Sports

   The Montauk Rugby Club’s warmups for next month’s national Division II East bracket Sweet 16 games in Pittsburgh began March 24 at a tournament held by the Village Lions on Randalls Island in New York City.

    The Sharks, who are the eighth seed in the East region, split on the 24th, defeating the New York Rugby Club 19-12, but losing 22-19 to White Plains, a loss that kept the side from advancing beyond pool play.

    Montauk is to meet White Plains, a solid D-I side, again in a friendly match to be played at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on April 21.

   The East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch league, which is down to five entries, has put out a call for a few more good teams. Whether they will materialize is questionable, but league officials are hoping, given the success each summer of the Travis Field memorial scholarship tournaments, that they may.

    “We’re down to five teams now. We had six last year,” said the league’s spokesman, Rich Schneider, who can remember the days when 14 teams played in two divisions at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett.

   On the eve of his team’s departure for 10 days of scrimmages and practice sessions at Disney World’s sports complex in Orlando, Lou Reale, who coaches East Hampton High’s softball team, said things were looking pretty good given the young team’s early season wins over Shoreham-Wading River, Rocky Point, and Miller Place, and a close loss to Sayville, the top-ranked Class A school and one of the best teams over all in the county.

Trip of a Lifetime

    The East Hampton High School Coaches Association is to have a golf outing at the South Fork Country Club this Saturday, and at the dinner that night the winner of a “trip of a lifetime raffle,” whose tickets cost $20, will be announced.

Thursday, April 12

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Bellport, 10 a.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 10 a.m.

Friday, April 13

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Kings Park, 10:30 a.m.

Saturday, April 14

RUGBY, Montauk vs. Village Lions, Randalls Island, New York City, 1 p.m.

Monday, April 16

BOYS LACROSSE, Mattituck-Greenport-Southold at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Islip at East Hampton, nonleague, and William Floyd at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

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

   As of earlier this week, East Hampton High’s baseball team was 1-3 in league play, having seen leads vanish in games with Mount Sinai and Shoreham-Wading River.

    “Finding a way to put teams away when we have a lead will be the focal point for us moving forward,” said Will Collins, who assists Ed Bahns in coaching the Bonackers.

    In the game with Mount Sinai, played here last Thursday, East Hampton went up 1-0 in the bottom of the first inning on a triple by Brandon Brophy and an r.b.i. grounder by the starting pitcher, Deilyn Guzman.

   None of the teams in East Hampton won Monday. The Ross School’s boys tennis team, as its coach, Vinicius Carmo, had feared, lost 4-3 at Southampton, a team that he had said had four good players. Thus Ross dropped to 3-1 in league play. Meanwhile, East Hampton lost 6-1 at Westhampton Beach, dropping to 2-3. Southampton and Westhampton, each at 4-1, are tied for the League VII lead.

East Hampton’s baseball team lost 4-1 at Bayport-Blue Point, dropping to 1-3. Bayport-Blue Point improved to 4-0.

   East Hampton High’s track teams went up against their Miller Place peers in season-opening meets on March 27, and while it was no surprise that both the boys and girls lost, their coaches, Chris Reich and Diane O’Donnell, were encouraged nonetheless.

    “It was a good start,” O’Donnell said Monday morning. “We’ve got a lot of new people, and Shani and I don’t know what exactly they can do yet, but we had some good performances there, and the ones we expected to do well did.”

   There was good news and bad for the East Hampton High School lacrosse teams last week.

    The boys, who as of earlier this week were 1-1 in division play, bounced back from a 15-8 loss here to Rocky Point by thumping Southampton 15-2 Friday, and the girls, after routing Bellport 18-5, were, in turn, polished off 15-4 by Hauppauge, dropping them to 2-1 in division play.

    The Ross School’s boys tennis team handed Westhampton Beach a 4-3 loss in the private school’s bubble Friday, thanks in the end to a clutch performance by one of Ross’s seventh graders, Jonas Linnman-Feurring, who played third singles.

    Newsday had touted the Hurricanes as the team to beat in League VII in its Sunday edition, noting that Ross had lost six players from last year’s county-finalist team.

    Things were going swimmingly for the East Hampton High School softball team as of earlier this week.

    Thanks to early-season wins over Westhampton Beach, Shoreham-Wading River, and Rocky Point, Lou Reale’s girls were 3-0 going into Monday’s game at Sayville. Miller Place was to have played here Tuesday.

    “I’ll be happy if we can go down to Florida at 4-1,” the veteran coach said during a conversation Sunday, following a clinic he and his assistant, Erin Abran, gave for coaches, parents, and young players that morning.

Monday, April 9

BASEBALL, Amityville at East Hampton, noon.

Tuesday, April 10

GIRLS LACROSSE, Ward Melville at East Hampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Sayville, 10:30 a.m.

SOFTBALL, Pierson-Bridgehampton at Center Moriches, 10 a.m.

BASEBALL, Pierson-Bridgehampton at Port Jefferson, noon.

Wednesday, April 11

BASEBALL, Port Jefferson vs. Pierson-Bridgehampton, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, noon.

Thursday, April 12

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 10 a.m.

   The East Hampton High School baseball team made the playoffs last year — for the first time since 2007 — and, despite the removal of one of its key pitchers, Maykell Guzman, to the Dominican Republic, the senior-heavy team can be expected to make them again this spring.

    Ed Bahns, the head coach, and his assistant, Will Collins, are counting on their “core six,” all senior returnees, to lead the way.

   As Matt Maloney had predicted, the East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team was well tuned for its league opener at Center Moriches Friday.

   In high school tennis matches here Monday, Half Hollow Hills East, the defending county champion, bageled Ross 7-0 and Southampton edged East Hampton 4-3.

Ross’s coach, Vinicius Carmo, who saw the rout coming, lamented the fact that his Ross Tennis Academy students were not allowed by Section XI to play in league matches. “With them,” said Carmo, “we would have won.”

   In a nonleague match played at Ross Saturday, Northport prevailed 4-3.

   Lou Reale, East Hampton High’s softball coach, spent much of Saturday morning’s practice schooling his three new infielders in cutoff plays and the like.

    The Ross School’s boys tennis team, which has only one senior, Felipe Reis, its number-one, is set, nevertheless, to challenge Westhampton Beach for the league championship. Ross and Westhampton are to play their first match tomorrow.

    While the coach, Vinicius Carmo, expects the Cosmos to make the playoffs, he’s not sure how deep this year’s team, which includes two seventh graders who play singles and three freshmen, will go. Ross was the county runner-up to Half Hollow Hills East the past two years.

Thursday, March 29

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

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

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Hauppauge, 5:30 p.m.

Friday, March 30

BOYS TENNIS, Westhampton at Ross and Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Southampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River and Pierson at Smithtown Christian, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, McGann-Mercy at Pierson, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 31

   East Hampton High’s boys and girls track teams, each about 40 strong, began the season with a scrimmage here Friday with their Southampton peers.

    Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, saw to it, even though it was a scrimmage, that judges were provided.

    The East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team, judging by its scrimmage here with William Floyd on March 14, looks as if it may well become the first in Bonac’s 12-year-old program to make the playoffs.

    Matt Maloney’s team, which plays in a power-rated division, just missed them last year although finishing with a program-best 9-7 record.

    Young swimmers on the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s Hurricanes team set four state records at the Y state meet at Erie Community College in Buffalo this past weekend.

    Georgie Bogetti, a 12-year-old seventh grader who is expected to move up to East Hampton High School’s girls team this fall, set three of them, two in the 11-to-12-year-old 200-yard freestyle — breaking her own record, set in Friday’s preliminaries, in the finals the next day — and in the girls 11-12 200 individual medley.

Thursday, March 22

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Riverhead, scrimmage, and Pierson at Miller Place, nonleague, 4 p.m.

Friday, March 23

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, William Floyd at East Hampton, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Hampton Bays, scrimmage, 4 p.m., and Pierson at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, 4:30.

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Center Moriches, 6 p.m.

Saturday, March 24

GIRLS LACROSSE, multi-team scrimmage, East Hampton High School, 9 a.m.

    When spring practice first began at the beginning of this month, Lou Reale’s response on being asked how East Hampton High School’s softball team looked was to roll his eyes.

    He’s not rolling them anymore.

    East Hampton Bowl was packed Sunday morning with the parents, teachers, and friends of 60 young bowlers with disabilities who, in high spirits and urged on by the applause of their elders and peers, participated in a tournament that capped two months of practice.

   The Killer Bees of Bridgehampton had, according to Carl Johnson’s assistant, Joe Zucker, a pretty good chance to win Saturday’s state Class D Southeast regional playoff game against Livingston Manor.

    The Bees, who wound up losing 69-53, took a 2-point lead into the halftime break, and were confident, “but our lack of experience and failure to get back on defense a few times in the second half turned the tide,” said Zucker.

   The news sports-wise, as of earlier this week at any rate, is that East Hampton High School’s spring teams have not been hampered by the ordinarily hostile weather of early March.

    “The weather’s been incredible, but I don’t want to jinx it,” Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, said during a preseason conversation on March 7.

    Numbers-wise things look good, except for junior varsity softball, which couldn’t field the requisite 11 for a team. Jayvee girls lacrosse’s numbers are thin, though, with 15 or so players as of Monday, sufficient.

   Mark Crandall, who’s hopeful that the Hoops 4 Hope program he’s overseen in Zimbabwe and South Africa for the past 18 years will continue to grow, is nevertheless mindful that, despite the organization’s fine reputation, fund-raising has been a continuous struggle, he said during a conversation at The Star before flying to Africa the other day.

Thursday, March 15

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Center Moriches, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Friday, March 16

GIRLS TRACK, Southampton at East Hampton, scrimmage, 3:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Newfield vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, scrimmage, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Southampton, scrimmage, 4 p.m.

Saturday, March 17

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at multi-team scrimmage, Eastport-South Manor High School, 8 a.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Mattituck, scrimmage, and Pierson at Southampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

   Basketball is arguably the most exciting game inasmuch as the presumptive victors can become the vanquished in the blink of an eye.

    Such was the case Saturday at Oswego State’s Max Ziel gymnasium as a line-drive N.B.A.-length 3-pointer by Eastern Connecticut’s Brian Salzillo with 2.5 seconds left in the second overtime period stuck a dagger into Hayden Ward and his Laker teammates’ hearts.

    The boys swimming season just past, the first winning one in the East Hampton High School program’s three years under Jeff Thompson, began with a bang — an opening day turnout that doubled that of the previous year — and ended with one — three career-best and four season-best performances in the county meet — the intense, quiet-spoken coach said this week.