Sports

    There has been talk about whether this year’s Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School baseball team is the best that ever was, though the Whalers’ coach, Jon Tortorella, is more interested in what the next game will bring.

    That next game — the first in a best-of-three county Class C championship series with Southold — was to have been played at the Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Monday afternoon, though despite the fact that the weather permitted — it was a gray day, though otherwise pleasant — Section XI, the governing body for high school sports in Suffolk, called it off.

   The benefits that therapeutic riding affords children with various disabilities were on display at Wolffer Estate in Sagaponack Friday evening, most easily discerned in the riders’ eyes as they performed maneuvers on horseback before a large group of spectators who looked on and applauded from a glassed-in room above the indoor ring.

   Lou Reale, East Hampton High School’s softball coach, said over the weekend that he was happy to have the third seed (behind Sayville and Islip) in the county Class A tournament. The Bonackers were to have begun it here yesterday with sixth-seeded Mount Sinai.

Thursday, May 24

BASEBALL, game two of county Class C final, Pierson at Southold, 4 p.m.

GIRLS TRACK, division championships, Bellport High School, 3 p.m.

Friday, May 25

SOFTBALL, county Class A tournament, semifinal games at sites of higher seeds, 4 p.m.

BASEBALL, game three of best-of-three county Class C final, if necessary, Southold vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4 p.m.

Tuesday, May 29

SOFTBALL, game one of best-of-three county Class A final, site of higher seed, 4 p.m.

Thursday, May 31

   Kirk Edwards would like it to be known that the Montauk Racquet Club’s eight Har-Tru courts are open to the public seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Oct. 31.

    As the result of Friday’s 1-0 loss in 10 innings here to Shoreham-Wading River, the East Hampton High School softball team’s record dropped to 12-4 in league play.

    It was the third straight loss for the Bonackers, a rarity; though, as opposed to the two previous defeats, by 4-1 here to Islip and by 2-1 at Rocky Point, this game was very well played on the part of Lou Reale’s charges.

   The East Hampton High School baseball team and its fans said farewell to 11 seniors Saturday, and they went out winners, defeating John Glenn 4-3.

    Thus the Bonackers finished the campaign at 9-11, though undoubtedly they and their coaches, Ed Bahns and Will Collins, would have preferred an 11-9 ending, which would have gotten them into the playoffs.

    East Hampton almost pulled it off, but a 13-11 loss to League VII’s co-champion Bayport-Blue Point in the finale of that penultimate three-game series proved fatal.

    A 15-12 win at Elwood-John Glenn last Thursday enabled the East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team to make the playoffs for the first time in the program’s 12-year history.

    The win, however, didn’t come easily. “We didn’t play our best, but we did play well down the stretch,” said the team’s head coach, Matt Maloney. “We scored three goals in the final five minutes and stopped them twice, which gave us the victory. Allison Charde, our goalie, had 12 big saves to prevent an upset.”

Day Care Races

    The East Hampton Day Care Learning Center will benefit from a 5K for those 10 and up, a mile race for 5-to-8-year-olds, and from a 400-meter race for 3-to-4-year-olds on Saturday at 9 a.m. Registration at the center, which is behind the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, is to begin at 8.

Girls Track

Friday, May 18

BOYS TENNIS, county team tournament, Ross-Mattituck winner at Harborfields, 4 p.m.

Saturday, May 19

RUNNING, East Hampton Day Care Learning Center races, 5K, mile, and 400-meter dash, 2 Gingerbread Lane Extension, 9 a.m., registration from 8.

GIRLS LACROSSE, playoffs, first round, East Hampton at Eastport-South Manor, noon.

Monday, May 21

BOYS TRACK, division meet, Comsewogue High School, 3 p.m.

BASEBALL, county Class C championship series, Southold vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4 p.m.

   Assuming the rain held off, the East Hampton High School softball team was to have played for a share of the League VI league championship here with Sayville Tuesday afternoon.

   Sayville lost 3-1 to Shoreham-Wading River and East Hampton defeated Miller Place 6-2 in games played Monday. The win improved East Hampton’s record to 13-4 and dropped Sayville’s to 14-3.

   Casey Waleko, the East Hampton High School softball team’s pitcher, had an almost-perfect (no hits, one walk) game going through the first six and two-thirds innings of a crossover game here with Islip on May 2 when, in coach Lou Reale’s words, “the wheels came off.”

    Though the Bonackers were to commit four errors in the final two frames on their way to a 4-2 loss — all of the visitors’ runs were unearned — Reale said he was to blame.

    Though it was faced with the daunting task of winning out in order to make the playoffs following a 6-0 loss to Bayport-Blue Point on April 30, the East Hampton High School baseball team gave it its best shot, winning game two of the three-game series with the league leaders before yielding grudgingly, 13-11, in the finale.

    Will Collins, who assists Ed Bahns in coaching the Bonackers, said the second game was played Friday at the Baseball Heaven facility given the fact that the fields at both schools were, because of the rain, unplayable.

    A hearing called at the behest of the Ross School’s boys tennis coach, Vinicius Carmo, who alleged that his Westhampton Beach counterpart had unfairly juggled his lineup in a match with the Cosmos, was held at Section XI’s offices in Smithtown Tuesday morning.

    Later in the afternoon, Carmo reported that the governing body for Suffolk high school sports had ruled in Ross’s favor.

Half-Marathon

    Jason Hancock, 38, a Southamptoner who teaches at the Amagansett School, won the Paddlers for Humanity off-road half-marathon in Montauk’s Hither Woods Sunday in 1 hour and 33 minutes. Sinead FitzGibbon, 41, won among the women in 1:43.34. Paul Hamilton and John Doyle were the relay winners in 1:48.50.

T-Ball

Thursday, May 10

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

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Elwood-John Glenn, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, May 11

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

BASEBALL, Stony Brook vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, and East Hampton at Elwood-John Glenn, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Center Moriches at Pierson, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, May 12

TRACK, East Hampton boys and girls at Elwood-John Glenn invitational, 9 a.m.

   “Everything’s changing by the minute,” Kathy McGeehan, who assists Matt Maloney in coaching the East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team, said Monday morning.

    “Among the B schools we’re in seventh place [in the power-rated division] at the moment — and we’re hoping to end up there or higher, depending on what we and the other teams do in the final games — but we won’t know where we’ve finished until Friday,” she said.

   “We just didn’t make the plays and they did,” Lou Reale, East Hampton High’s softball coach, said Tuesday following Monday’s 2-1 loss at Rocky Point.

    The first time around, the Bonackers shut out the Eagles 2-0 as Casey Waleko, their pitcher, dominated. But this time Waleko was not quite as sharp, and she and her teammates could manage only two hits off her opposite number.

    Two errors, on a ground ball and the subsequent throw, led to the home team’s first run. Reale said “two good hits” resulted in the game-winner in the bottom of the sixth inning.

    As was the case last year, the turnout at the Katy’s Courage 5K in Sag Harbor Saturday was huge — the finishers’ list totaled 1,005 — with reportedly every school in the area represented.

   James Ignatowich’s success in regional United States Tennis Association junior tournaments has provided compelling proof of the Ross School Tennis Academy’s effectiveness.

    A pleasant, quiet-spoken 11-year-old sixth grader who tops Connecticut’s 12-and-under age group, James recently made more noise by winning a 14-and-under U.S.T.A. New England sectional tourney outside Hartford, besting in straight sets two older players — the number-one and two seeds — who had beaten him before he’d matriculated at the academy in the fall.

Ryan Pilla, “the Car Doctor,” is to return to Daytona, Fla., this weekend to compete in pro touring class races there.

“The last time I was in Daytona, in 2006, I had the pole position in the enduro,” the sports car mechanic and driver said Monday. “Two of us, Patrick Dempsey, the actor, and I, shared a Ford factory Mustang. I brought it in in first place after my hour-and-a-half stint. When he finished we were in 15th. This time, I’m driving the entire three hours myself, in a Mazda I built

    A win over Harborfields here Friday would apparently have assured the East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team of a home game in the opening round of the playoffs, but it was not to be, as the Tornadoes wound up on the long end of a 9-5 score.

    Afterward, Matt Maloney, East Hampton’s coach, agreed that the loss “wasn’t the end of the world, though it would have been nice to win. . . . We need a couple more wins, but to be two games above .500 with four games to go is a good place to be.”

    East Hampton High’s baseball team, as the result of a 6-0 loss here to league-leading Bayport-Blue Point Monday, will have to win all five of its remaining games in order to make the playoffs.

    The Bonackers were able to take the last of a three-game series with Shoreham-Wading River, winning 14-5 on Friday.

    Will Collins, who assists Ed Bahns in coaching East Hampton’s team, said, “Deilyn Guzman, who pitched for us, went five and two-thirds innings, giving up only three hits and striking out three. He walked five and hit four batters, though.”

    The Long Island Rugby Club was said to be missing a few guys, but it is doubtful that the outcome of Saturday’s friendly match at East Hampton’s Herrick Park would have been any different had the Division I side come in at full strength.

Thursday, May 3

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

BASEBALL, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, and Pierson at Greenport, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, William Floyd at East Hampton, and Ross at Eastport-South Manor, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, May 4

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

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Bayport-Blue Point, and Pierson at Greenport, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Pierson at Stony Brook, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, May 5

    Having returned from a singular spring training trip to Orlando, Fla., where it had won all eight of its scrimmages, the East Hampton High School softball team flirted with disaster in a crossover game here on April 18 with Eastport-South Manor, but Kathryn Hess, the senior catcher and cleanup hitter, saved the day.

    As a result of Hess’s two-out single to right field in the bottom of the seventh inning, a hit that scored Casey Waleko from second base, the Bonackers went home happy on the long end of a 4-3 score.

    Following Saturday’s 24-22 loss in a friendly match with the White Plains Rugby Football Club, Rich Brierley, who coaches the Montauk R.F.C., said, looking ahead to the regional Sweet 16 tournament in Pittsburgh, that he liked Montauk’s chances.

    The Sharks, he said, are to play the Midwest champion (probably Wisconsin) in the first game, on May 12. To advance to the Final Four, which is to be contested in Glendale, Colo., over the June 2-3 weekend, Montauk will have to win both games it plays in Pittsburgh’s Cheswick suburb, home to the Pittsburgh Harlequins.

    The East Hampton Coaches Association’s coffers benefited to the tune of $10,000 from a golf outing Saturday at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett.

    Rain had been forecast, but it was, wonderful to tell, a sunny day, and spirits were bright.

    “The last time here [two years ago], I hit a horse,” Lou Reale, East Hampton High’s softball coach, said before the golf cart brigade of foursomes set out.

    Ed Bahns, whose baseball team was 5-6 as of Tuesday morning, having dropped all three games in a series with Mount Sinai, by scores of 9-1, 11-1, and 4-1, professed some concern Friday when asked about the team’s chances of making the playoffs.

Friday, April 27

GIRLS LACROSSE, Harborfields at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

BASEBALL, Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, and Smithtown Christian vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4:30 p.m.

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

Saturday, April 28

RUNNING, Katy’s Courage 5K, West Water Street, Sag Harbor, 8:30 a.m.

SOFTBALL, Deer Park at East Hampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

RUGBY, Long Island Rugby Club vs. Montauk, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 1 p.m.

Monday, April 30