Sports

   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).

   The fall high school sports season is upon us, and from a Bonac fan’s perspective the prospects are bright. Just about all of East Hampton’s 11 teams seem to have legitimate shots at the playoffs.

   The Montauk Rugby Club, which went undefeated in league play last fall, is looking to repeat, although, according to Rich Brierley, the format has been changed so as to include upstate sides in the mix.

    “There will be four three-team divisions in the Empire Union,” Brierley said during a conversation this week. “We’ll play each side in our division twice and then one crossover game. Ours is with Syracuse, but they’ll have to come to us.”

Triathlon

    The 31st Mighty Hamptons Triathlon (.93-mile bay swim, 23.8-mile bike, and 6.2-mile run) is to be held at Long Beach, Sag Harbor, on Sunday beginning at 6:40 a.m.

    Tom Eickelberg, a 23-year-old pro from Babylon, was last year’s winner, in 1 hour, 57 minutes, and 18 seconds. It was his first time at this race. At the time, Eickelberg said he didn’t think he’d been beaten on Long Island in the past couple of years. The women’s winner, and seventh over all, was Amy Bevilacqua, 37, of Wilton, Conn., in 2:07:32.

Hall of Fame

Thursday, September 6

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Southampton, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Friday, September 7

BOYS SOCCER, Mattituck at East Hampton, nonleague, 4 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Hampton Bays, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

FOOTBALL, East Hampton at Babylon, season opener, 6 p.m.

Saturday, September 8

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Smithtown East invitational, 8:30 a.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton vs. Pierson, nonleague, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 10 a.m.

   No longer a comedy of errors, the Artists-Writers annual softball game has become discomfitingly well played in recent years, this past Saturday’s mano-a-mano struggle in East Hampton’s Herrick Park being no exception.

    In the end, the Writers’ egos were spared serious bruising as they emerged from the dogfight as 12-11 victors in 10 innings, thus taking a 26-18-1 lead in modern times, and going up 12-11-1 in the post-modern era.

   The Beach Diplomats, a team got together by Chris Carney whose roster included a former Olympic decathlete from Ghana, Kofi Sekyiamah, wound up winning the Gurney’s Inn beach volleyball league’s finals last Thursday, coming back to best top-seeded Air and Speed 17-21, 21-16, 21-14.

    “It was great volleyball,” said Kathy McGeehan, the league’s founder and girls volleyball coach at East Hampton High School, who in the summertime works as a fitness instructor at Gurney’s Spa in Montauk.

    Caroline Cashin, with 120 pumps, which took the pressure off her in the subsequent run that spanned the Atlantic and Indian Wells Beaches in Amagansett, was the runner-up to Neil Falkenhan and set a record for women in the Body Tech and Old Montauk Athletic Club’s “Pump and Run” competition on Aug. 22.

    This year, “thanks to my workouts at [her husband Ed’s] Exceed Fitness studio” on Plank Road, Cashin chest-pressed the bar 120 times, 22 more repetitions than she did at the same event in 2011.

    A pleasant sea breeze caressed the horses and riders and spectators as the 37th Hampton Classic opened Sunday — in stark, and welcome, contrast to the tropical storm that caused the weeklong hunter-jumper show to be foreshortened last year.

   Among the Local Day ribbon winners from Alvin and Patsy Topping’s Swan Creek Farms in Bridgehampton were: Practical Magic, owned by Samantha Rudin Earls and ridden by Jagger Topping, champion, local professionals; Spring Fling, owned and ridden by Yvetta Rechler-Newman of Southampton, champion, local amateur owners; Red Drum, owned by Charlotte Maerov of East Hampton and ridden by Amanda Topping, first and fourth in local professionals.

Paddle Relay Race

    Despite southwest winds that made paddling in Gardiner’s Bay difficult, the three-person, three-mile stand-up paddleboard relay race overseen by Paddlers for Humanity went on as scheduled Sunday with 13 teams participating.

    The race to raise the $35,000 needed so that about 40 Springs School seventh and eighth graders may continue to be combined with the middle school in certain sports has apparently been won.

    Mark Lappin, one of a half-dozen parents who, under the Springs Sports Booster Club aegis, began soliciting donations from businesses and individuals scarcely a month ago in the run-up to a Sept. 1 deadline, said during a conversation Sunday evening, “It’s definitely a go.”

Thursday, August 30

HAMPTON CLASSIC, hunter and jumper classes in all five rings, with featured events to include the $5,000 Junior Jumper Classic and the $5,000 Strong’s Marine A-O Jumper Classic in Jumper Ring 2, the $10,000 Sam Edelman Equitation Championship in the Grand Prix Ring at 1:30 p.m., and the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Adult Amateur Hunter Classic in the Hunter 2 Ring at 1:30, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Friday, August 31

   Thomas Brierley, a 16-year-old lifeguard who, as a sophomore, helped lead the East Hampton High School boys swimming team to its first winning season last winter, won the main event, the 2-miler, in Saturday’s East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad swims in choppy Gardiner’s Bay.

   Luis Mancilla, 21, a Springs resident who is better known locally as a Golden Gloves boxer, won Ellen’s Run in Southampton Sunday in a speedy time of 16 minutes and 39 seconds.

    After crossing the line, Mancilla, a 132-pounder who trains in Westbury, and who runs on his own, was told he’d undoubtedly be welcomed at John Conner’s track workouts on Monday and Wednesday evenings at East Hampton High School.

   Shanette Barth Cohen, the Hampton Classic’s executive director, who used to face a wall, has a corner office now, with a window, a door through which she can escape, and a low-slung guardian lapdog named Jackson, but she won’t feel entirely secure until Opening Day has come and gone without incident.

Volleyball Finals

    Semifinal and final beach volleyball league matches are to be contested this evening at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk. Top-seeded Air and Speed is to play Shelter Island in one semifinal, while the second-seeded Beach Diplomats are to play Team Dempsey in the other.

    The semis are to begin at 6, and the final is to follow. There will be a barbecue for players and spectators at Gurney’s beach bar next to the center court.

Artists-Writers Game

   With two of its collegiate contributors absent, having gone back for the fall semester, Groundworks Landscaping nevertheless swept perennial-champion Bostwick’s last week to win the East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch league’s playoff championship.

    Bostwick’s (nee Cangiolosi’s) was looking for an unprecedented seventh straight trophy, but Groundworks dug deep for the win, its first ever in slow-pitch play.

Thursday, August 23

BEACH VOLLEYBALL, semifinal and final matches, followed by awards ceremony and barbecue, Gurney’s Inn, Montauk, from 6 p.m.

Friday, August 24

TENNIS, clinics by Hall of Famer Mats Wilander, Montauk Racquet Club, West Lake Drive, 3-6 p.m., followed by dinner at Moby Dick’s restaurant.

Saturday, August 25

ARTISTS-WRITERS GAME, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 2 p.m., preceded by batting practice from noon.

Sunday, August 26

   Gina Bradley, a city kid who took to the water once she’d graduated from the University of Vermont, said during a conversation the other day at her Paddle Diva office at the Shagwong Marina that she liked it that in a 90-minute lesson she would make the water completely accessible to women who otherwise might never venture forth.

   Annette MacNiven was heading toward a mountain bike triathlon in New Hampshire the other day with a light heart, for she knew she’d already won the regional championship in the 55-to-59-year-old age division, for the sixth or seventh year in a row.

    “The last 10 years I’ve been doing these off-road triathlons,” she said. “They’re going to be in the Olympics for the first time in 2016.”

   “You got a stop watch?” John Conner asked Bill Herzog at the starting line of the Miss Amelia’s Cottage 2-mile road race in Amagansett Sunday morning.

    When Herzog nodded, Conner said, “Can I use it?” Yes, he could, said Herzog, who was there to see how some of the young runners he coaches fared. “I hope it works,” he said to an observer. “I got it 25 years ago at Radio Shack.”

    This 2-mile race, about half of which is down Town Lane, is a favorite of kids, and of adults whose fast twitch fibers remain intact.

   It was incorrectly reported in the obituary of Andy Neidnig last week that he had set an over-70 record of 2 hours and 57 minutes at the New York Marathon. He did indeed set an over-70 record, in 1989, but his time was 3:32:28.

    The former world-class miler and marathoner, who died on Aug. 6 at the age of 93, won his age group at the New York Marathon three years running, between ’89 and ’91. The 3:45:42 he ran in ’90, while it was his “slowest ever,” still placed him in the top quarter of the 25,000 entrants.

Thursday, August 16

BEACH VOLLEYBALL, rounds one and two of playoffs, Gurney’s Inn, Montauk, 6 p.m.

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game three of best-of-three final series, if necessary, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 7 p.m.

Saturday, August 18

SWIMMING, East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad one-half, one, and three-mile swims, Fresh Pond beach, Amagansett, 7:30 a.m.

BASKETBALL, Amateur Athletic Union 16-and-under tournament, Montauk Playhouse Community Center, 240 Edgemere Street, also Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

    Bostwick’s (nee Cangiolosi’s) is eying its seventh straight East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch softball league championship, though Groundworks Landscaping, a team that Kim Hren has gotten together, planted a 13-10 loss on the perennial champions in game one of a best-of-three final last Thursday.

    Members of the Springs Booster Club, who hope to raise $35,000 by the end of this month so that an estimated 40 to 45 Springs School seventh and eighth graders can continue to participate on East Hampton Middle School teams, met last Thursday with the East Hampton School District’s athletic director, Joe Vas, who encouraged them in their endeavor.

    The weekend of Aug. 18-19 will sport two popular events here — the Artists and Writers Softball Game at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Saturday, the 18th, and Ellen’s Run the next morning in Southampton.

    It’s the 64th year for the Artists-Writers Game, according to its impresario, Leif Hope, and it’s the 17th year for Ellen’s Run, which has underwritten Southampton Hospital’s state-of-the-art breast cancer center, named after Julie Ratner’s late sister, Ellen P. Hermanson.

   Maidstone Market continued its undefeated string of championships in the 7-on-7 men’s soccer league here, defeating Tortorella Pools 3-1 in the playoff final on Aug. 1.

    Tortorella, the tournament’s fourth seed, had upset top-seeded 75 Main 2-1 in one of the semifinals while Maidstone, the dominant men’s soccer team locally in the past four years, had shut out Bateman Painting 2-0 in the other semi.

    Fifteen teams duked it out in the double-elimination Travis Field memorial softball tournament at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett over the weekend, and the Mighty Midgetts, Brian Midgett’s team, came out on top.