift of a $7,500 Dr. Dish shooting and rebounding machine that made its debut Saturday morning at Biddy basketball practice at the John M. Marshall Elementary School.

   The East Hampton High School girls basketball team scored a season-high 64 points in Friday’s game here with Miller Place, a feisty opponent whose post players impressed Bonac’s coach, Howard Wood, with their grit.

    “Those girls play hard,” the former professional power forward said of the Panthers’ big girls following the 64-51 decision. “They were posting our girls up hard — that’s what you should do.”

    Meanwhile, Wood said of Bonac’s defenders, “We don’t move our feet, and then we reach in. That’s what you shouldn’t do.”

    Both of East Hampton High’s winter track teams finished at the bottom of the heap in league meets at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood this past weekend, but both are very young, and, particularly in the girls’ case, have thin rosters.

    Nevertheless, there was some good news: Chjuvaughn Cameron placed third among the freshmen in the countywide freshman-sophomore meet’s 55-meter dash Friday in a personal best time of 7.15 seconds, and, in the same category, Erik Engstrom placed fourth in the 1,600 in a personal best 5:00.54.

   The East Hampton High School boys swimming team continued its stellar season with a 60-41 win at West Islip last Thursday. It was the fourth win in a row for the second-place swimmers, who are coached by Craig Brierley and Brian Cunningham, and it improved their league record to 4-1.

Thursday, January 31

BOYS SWIMMING, North Babylon vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Elwood-John Glenn at East Hampton, 6:45 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Elwood-John Glenn, 5 p.m.

Friday, February 1

BOYS BASKETBALL, Bridgehampton at Shelter Island, 4 p.m.

Saturday, February 2

WRESTLING, East Hampton at league championships, Westhampton Beach High School, 9 a.m.

BOWLING, East Hampton at county championships, Sayville Lanes, 9 a.m.

    Having to forfeit at 120 and 126 pounds again denied a possible win to East Hampton High School’s wrestling team here in a match with Miller Place on Jan. 23.

    The good news, however, was that the 120-pounder, Lucas Escobar, the team’s best wrestler, who had suffered a broken clavicle earlier in the season, had been cleared to compete in the league meet at Westhampton Beach High School this Saturday.

   East Hampton High School’s basketball teams continued this past week to point toward the postseason, though the boys, with Thomas King missing because of an injury, from both games, dug themselves into a bit of a hole.

    “Two tough losses,” said the boys’ coach, Bill McKee, referring to the games with Bayport-Blue Point and Mount Sinai. East Hampton lost 74-69 to Bayport in overtime and 53-49 at Mount Sinai last Thursday.

   Stony Hill Stables in Amagansett has always been a cute one, a wonderful place to start the kids riding, though when it’s come to the Hampton Classic, other South Fork barns have brought in far more ribbons.

   East Hampton High School’s boys swimming team improved its league record to 3-1 this past week with an impressive 93.5-74.5 win here over Harborfields.

    As a result of the win, the Bonackers, whose roster is deep, rose from third to second place in League II, behind undefeated Sayville.

    Harborfields, at 3-2, Hauppauge, at 3-2, West Islip, at 2-2, Deer Park, at 2-3, Huntington, at 1-4, and North Babylon, at 0-5, were as of Tuesday in East Hampton’s wake.

Thursday, January 24

BOWLING, Westhampton Beach vs. East Hampton, East Hampton Bowl, 3:30 p.m.

BOYS SWIMMING, East Hampton at West Islip, 3:30 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Miller Place, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, January 25

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Miller Place at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton boys at freshman-sophomore meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 5 p.m.

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Rocky Point, 6 p.m.

Saturday, January 26

   There almost wasn’t a boys basketball game at Sag Harbor Friday night because the already-slim ranks of Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees had been pared even further by two academic ineligibilities, which had prompted the Bees’ coach, Carl Johnson, earlier in the week to forfeit a contest to Bridgehampton’s chief Class D rival, Shelter Island.

   The East Hampton High School boys swimming team knocked Hauppauge out of a first-place tie with Sayville-Bayport by defeating the Eagles 95-75 at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter on Jan. 9, thus improving to 2-1 in league competition and dropping Hauppauge (3-1) into a second-place tie with Harborfields.

    The meet was swum before a full house. “Going into the last event, the 400-yard freestyle relay,” said East Hampton’s coach, Craig Brierley, “the top of the roof was coming off. The meet was decided by then, but the crowd didn’t know it.”

   East Hampton High School’s basketball teams were to have played big games with their Bayport-Blue Point peers Tuesday.

    Meanwile, in recent action, the boys, on Jan. 8, parlayed an energetic second half into a 53-47 win over Elwood-John Glenn before losing 73-57 on Friday at Amityville, the odds-on favorite to win the league championship. That same night, the girls, following lopsided losses to Shoreham-Wading River and John Glenn, rebounded behind Jackie Messemer’s breakout 21-point performance to defeat their Amityville peers 49-36.

   Twenty-four members of the Y.M.C.A.’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, coached by Tom Cohill, competed this past weekend in a large regional meet at the University of Maryland.

   Doug and Kathryn de Groot, who own the Buckskill Tennis Club here, which is turned over to skating in the winter, are making a big push for the young set.

    “We’re putting an emphasis on kids with our after-school and weekend junior hockey, figure skating, and regular skating offerings,” Kathryn de Groot said Saturday morning as 20-plus youngsters, under Tim Luzadre’s direction, were doing hockey drills and scrimmaging on Buckskill’s rink, which overlies about six Har-Tru tennis courts.

Coach on Goalie

    Brad McCarty, coach of the national champion Messiah College men’s soccer team, whose goalie is Brandon West, a former Bonac star, had this to say by way of e-mail: “One of the things that separates Brandon from everyone else is his work ethic, on and off the field.”

Thursday, January 17

BOWLING, Southampton vs. East Hampton, East Hampton Bowl, 3:30 p.m.

BOYS SWIMMING, Harborfields vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Mount Sinai at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, January 18

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 6 p.m.

Saturday, January 19

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Mattituck tournament, 8 a.m.

January 7, 1988

    Kenny Wood, East Hampton’s 6-foot-4 1/2-inch junior center, who has averaged 31.3 points per game since the season began, and 35.0 in the past five games, during which he has been virtually unstoppable, tied the school’s single-game scoring record, set by Bill Myrick in 1968, as he tallied 40 points in Saturday’s game with Alexander Hamilton, which was played as part of a doubleheader at Manhasset High School. Even so, East Hampton wound up losing in the final seconds, 65-62.

January 14, 1988

   Agony and ecstasy met together at the Shoreham-East Hampton girls high school basketball game here last Thursday.

    A good-sized crowd had turned out to see Kaelyn Ward, who had already established herself as the highest-scoring female player in Bonac hoop history, score her 1,000th point. And, of course, the fans hoped too that their team would defeat Shoreham-Wading River.

    “Only Kaelyn should have been nervous — not all of them,” East Hampton’s coach, Howard Wood, said in the wake of the disappointing 64-35 loss.

   Though the East Hampton High School boys basketball team was missing two key players — Juan Cuevas, who starts, and Rolando Garces, the valuable sixth man — Bill McKee, the Bonackers’ coach, said during a conversation the day following a disappointing 56-55 loss at Shoreham-Wading River that “we just didn’t, for whatever reason, play well — we didn’t lose because Juan and Rolando weren’t there.”

    The East Hampton High School boys swimming team evened its league record with a 99-85 win at Huntington this past week.

    While Huntington had a state-record-holding swimmer, Gunther Cassel, in its lineup, and had divers to boot, East Hampton’s depth turned the tide.

   Just a few East Hamptoners have played on collegiate national championship teams over the years; Brandon West is the latest.

    West and his Messiah College teammates of Mechanicsburg, Pa., went 23-0-2 this past season on their way to winning Division III’s men’s soccer championship. It was the eighth national title for the Falcons in the past 11 years.