Sports

    A seasoned triathlete, mountain-biker, marathoner, and long-distance swimmer, Emi Berger, a vivacious 34-year-old veterinarian, said during a recent conversation at The Star that she didn’t think one could train for the 4,000-mile bicycle trip that she and Kevin Harrington had recently made across the United States.

    Just when it looked as if last year’s endgame swoons might become this winter’s pattern as well, the East Hampton High School boys basketball team proved in Saturday’s 64-56 win over the Dalton School that it can come back, and win.

    “We got off to a bad start,” said Bonac’s second-year coach, Bill McKee, on Monday. “We were trailing 15-2 near the end of the first quarter before pulling to 15-8. We were down by 5 at the half, and in the third quarter we played really well, outscoring them 23-10.”

    Exceeding their coach’s and their own expectations, just about everyone on East Hampton High School’s boys swimming team set the bar high insofar as personal performances went in the league opening meet here with Huntington Friday.

Thursday, December 22

BOYS BASKETBALL, Greenport at East Hampton, nonleague, 6:15 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Bellport, nonleague, 6 p.m.

Friday, December 23

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at Mattituck, nonleague, 6:15 p.m.

Tuesday, December 27

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Half Hollow Hills East tournament, 9 a.m.

Wednesday, December 28

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Half Hollow Hills East tournament, 11 a.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at tournament, 11 a.m.

Thursday, December 29

    Bouncing back from a 47-28 season-opening nonleague loss to Mattituck-Greenport here on Dec. 14, East Hampton’s wrestling team won the Doc Fallot team tournament at Hampton Bays High School Saturday — the first time that East Hampton had done so since 1999, according to Steve Tseperkas’s assistant, Louis Russo.

    East Hampton High’s girls and boys basketball teams began playing this past week, and their nonleaguers with Pierson went well, the boys winning 40-31 here last Thursday and the girls winning 47-33, “or something like that,” according to Howard Wood, the head coach, at the Sag Harbor school on Dec. 6.

    Both teams run an up-tempo offense, though it appears, given this past week’s cursory look, that the girls may wind up having more success vis-a-vis their peers.

    The East Rockaway High School boys basketball team, intrigued by the idea of playing in a tiny gym much like the ones in its district’s elementary schools, traveled out to Bridgehampton Saturday for a nonleaguer in the Bee Hive.

    It was said to be the first time in 20 years that an UpIsland school had played a nonleague game at Bridgehampton.

    And the Rocks, as they are known, despite the new surroundings, seemed to feel right at home.

“I was desperate to keep playing — I was so passionate about the sport. I tried to get friends of mine out here interested, and I also went out to the bars at the Montauk docks and got a lot of fishermen to play. That’s how we came to be called the Montauk Rugby Club.”

Thursday, December 15

BOWLING, Southampton vs. East Hampton, East Hampton Bowl, 3:30 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Mount Sinai at East Hampton, league opener, 6:15 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, league opener, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, December 16

BOYS SWIMMING, Huntington vs. East Hampton, East Hampton Y.M.C.A. RECenter, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at Bridgehampton, 6 p.m.

Saturday, December 17

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Doc Fallot tournament, Hampton Bays High School, 9 a.m.

    At well-attended holiday dinners at the Beachhouse restaurant on Friday and Monday, the Montauk Rugby Club, the Old Montauk Athletic Club, East Hampton’s Ocean Rescue Squad, and Spokespeople, an organization that advocates on behalf of cyclists here, recognized a number of athletes for their contributions in the past year.

    The Maidstone Market’s 7-on-7 men’s soccer team lost the first two games it played in this fall’s season, one to Tuxpan and one to Hamptons Arsenal, each by 1-0 scores, but when it came down to crunch time, the Market — unarguably the Wednesday evening league’s best team — ate those other teams’ dreams.

    Outrigger canoeing is a big sport in Hawaii that brings, according to Jeremy Grosvenor, whose waterborne repertory is extremely varied, “all different ages, sizes, and shapes together to ride waves — it’s more of a community sport than surfing, where you have egos come into play.”

Thursday, December 8

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

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at East Hampton, nonleague, 6:30 p.m.

Friday, December 9

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Pierson-Bridgehampton at Hampton Bays tournament, and Ross at McGann-Mercy tournament, 7 p.m.

Saturday, December 10

WRESTLING, Frank (Sprig) Gardner tournament, East Hampton High School, from 9 a.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Rockaway at Bridgehampton, nonleague, 1:30 p.m.

Monday, December 12

    Jeff Thompson, who coaches the East Hampton High School boys swimming team, was pleasantly surprised when on the first day of practice he saw that 30 hopefuls, twice last year’s number, were facing him.

    The word had gotten around.

    Five have since cut themselves, in effect, but the rest have stayed, and promise to be, in the aggregate, Thompson said during last Thursday’s practice at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, the best team he’s had.

    Last year, though it didn’t win much, the East Hampton High School boys basketball team made things interesting, and Bill McKee, Bonac’s coach, now in his second year at the helm since Ed Petrie’s retirement, hopes the 2011-12 team will make things interesting again this winter.

    Though McKee, who again will be assisted by Bobby Vacca, could do without the tragic third acts, which haunted the Bonackers in 2010-11.

Blessed with a perfect day, Montauk attracted another record-smashing turnout.

    Mario Olaya, the center midfielder on East Hampton High School’s boys soccer team and League VI’s player of the year, wound up a stellar four-year varsity career Saturday by scoring the winning goal in the exceptional senior Suffolk-Nassau all-star game played at Dowling College, the scene recently of East Hampton’s first-ever county championship.

    Luis Correa’s hat trick at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Thanksgiving eve enabled his team, Maidstone Market, to take over sole possession of first place in Wednesday’s 7-on-7 soccer league and vaulted him into first place in the league’s “Golden Boot” goal-scoring competition, with seven.

Dana Cebulski, who as a freshman starred this fall on East Hampton High’s girls cross-country team, placed ninth Saturday in the regional (Maine to Delaware) Foot Locker championships’ freshman race at Sunken Meadow, in a time of 21 minutes and 30 seconds.

Thursday, December 1

BOYS BASKETBALL, Southold at East Hampton, scrimmage, 5 p.m.

Friday, December 2

BOYS WINTER TRACK, East Hampton at crossover meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 5 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Rocky Point at Pierson, Sag Harbor, scrimmage, 5 p.m.

RUGBY, Montauk Rugby Club holiday dinner, Beachhouse restaurant, Route 27, East Hampton, 6:30 p.m.

Saturday, December 3

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Center Moriches, scrimmage, and Bridgehampton at Mattituck, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

    Howard Wood and his assistant, Louis O’Neal, spoke many times last season about the need for the East Hampton High School girls basketball team’s players to practice in the off-season.

    Apparently, however, not many did, aside from Kaelyn Ward, the junior point guard from whom more big things are expected this year, and Quincy King, Ward’s sister, a sophomore.

    In recounting during a conversation the other day how he’d come to place third in a recent men’s physique show in New York City, a finish that has qualified him to compete in national shows and has opened doors to a professional modeling career, Beni Shoshi said, “The key is dieting.”

The ebullient Kosova-born 24-year-old business owner said it was his trainer, Chris Cosich of the East Hampton Gym, who clued him into this when he went to him to train at the beginning of last summer.

    Steve Tseperkas, who coaches East Hampton High School’s wrestling team, is reasonably sure, with the exception of 285 pounds, “and possibly one or two other holes,” that he can fill most of the 15 weight classes this season, though, because the Bonackers are very young, he doesn’t expect much when it comes to the win column.

Road Races

    Besides this morning’s 3 and 6-mile Turkey Day road races in Montauk, there will be a post-Thanksgiving 5K run-walk in Sag Harbor Saturday, starting and finishing at West Water Street in the village.

    The race, which is to benefit the Old Whalers Community House Fund, is to begin at 8:30 a.m. Registration will be held from 7:30.

Golf Champs

    Troy Smith recently won the men’s championship at the Sag Harbor Golf Club; Russell Miller was the senior men’s champion, and the men’s low qualifier was Mark Weinhardt.

Thursday, November 24

RUNNING, Turkey Day races, 3 and 6 milers around Fort Pond, The Circle, Montauk, 10 and 10:10 a.m.

Saturday, November 26

RUNNING, Old Whalers Community House Fund 5K run-walk, West Water Street, Sag Harbor, 8:30 a.m.

Monday, November 28

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East End Waves tryouts for girls 11-through-18-years-old, Sportime at the Arena, Amagansett, 7-9 p.m.

    The 9-year-old Police Athletic League football team here crowned a division-championship season with a 26-6 win over Three Villages on East Hampton High School’s turf field Sunday.

    “This is the first championship season an East Hampton P.A.L. team has had since the 10-year-olds won two years ago,” said Bob Nicholson, who, along with Andy Baris, Chris Stewart, and Kieran Brew assisted Joe Hren III in coaching the 9-year-olds, who went 9-1 this fall in the Pioneer Division.

    “There’s a new sheriff in town,” the Speed Channel announcer Greg Kramer said after Ryan Pilla drove an MX5 Spec Mazda to a win in a Sports Car Club of America race last month at the New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville.

    From sheriff, Pilla soon ascended to attorney general status as he followed up the Jersey win with an American Road Racing Championship at Road Atlanta, a race for Mazdas that attracted “all the top drivers from Canada to California

. . . the best of the best.”

    Gary Stanis, who brought traveling Police Athletic League football to East Hampton in 2008, said this week that to give the high school program a boost, the East Hampton P.A.L. organization hopes to put 20 to 25 seventh and eighth graders through a 12-week strength, speed, agility, and nutrition program at Sag Harbor’s Studio 89 this summer.

    Marina Preiss, an East Hampton High School sophomore, qualified this past weekend at the county girls swimming championships for the state meet in the 50 and 100-yard freestyle races.

    Preiss won the 50, in 24.58 seconds, and was second in the 100, in 52.96. The state meet is to be held this weekend at Erie Community College in Buffalo.

    In other postseason action, Dana Cebulski, East Hampton’s freshman all-county cross-country runner, placed 40th among 132 runners in the state Class B race Saturday in Verona, N.Y., which is near Rome.

Saturday, November19

RUGBY, Northeast regional semifinal games, Portland, Me., vs. Middlesex,  Mass., noon, and Burlington, Vt., vs. Montauk Rugby Club, 2, Newport, R.I.

Thursday, November 24

RUNNING, Thanksgiving Day races, 3 and 6-milers around Fort Pond, the Circle, Montauk, 10 a.m.