Sports

    “They began to come alive in practice this week,” Bill Barbour Sr. said following Saturday’s 39-17 loss here to Mount Sinai, which his son, and head coach, Bill Jr., had described as “arguably the best team in the league.”

    Yes, it was a defeat, but the Bonackers’ heads were not bowed. They’d given it their all, and their spirits were high throughout the fray.

    “It was a great game — I’m proud of them,” the younger Barbour said afterward. “They didn’t back down; it was a loss to build upon.”

   Two platform tennis courts were officially opened at the East Hampton Indoor-Outdoor Tennis Club this past weekend with well-attended clinics put on by Marco Grangeiro, the New York Athletic Club’s paddle director in Pelham, and Marie Minnick of East Hampton, who teaches the increasingly popular racket sport at four clubs on the South Fork.

    As of Tuesday morning, standings posted on Section XI’s Web site showed East Hampton High’s boys soccer and girls swimming teams in first place in league competition, with boys and girls volleyball and girls cross-country in runner-up positions.

Thursday, October 11

GOLF, Pierson vs. East Hampton, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 4 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Miller Place, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 4:30 p.m.

CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton boys and girls at invitational meet, Indian Island County Park, Riverhead, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, October 12

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

   Two teams that had been sailing along, the East Hampton High School boys soccer team and the Ross School girls tennis team, stumbled Monday.

    The Bonac boys lost 1-0 at Amityville as the result of a first-half penalty kick.

    The Ross girls, who had defeated William Floyd 5-2 at home Saturday, lost by the same score at Floyd Monday. Vinicius Carmo, Ross’s coach, was a bit mystified, though as of Tuesday morning he was confident his team, with a little help from East Hampton, which has yet to play its second match with Floyd, would win out in the end.

   A rarity occurred last Thursday at Indian Island Park in Riverhead — both the East Hampton boys and girls cross-country teams won.

    The boys, vying against Sayville and Westhampton Beach, which had recently trounced them at the Peconic County Invitational, edged the Hurricanes 27-28, and went toe-to-toe with Sayville, which wound up a 26-29 winner. The girls meanwhile defeated Elwood-John Glenn 20-29.

    The East Hampton High School football team fell back to earth here Saturday as Shoreham-Wading River, whose Tyler Anderson broke countless tackles in rushing for 328 yards and five touchdowns, won 42-14.

    Anderson, a tall back who averaged almost 30 yards per carry, invariably ran right up the middle, after having made a stutter step, leaving Bonac fans to cry out futilely in his wake, “Stop him! Stop him!”

    Later, when asked how many yards Anderson had gained, a Shoreham coach said, “A million.”

   Nic Roldan, who summers in Water Mill and has played with teams contesting cups at the Bridgehampton Polo Club for years, and Tommy Biddle, another Bridgehampton veteran who once quarterbacked the University of South Carolina’s football team, are to square off in the featured match at the Scottsdale, Ariz., polo championships on Oct. 20.

   Biddle will captain the Hamptons team, and Roldan will captain the Los Angeles-based Bel Air team.

   While John Glenn’s Sarah Hardie finished first in last Thursday’s girls cross-country race at Indian Island County Park in Riverhead, East Hampton’s team won, by a score of 20-29.

    Dana Cebulski, a sophomore who became the first East Hampton girl to vie in a state cross-country meet last fall, was the runner-up to Hardie, in 20 minutes and 46 seconds, 24 seconds  behind the winner.

    Then came East Hampton’s pack — Jamie Staubitser, in 23:45, Emma Newburger, in 23:56, Jackie Messemer, in 24:06, and Merissah Gilbert, in 24:18.

Thursday, October 4

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Islip, 5 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Islip, 4:30 p.m.

GOLF, East Hampton at Southampton, 4p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, East Hampton at Southampton, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, October 5

GIRLS TENNIS, Shoreham at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Mount Sinai at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, October 6

BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton vs. St. Anthony’s, Sunken Meadow, 9:30 a.m.

   For Cheryl Keller of Montauk and Mike Bahel of East Hampton, owner of the Body Tech fitness centers here, Saturday’s 26.2-mile race through Springs and Amagansett might as well have been called a “marrython,” for they were to tie the knot in Montauk later that day.

    Pretty much everyone in the wedding party ran Saturday, including the minister, Brian Monahan, either in the full, the half, or the 5K, and the 46-year-old bridegroom’s 24th-place finish in the marathon was pretty impressive given the rehearsal dinner and bachelor’s party that had preceded it.

   Ryan Pilla, “the Car Doctor,” won both ends of a national sports car doubleheader at Watkins Glen over the course of a recent weekend, setting the track’s speed record for Mazdas in the process.

    “I’ve been racing all summer long, and I’ve always been in the top five,” Pilla said on his return, “though this is my biggest achievement — the Sports Car Club of America’s Mazda series has been contested since 1990, almost 23 years.”

    All week leading up to Saturday’s homecoming football game with Southampton, the winner of which would take home the handsome silver Hampton Cup that was introduced into the rivalry by Bridgehampton National Bank in 1982, East Hampton High’s coaches fed the emotional fires, and came the big night, the Bonackers scorched their ancient foes 42-7 before a full house under the lights.

    Nine decades of East Hampton High School sports were celebrated Saturday morning when 12 athletes (5 of them deceased), 2 coaches, 2 teams, and The Star’s sportswriter were inducted into the high school’s Hall of Fame, as its inaugural class, following a breakfast for 400 in the school’s large glassed-in cafeteria.

    “This is one of the great days in Bonac sports history,” said Jim Nicoletti, president of the 19-member committee that made the Hall’s first selections. He was overwhelmed, he said, by the reception the effort had received.

Thursday, September 27

GOLF, East Hampton vs. Center Moriches, Maidstone Club, 4 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

CROSS-COUNTRY, Westhampton boys vs. East Hampton, 4 p.m., and Elwood-John Glenn girls vs. East Hampton, 4:30, Indian Island County Park, Riverhead.

Friday, September 28

GIRLS TENNIS, West Islip at East Hampton, nonleague, 4 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Elwood-John Glenn at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

   Besides football, three other Bonac teams — field hockey, boys soccer, and girls volleyball — celebrated homecoming victories this past weekend.

    The boys soccer team, which is the defending county Class A champion, bested Miller Place 2-1 Saturday afternoon, a nice lead-in to the rout in football of Southampton. The girls volleyball team swept Rocky Point in three, and the field hockey team, in a Friday game whose second half was played under the lights, defeated Port Jefferson 2-1 thanks to a corner play goal by Amanda Calabrese in the final minutes.

September 10, 1987

    John Kenney of New York and Shelter Island, who nine days before had won a 5K here, continued the string by leading some 200 runners across the line in Monday’s Great Bonac 10K race in Springs.

    Kenney, a 31-year-old IBM systems engineer, covered the 6.2-mile course in 31 minutes and 41 seconds. Kevin Barry, also of Shelter Island, who won this race last year and in 1985, was third in 33:04.

   Bill Barbour Jr., head coach of the East Hampton High School football team, and an assistant, Jason Menu, remember what it was like the last time an East Hampton team defeated a Southampton one.

    “It was a great feeling,” Barbour, who was the center in that game of 25 years ago, said following a recent preseason practice.

    “It was a low-scoring mudfest,” said Menu, who played a guard position. “It was fantastic.”

   Saturday’s homecoming will mark the return of one of the oldest high school football rivalries on Long Island, the one between East Hampton and Southampton that dates to 1923, and will feature as well the induction of East Hampton High School’s first Hall of Fame class.

    Locals who cursed the presence of New Jerseyites here this summer can take a measure of revenge in the dispatching of the Montclair, N.J., Rugby Club back whence they came Saturday, courtesy of the Montauk Sharks by a 17-14 tally at Herrick Park in East Hampton.

    Still, “a 3-point game in rugby is a pretty close game,” the Sharks’ coach, Rich Brierley, said Monday. And Montclair is a team that just moved up to the Empire Union’s Division 2, which, taken together, could signal rough waters ahead.

   Michelle Del Giorno is a world champion in karate, hooked since her first tournament at the age of 16, but she said on Monday that despite what some may think, self-defense is not all about kicking, punching, blocking, and throwing. At her dojo in Sag Harbor, Epic Martial Arts East, the curriculum teaches kindness, respect, tolerance, focus, discipline, confidence, and self-control.

Thursday, September 20

GIRLS SOCCER, Rocky Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GOLF, Westhampton Beach vs. East Hampton, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 4 p.m.

Friday, September 21

FIELD HOCKEY, Port Jefferson at East Hampton, 6 p.m.

Saturday, September 22

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Half Hollow Hills at East Hampton, 10 a.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, Harborfields at East Hampton, 10 a.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, Ross School at East Hampton, 10:30 a.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Rocky Point at East Hampton, 11:30 a.m.

August 6, 1987

    Bridgehampton High School’s sophomore wing, Bobby Hopson, and East Hampton’s junior center, Kenny Wood, were starters on the Long Island team that played in the Empire State Games at Syracuse last weekend.

    About 150 spectators watched as a Racquet Club of East Hampton pro, Frank Ackley, defeated Ken Trell, a member of the Green Hollow Tennis Club, 7-5, 6-2 in the finals of the senior men’s open tournament held Sunday at the Racquet Club.

August 13, 1987

   If you need proof that bowling is a lifetime sport, just come to East Hampton Bowl Wednesday mornings.

    There you’ll see some pretty keen competitors in the Senior Men’s League, whose average age, Ken McFall, a member of the league for the past seven years, reckoned, was “pushing 80.”

    East Hampton High School’s football team has nowhere to go but up, and this fall it presumably will.

    Last year, if you recall, the Bonackers, who were outnumbered, undersized, and outplayed by all their Division III opponents, went 0-8.

    In the second game of the season, with Kings Park, the starting senior quarterback, Ryan Joudeh, went down with a severe ankle sprain, and his sophomore backup, Cort Heneveld, and the team’s best defender, Dan Barros, were taken to the sidelines with concussions, a “first” in this writer’s memory. And so it went.

Thursday, September 13

FIELD HOCKEY, Riverhead at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4:30 p.m.

CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton boys and girls at invitational meet, Red Creek Park, Hampton Bays, 4 p.m.

Friday, September 14

GIRLS SOCCER, Miller Place at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4 p.m.

FOOTBALL, East Hampton at Stony Brook, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, September 15

   Alexander Peters and Peter Bennett, two regulars in the Ultimate flying disc competitions held on Friday nights at Herrick Park in East Hampton, took part in the Ultimate national championships in Blaine, Minn., over the Labor Day weekend.

   The two played on the Brooklyn team, one of 18 in the tournament from all over the country. “It’s one of the toughest tournaments in the world,” Peters said Monday. “It was great. We both played really well.”

   The brother and sister act of Adam and Dana Cebulski was on display Labor Day morning as each of them won first-place medals in the Great Bonac Footrace’s 5K.

    Adam, a 17-year-old junior at East Hampton High School, won running away in 18 minutes and 10 seconds. He’d been hoping for a 17:30 or a 17:45, but was nevertheless happy, knowing that he had run hard.

   Grand Prix Sunday at the Hampton Classic ran the gamut age-wise, from 2-to-4-year-olds in leadline classes to the 50-year-old Jeffrey Welles, a two-time former Grand Prix winner, who on Merlin placed eighth in the day’s main event.

    Stuart Nayman, as he was watching his wife, Hilary, lead their 4-year-old daughter, Rachel, around the Anne Aspinall Ring that morning under the discerning eyes of two judges, said, when questioned, that Rachel had been riding “practically since birth.”

   The last line, as it were, of the Hampton Classic’s $250,000 Grand Prix was writ large insofar as about a third of the 35 horse-and-rider combinations were concerned.

    Eleven of them, by one count, came to grief at the 17-effort course’s final hurdle, a skinny vertical four short strides off a wide oxer that followed a double liverpool (a double jump under which small water trenches lay).