Sports

   “We were playing for our lives,” Pete Vaziri said in the euphoric aftermath of Friday’s beatific 33-14 victory under the lights at McGann-Mercy in Riverhead.

    Indeed, Friday’s high school football game was a must-win for the Bonackers, who, as a result, nailed down Division IV’s last (eighth) playoff spot. That means they’ll be playing in the first round at top-seeded Babylon, which crushed them 44-7 in the season opener on Sept. 7, but Babylon (a traditional thorn in East Hampton’s side) can wait.

   Ryan Pilla, “The Car Doctor,” who operates out of his well-appointed shop on Scuttlehole Road, recently completed a Mazda trifecta, adding a New Jersey Motorsports Park lap record to speed records he had set this past Sports Car Club of America season at Lime Rock and Watkins Glen.

    There are two tracks at the Millville, N.J. site — the Lightning track and the Thunderbolt track. Pilla set his record on the way to winning the race, and the S.C.C.A’s Mazda series, on the latter loop.

   Cory Midgett, a 16-year-old junior at East Hampton High School, recently finished a season of Charger division racing at the Riverhead Speedway, winding up seventh among 18 contenders in the point standings.

    For virtually the entire season, Midgett was the youngest of the drivers at the speedway.

    “He’s got a long way to go to become a NASCAR driver, which is his dream,” Cory’s father, Brian, said during a conversation Friday, “but given his age and our shoestring budget, what he did this summer was fantastic.”

Golf Champs

    The following won championships recently at the Sag Harbor Golf Club: Tim Sweeney, men; Robin Corwith, women; Peter Donohue, senior men; Jean Thompson, senior women, and Ray Romano, first flight.

    In addition, Mark Weinhardt was the men’s low qualifier, and John Acquino and Liz Granitz were the president’s cup winners.

   East Hampton High’s field hockey and girls soccer teams said farewell to fall last week. For these young teams presumably the best is yet to be.

    You wouldn’t have thought girls soccer had gone winless in League V this season given the high spirits with which Mike Vitulli’s charges played in the regular-season finale here with runner-up Islip.

    East Hampton helped Islip to its first goal, a defender deflecting a corner kick by Lexi Jones, a junior, who was subbing that day in the goal for Francesca Schelfhout.

Thursday, November 1

BOYS SOCCER, first round county Class A tournament, Miller Place at East Hampton, 2:30 p.m.

Friday, November 2

GIRLS SWIMMING, East Hampton at League III championship meet, Hauppauge High School, 4:30 p.m.

FOOTBALL, first round Division IV tournament, East Hampton at Babylon, 7 p.m.

Saturday, November 3

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, county Class B semifinal, East Hampton High School, 10 a.m.

Monday, November 5

   The East Hampton High School boys soccer team repeated as the League VI champion here Saturday, routing Amityville, the only team that had beaten it during the regular season, by a score of 4-1.

    The visitors’ goal, by way of a penalty kick resulting from an inadvertent hands ball in the penalty box, came late in the game, long after everything had been decided.

   After bowling a perfect game, the first in her life — and she has been bowling since the age of 7 — the 42-year-old Dot Grossman dropped to one knee and cried.

    Asked if he’d gotten “the shot,” her husband, Ian, who is the East Hampton Bowl’s general manager, and who watched the singular perfect game unfold, said he had not, though it would have been hard to do, he added, “because everyone ran to her and enveloped her in hugs.”

   The Montauk Rugby Club finished the regular season here Saturday with a 46-5 thumping of Bayonne, N.J., thus winding up in second place in the Empire Geographical Union with a 6-1 record.

    Now the Sharks must wait until early May to find out whether they’ll be one of the two sides from the Northeast and New England regions to advance to U.S.A. Rugby’s Division II Sweet Sixteen.

   A record turnout enjoyed an extraordinarily warm October day at Crescent Beach on Saturday for the Shelter Island Fall 5K run and walk. Mary Ellen Adipietro, the race’s director, said on Monday that 670 had registered and almost 600 finished the race, a benefit for the Coalition for Women’s Cancers at Southampton Hospital and the North Fork Breast Health Coalition.

    Ed Petrie, the state’s winningest public high school boys basketball coach, who on Sept. 22 became an inaugural member of East Hampton High School’s Hall of Fame, was among four honorees inducted into the Westchester Sports Hall of Fame on Oct. 10.

Thursday, October 25

GIRLS TENNIS, county team tournament playoffs, sites of higher seeds, 3 p.m.

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

Friday, October 26

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Center Moriches at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

FOOTBALL, East Hampton at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, 7 p.m.

Saturday, October 27

BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton at freshman-sophomore meet, Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park, 9 a.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

   Josh Brussell, who coaches East Hampton High’s boys volleyball team, said following his team’s sweep of Westhampton Beach here Friday that it’s likely the Bonackers will have a home playoff match.

    Kathy McGeehan, the girls’ coach, who was helping to keep score that day, said she’s hoping for a first-round home playoff match too.

    “We know how to solve John Glenn,” McGeehan said, “but we’ve yet to actually do it. It has to do with taking care of the ball.”

    While perhaps not a joy forever, Saturday’s high school football game here was, for Bonac fans, a thing of beauty.

    On that beautiful day, the Bonackers, playing on all cylinders, routed Port Jefferson 28-6, with all of the scoring occurring in the first half.

    The win improved East Hampton to 2-4 in the Conference IV standings. As of Monday, Bill Barbour’s team was in seventh place among the conference’s 14 teams, with 103.320 power points. The top eight are to go to the playoffs.

    The Montauk Rugby Club, by virtue of a 54-27 rout of Syracuse at East Hampton’s Herrick Park Saturday, remains one of the 12-member Empire Geographical Union’s top sides, with a playoff spot in the spring guaranteed.

Standings posted on Section XI’s Web site Tuesday morning showed that East Hampton High School’s boys soccer team was in first place in League VI with a 7-1-0 record, and that girls volleyball, boys volleyball, and girls swimming were in runner-up spots.

    Moreover, boys and girls cross-country were each in third place in their leagues, golf was fourth, girls tennis was fifth, field hockey was eighth among 11 teams in Division III, and girls soccer was last in League V.

October 8, 1987

    An unexpectedly tough Southampton High School football team came close to rocking East Hampton in Sunday’s stormy weather, but thanks to an early Bonac score, a defense that rose to the occasion, costly Mariner miscues, and an untried place-kicker, East Hampton repossessed the handsome silver Hampton Cup, 7-6, to continue undefeated.

Thursday, October 18

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

Friday, October 19

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

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

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Westhampton at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

Saturday, October 20

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Long Beach, scrimmage, 9 a.m.

GOLF, East Hampton at tournament, Rock Hill Golf and Country Club, Manorville, 12:30 p.m.

   The East Hampton High School boys soccer team clinched a county Class A playoff berth with Friday’s 5-1 win here over Mount Sinai, though while that game went smoothly, the team two days before spotted Bayport-Blue Point to a 2-0 lead before coming back to win in overtime.

    “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.