Sports

    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.

Friday, March 9

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Smithtown Christian eighth-grade team at East Hampton Middle School, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 10

BOYS BASKETBALL, New York State regional finals, Class C bracket, Pierson-East Rockaway winner vs. Pine Plains-Tuckahoe winner, 2:45 p.m.; Class D bracket, Bridgehampton vs. Section I/IX winner, 4:30 p.m.

Sunday, March 11

    Asked during a conversation in between county classification contests last Thursday how his team, the Pierson High School Whalers, got to be so good, Dan White, who’s in his second season coaching boys basketball in Sag Harbor, said, “The big thing is that the kids are playing year round.”

    Last year’s senior-heavy team, whose players didn’t play the year round, went 5-9 in league competition, but this winter White reaped a bonanza as Jon Tortorella’s 12-2 junior varsity moved up.

    Diane O’Donnell, who coaches East Hampton High School’s girls cross-country team, said during recent physical evaluations of Springs’s I-Tri girls at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter that she thought they were “ready to take the next step . . . you can see a difference in these girls, they have more of a spark.”

   A Winter Luau to benefit the Hampton Lifeguard Association is to be held next Thursday from 7 to 11 p.m. at East by Northeast restaurant in Montauk. John Ryan Sr. of East Hampton and Mary Lownes of Amagansett are handling reservations.

Tickets bought in advance cost $75 per couple and $40 per person. They will cost $85 and $45 at the door.

   The Bees may be back, but the Whalers are too, and so it was that in the county C-D boys basketball game at Farmingdale State on Feb. 22, Sag Harbor’s players took the measure of their Bridgehampton counterparts by a score of 57-41.

    While the young East Hampton High School boys swim team, which is combined with Pierson and Bridgehampton, didn’t qualify anyone for the states at the recent Suffolk County meet, the Bonackers, who finished third in League III, behind Hauppauge and Harborfields this season — their highest finish in the program’s three years — acquitted themselves well.

    Thomas Brierley, in placing fifth in the 100-yard backstroke in 56.74 seconds, a career best, missed the state cut by a second.

Thursday, March 1

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Center Moriches eighth grade team at East Hampton Middle School, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, March 2

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton Middle School vs. Montauk, Montauk Playhouse, 4 p.m.

Saturday, March 3

WRESTLING, Port Jefferson at East Hampton Middle School, 10 a.m.

Sunday, March 4

STRETCHING, for men, with Carolyn Giacalone, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 10:30 a.m.-noon.

Monday, March 5

SPRING SPORTS, practices begin, 3 p.m.

Tuesday, March 6

   Hayden Ward, who played on back-to-back East Hampton High School state Final Four basketball teams in 2008 and ’09, has kicked it up a notch at Oswego State, which with his considerable help went 21-0 in conference play before sweeping through tournament games this past week with New Paltz, Brockport, and Cortland to become the State University of New York Athletic Conference champion.

    Thirty-one years ago, Dick Baker, who before he began selling real estate had been a physical education teacher at the Amagansett School for 15 years, inaugurated weekly badminton nights there from the fall through spring.

    During a conversation at The Star the other day, the group’s founder, who is back to playing after having got a new hip on Nov. 21, said, “We’ve got a good group now, from 16 to 18.”

   East Hampton High’s underclassmen got a taste of the playoffs at Shoreham-Wading River Saturday night, and, as a result, Bill McKee, the boys’ coach, said after the 51-40 loss that he hoped they’d play in the interim and come back ready to go further in the postseason next winter.

    “Our goal was to try to do something in the playoffs this year, but, in the end, we were happy to get there,” said McKee, who graduates two seniors — Cameron Yusko, a 3-point shooter, and Patrick McGuirk, who, at 6 feet 2 inches was the team’s tallest player.

    The week past was a stellar one for Cameron Yusko, a senior captain of East Hampton High’s boys basketball team. During it, he was named, by virtue of his 98.5 unweighted average, as East Hampton’s valedictorian and received Channel 12’s scholar-athlete-of-the-month award.

    He was only the fourth Bonacker to be so honored since Robin Streck first won the award in the fall of 1990.

   East Hampton High’s varsity football and girls lacrosse teams are to move down a division in the next school year, each having cut ties, at least temporarily, with Pierson High School in Sag Harbor. In addition, next fall’s boys volleyball team will be combined with Bridgehampton.

    “We’re still an ‘A’ school,” said East Hampton’s athletic director, Joe Vas, “though, instead of being the smallest A school in Conference III, we’ll be a good-sized one in Conference IV.”

    Twelve years ago, after his team had regained the county Class D title by defeating Greenport 62-55, Carl Johnson, the Bridgehampton High School Killer Bees’ coach, said that the graduation of Maurice Manning had not meant the end of Killer Bee dominance in boys basketball.

    And yet . . . and yet it seems hard to believe that Bridgehampton, whose well-known 20-year state championship run ended in 1998, had not, until Monday, won a county title since 2000.

Friday, February 24

BOYS BASKETBALL, county B-C-D game, Suffolk Community College-Selden, 6 p.m.

Sunday, February 26

TRIATHLONING, second session of four-part Indoor Tri series, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 9 a.m.

STRETCHING, partners stretch class with Rosie Orlando, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 11:30 a.m.

RUNNING FILM, “Unbreakable: The Western States 100,” Guild Hall, East Hampton, 4 p.m.

Wednesday, February 29

BADMINTON, open play on three courts, Amagansett School, 7-9 p.m.

   The Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School Whalers won the county Class C championship at Suffolk Community College-Selden Monday by virtue of Forrest Loesch’s last-second desperation 3-pointer that stunned Stony Brook 34-32.

    It was the first county championship for the Whalers since 1994 when they won the Class D title with Tyler Ratcliffe, John Schroeder, Jeremy Brandt, and Eric Bramoff.

    Battling from the get-go, the Ross School boys basketball team, the Cosmos, took Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees to school at Ross’s well-appointed gym Monday night before a packed house, which was entertained as well by numerous and lively Ross and Bridgehampton cheerleaders.

    For the Cosmos, who had to forfeit two games earlier in the season because of a self-reported eligibility mix-up, it was a must-win situation. The Bees had already clinched a playoff spot, though the prospect of eliminating their Class D rivals was nevertheless beguiling.

    Dennis Fabiszak, the East Hampton Library’s executive director, has been for a while now an ultradistance runner, which is to say he competes in 50-and-up events, though he’s never been in the ne plus ultra of ultra competitions, the Western States 100.

    For the moment then, he will have to content himself with viewing — along with many others, he hopes — a two-hour documentary on the 2010 Western States 100 at East Hampton’s Guild Hall on Feb. 26. It’s the last film in the library’s free winter series, which has featured foreign films.

   The East Hampton High School girls basketball team dug itself into a hole with a 2-point loss here to Shoreham-Wading River on Feb. 7, a game it could well have won. In a must-win situation, at Amityville’s inhospitable gym three nights later, the team fell out of playoff contention.

    Bonac’s boys lost to their Amityville counterparts too, by a lopsided 60-32, here on Saturday, but, at 5-6, they still had a chance to make the postseason if they defeated winless Westhampton Beach in an away game Tuesday.

Saturday, February 18

BOYS BASKETBALL, playoffs begin, site of higher seeds, times to be announced; Class D outbracket game, Ross vs. Bridgehampton, site and time to be announced.

BOYS SWIMMING, county meet, Suffolk County Community College-Brentwood, 2 p.m.

Sunday, February 19

STRETCHING, Carolyn Giacalone’s class for men, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 10:30 a.m.-noon.

Monday, February 20

BOYS BASKETBALL, county Class D championship game, 4 p.m., and Class C championship game, 6:30, Suffolk Community College-Selden.

    In postseason competition this past weekend, East Hampton High’s Ashley West qualified for the state indoor track meet on March 3 by placing third in the state qualifier 600-meter race in 1 minute and 40.24 seconds. As a result, she’ll run with the inter-sectional relay team, Shani Cuesta, West’s coach, said.

    The boys swimming team placed fourth in the league meet at Hauppauge, despite having to forfeit points in diving, “the best finish we’ve had in three years,” said the coach, Jeff Thompson.

   In only its third year, East Hampton High School’s boys swimming team has finished a season with a winning record.

    Jeff Thompson’s charges have finished at 3-2 in League III, good for third place, behind 5-0 Hauppauge and 3-1 Harborfields, and ahead of 2-3 Deer Park, 1-3 Huntington, and 0-5 North Babylon. The team went 3-4 over all.

    A 13-member committee headed by Jim Nicoletti, who perhaps is best known for the championship baseball teams he coached here between 1985 and ’95, is seeking nominations for an East Hampton High School Hall of Fame.