August 5, 1993

Hren’s Nursery continued its drive to win the East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch softball league championship for the fifth year in a row last week by taking a first-round series from Diversified Services, the fourth-place finisher in the regular season, in two straight.

. . . At the plate, Hren’s was led by Leslie Miller, who went two-for-three and scored two runs Tuesday, and who went two-for-four and scored three times last Thursday; Sue Warner, who went three-for-four Tuesday; Heather Hren, who went two-for-four last Thursday, and Rhonda Bennett, who went two-for-three on Tuesday.

August 12, 1993

The Artists are looking to make it three in a row over the Writers when the paletteers and scribblers clash at East Hampton’s Herrick Park in the annual agon to benefit the East Hampton Day Care Center and the Retreat at 3 p.m. Saturday.

Leif Hope, the Game’s impresario and the Artists’ manager, said he’s got no curveballs planned for this year, but you never know. Last year, he started four members of the national champion women’s softball team, including the team’s fireballing pitcher, Pat Dufficy, who had not long before recorded her 400th win.

. . . “And Carl Icahn may play for us,” said Hope.

“Isn’t he a businessman?” Hope was asked.

“Yes, he used to own T.W.A. . . . and U.S. Steel.”

“But is he an artist?”

“He’s as much of an artist as half of the writers are. Yes, he’s an artist. He practices the art of deal-making.” After a pause, the Artists’ manager added, “Each team is entitled to several variables, you know.”

Costa Rica — well, the Costa Rican team that wears the red shirts — won a four-way round-robin soccer tournament here Saturday that was put together by Bob Moss.

. . . Players of note on the winning team, which is led by Marco Mussio, included Jorge Contreras, who was a member of the Costa Rican national team that competed in the World Cup in 1983 and ’84, and Enrique Leon, who at 60 is apparently the oldest active soccer player in East Hampton.

“I remember playing basketball at the elementary school when I was 8 and seeing Enrique and the others playing soccer and wondering what was that game they were playing,” said Moss. 

While Contreras, who is 32, is not quite the player he used to be when he was a professional, he still exhibits extremely slick moves that baffle defenders.

“It seems effortless with him,” said Moss. “He makes it look easy as he goes through half a dozen defenders. I’ve never seen him take a blistering shot on goal, but he can set people up all day.”

Thursday, August 23

RIDING, Center for Therapeutic Riding on the East End benefit, Sebonack Golf Club, Southampton, 6-9 p.m.

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, third game of final series, Marcello Masonry vs. Uihlein’s, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, time to be decided.

Saturday, August 25

PADDLING, Paddlers 4 Humanity’s Montauk to Block Island paddle, north side of Montauk Lighthouse, 6 a.m., check-in from 5:30.

SWIMMING, masters races, benefit Lustgarten Foundation for pancreatic cancer research, 25 Georgica Close Road, East Hampton, from 10:30 a.m.

TENNIS, 64-draw pro-am doubles tournament with John and Patrick McEnroe, Mats Wilander, Lindsay Davenport, and other former touring pros, benefit Johnny Mac Project, Sportime club, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 2:30-6:30 p.m., with party at private residence to follow.

Sunday, August 26

HAMPTON CLASSIC, opening day, with leadline classes and $30,000 Boar’s Head jumper challenge in the Grand Prix ring, as well as hunter and jumper competitions for Long Island riders in other rings, including the $10,000 Marders local hunter derby, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

Monday, August 27

HAMPTON CLASSIC, Adoption Day and Long Island Show Series for Riders With Disabilities finals, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 10 a.m.

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game four of best-of-five final series, if necessary, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, time to be decided.

Tuesday, August 28

HAMPTON CLASSIC, short stirrup, hunter, and jumper competitions with featured events to include $10,000 open jumper-Section A and $10,000 open jumper-Section B, Grand Prix ring, and $10,000 Brown Harris Stevens 7-and-under jumpers, Jumper Ring 2, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, game five of final series, if necessary, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, time to be decided.

Wednesday, August 29

HAMPTON CLASSIC, hunter and jumper competitions with featured events to include $10,000 Wolffer Estate open jumper, $10,000 Bruno Delgrange 7-and-under jumper, and $10,000 Palm Beach Masters open jumper classes in the Grand Prix ring, and $2,500 children’s hunter 14-and-under and children’s hunter large pony championships, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.

The Hampton Classic’s 60-acre Snake Hollow Road showgrounds in Bridgehampton were quiet Friday afternoon, a little more than a week before the weeklong hunter-jumper show, one of the top ones in North America, is to begin with Sunday morning’s leadline classes judged by Joe Fargis, an Olympic gold-medal winner.

“The calm before the storm,” said this writer, who probably could have used a better word. 

“Knock on wood,” Shanette Barth Cohen, the popular event’s executive director, said, after being asked if she’d looked at the forecast for the last week in August and the first weekend of September.

The Classic, which draws about 1,600 horses, and about as many riders, to its large tents and broad grass and synthetic-surfaced rings, has over the years weathered a lot of storms, in fact, the last one descending in 2011, “when we took the tents down, let the storm go through, and rebuilt everything. We started on Wednesday that year, and got in everything but one competition. Hopefully, we’ve checked that off the list and will never have to do it again.”

Barth Cohen’s on a firm footing, having been on the job, which she still loves, for 13 years, and the hunter and jumper and warm-up rings are too. “You know, long, long ago this was a potato field, and we’re still continuing with drainage upgrades and upgrades to the irrigation system. . . . The footing in all the rings is so much better than it was 15, even five years ago, and I think the riders would for the most part agree.” 

“We’re looking to do an even bigger drainage upgrade,” she added, “but not until after next year. It depends on the funding, it’s a significant investment.”

The long list of top riders who will compete for thousands of dollars in prize money is headed by McLain Ward, a six-time Hampton Classic grand prix champion, Devin Ryan, Adrienne Sternlicht, and Beezie Madden, members (Madden is an alternate) of the United States’ five-rider team that’s to compete in the FEI World Equestrian Games in Tryon, N.C., next month. 

“We’ll have other World Equestrian Games riders here too — Daniel Bluman, who won last year’s grand prix, will represent Israel, and Shane Sweetnam, who won the Longines rider challenge award recently, will represent Ireland, and there probably will be others. . . .”

Sunday’s main event, the $30,000 Boar’s Head jumper challenge, at 2 p.m., will end — as the final day’s grand prix does — with a jump-off contested by riders who have gone clear within the allotted time limit in the first round.

The show has a new grand prix course designer in Michel Vaillancourt, a Quebec native now based in Aiken, S.C., who was the course designer for the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto, “where,” according to a Classic release, “his courses received rave reviews from the competitors.”

Vaillancourt is not new to the show. “He’s done our Jumper Ring 2 in the past, and also, in the last two years, he’s done opening day,” said Barth Cohen. “He’s very experienced.”

Vaillancourt is one of the very few grand prix course designers the show’s had since 1977 — Conrad Homfeld, Guilherme Jorge, and Alan Wade being others.

“Vaillancourt made history when, at just 22 years of age,” the Classic’s release says, “he became the youngest rider, and the first Canadian rider, to win an individual Olympic medal (silver) — at Montreal in 1976.” 

“He went on to win, with Canadian teams, bronze and silver medals in the 1975 and ’79 Pan American Games, and a gold medal at the Alternate Olympics in Rotterdam in 1980. He was inducted into Jump Canada’s Hall of Fame in 2009, and was honored as its official of the year in 2016.”

Sunday’s competitions will be for local, which is to say Long Island, riders primarily. The Long Island Horse Show Series for Riders With Disabilities finals, beginning at 10 a.m., are to be held Monday, an otherwise quiet day at the Classic insofar as hunter and jumper competitions go. Monday is also Adoption Day.

“Adoptable cats and dogs will be in the Kids’ area from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.,” a Classic release says. “And adoptable horses, curated by the EQUUS Foundation, will be showcased in Hunter Ring 2 from 1 to 2.”

Featured events on Tuesday will include the $10,000 open jumper class and $10,000 Brown Harris Stevens 7-and-under jumper class. Wednesday’s featured events are to include the $10,000 Wolffer Estate open jumper class, the $10,000 Palm Beach masters open jumper class, and the $10,000 Bruno Delgrange 7-and-under jumpers.

Jumping competitions with purses ranging from $10,000 up to $300,000 will continue through Grand Prix Sunday, Sept. 2.

Women were prominent in competitions here this past week. Caroline Cashin, for the second year in a row, outdid everyone in the Pump ’N’ Run, her 133 bench press reps sending her off on the 1.7-mile beach run three minutes and nine seconds ahead of her nearest competitor. Paige Duca, a Boston College all-American and all-A.C.C. miler, her best being a 4:37, topped some 500 female registrants in placing fourth in Sunday’s Ellen’s Run, in 17 minutes and 18 seconds. And Maggie Purcell, heading for the University of Richmond, where she will swim, won among the milers in Saturday morning’s Fighting Chance distance swims in Sag Harbor.

Not to say that males didn’t fare well too, Erik Engstrom in particular, who set a record as Ellen’s overall winner, in 15:39.97. That’s no mean feat considering that Troy Taylor, a former Gubbins Running Ahead employee, and a 4:02 miler, crossed the line in 15:40.96 last year, paring 14 seconds from the previous record, set by another former Gubbins employee, Nick Lemon, in 2015.

The last time out, at Jordan’s Run in Sag Harbor, Duca, a Montauk summer resident who will captain B.C.’s women’s cross-country team this fall, and who, like Engstrom, competes in the steeplechase, failed to make a U-turn at the end of the Jordan C. Haerter Memorial Bridge, resulting in an 18th-place finish. This time, she stayed on course, cracking the top five, behind Engstrom, Dylan Fine, and Carter Weaver.

The women’s top 10 at Ellen’s, whose proceeds help fund cancer prevention, treatment, and post-operative services on the South Fork, included Tara Farrell, Barbara Gubbins, Megan Gubbins, and Erik’s younger sister, Ava Engstrom. Barbara Gubbins’s time of 20:07.55, which works out to a 6:33-per-mile pace, was of particular note given that she is 58.

Used to running a half-marathon at a 7-minute-per-mile pace, it showed the track work she’s been doing lately with Farrell at Southampton High has been productive, said the elder Gubbins, who is in the 89th percentile when she’s “age-graded,” i.e., when her times are compared to the best possible ones for women her age.

Farrell, Barbara Gubbins, and Megan Gubbins, who lives in Brooklyn and comes out on weekends, have formed a formidable trio in recent road races, always finishing in the money, as it were. Geary Gubbins, Megan’s brother, and Geronimo, her Portuguese water dog, have been their chief cheerleaders. Geronimo was the first dog over the line in the 2015 Turkey Trot in Montauk, after which he went into a self-imposed retirement. “The pressure’s been too much,” Geary said. Megan Gubbins said, though not ruefully, that her mother “still beats me.”

There were 812 registrants — pretty much the same number as last year — and 665 finishers. The cool, overcast day was perfect for running, Dr. Julie Ratner, the race’s founder, said. 

Debbie Merrick, 47, of New Providence, N.J., repeated as the top breast cancer survivor to finish, for which she received a Tiffany sterling silver heart necklace with sapphires. She was 34th over all. Another breast cancer survivor, Debbie Donohue, an East Hampton librarian, was the first female in the 65-69 division.

Other female division winners were Ava Engstrom, 12-15; Farrell, 35-39; Laura Brown, 50-54; Gubbins, 55-59, and Susie Roden, also a breast cancer survivor, 60-64.

Male division winners included Eng-strom, 20-24; Jason Hancock, 40-44; Arthur Nealon, 70-74, and Robert Goldfarb, who’s 88, 80-plus. Tony Venesina, 76, who was one of the South Fork’s top distance runners some time ago, placed fourth in the 75-79 division, and Perry Gershon, 56, the Democratic candidate for Congress in the First District, was second in the 55-59 division.

The Stony Brook Southampton Hospital team, numbering around 25, was the day’s largest, meriting a prize. Two tickets on the floor to Billy Joel’s Madison Square Garden concert tonight and four tickets to Meredith O’Connor’s Arts Against Bullying Gala concert in Philadelphia next month were awarded to silent auction bidders. 

O’Connor, who Ratner said “has a huge following among teens,” came to the race. “She’s a terrific, caring, wonderful young woman,” she added.

Ratner began this race, and the Ellen P. Hermanson Foundation, 23 years ago in memory of her sister, an advocate for those with breast cancer who died as a result of the disease. Ellen’s daughter, Leora Moreno, an assistant public defender in Charlotte, N.C., said after the race that she’s been a participant “since the age of 6, the same year my Mom died. . . . It’s been amazing to have watched this run become such a celebratory event, and to have watched it grow into what it is today. Seeing my Mom’s name over Southampton Hospital’s Breast Center makes me feel incredibly proud of what the foundation has accomplished.”

Fighting Chance Swims

The swims for Fighting Chance, a nonprofit organization in Sag Harbor that offers free counseling and services to families affected by cancer, did not draw as well as they have in the past, owing, apparently, to several factors, Saturday’s iffy weather being one. Jim Arnold of the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad had tried to obtain permission from Southampton Town to hold the swims at Long Beach in Noyac, but could not, and so settled again on Sag Harbor’s Havens Beach. The ripple-less water couldn’t have been more inviting. It was like swimming in a pool, everyone agreed. 

As aforesaid, Purcell, a Southampton Town lifeguard at Cooper’s Beach, was the one-mile winner, followed by a fellow lifeguard, and East Hampton Y.M.C.A.-RECenter Hurricane teammate, Caroline Brown, who’s going to Syracuse this fall. Purcell will swim the 100 breaststroke at Richmond. They were joined by another Hurricane, Summer Jones, an eighth grader, in the one-miler. Craig Brierley, who coaches East Hampton High’s girls swim team, which is expected to be strong again this season, had given her the green light to join the varsity, but, her mother, Anne, said, her daughter, who swims the 50 freestyle and the 100 butterfly, had decided to wait until she’s a ninth grader.

 Didric C. Ceder Holm, a 40-year-old native of Sweden and father of four who summers in Bridgehampton, won the 2-miler. “It is beautiful and well organized,” he said on exiting the water, arms raised. He also liked it, he said, that the route, marked by buoys, was straight out to Barcelona Neck and back. Ely Dickson, 14, who is in East Hampton Town’s junior lifeguard program, won the half-miler. Soon after, he was on the way out to the Rell Sunn surf contest in Montauk. Of the two sports, the young Californian said he liked swimming better.

Rich Kalbacher, who served as the swims’ M.C., said that the Ocean Rescue Squad’s Red Devil swims, a fund-raiser for the volunteer organization, which numbers 68 at the moment, will be held at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett on Sept. 2 at 5 p.m.

“With a donation of $2,000 you can pick out the lifeguard of your choice and swim with him or her the whole way,” he said. The Red Devil distances are to be one mile, a half-mile, and a quarter-mile. “We want families to come out,” said Kalbacher, “little ones, moms, dads . . . we want it to be a family event.”

Pump ’N’ Run

As for the Pump ’N’ Run, held at Atlantic Avenue on Aug. 15, it was the second year in a row that Caroline Cashin, who combines three strength workouts and three running workouts per week, won it. Until last year, no female had won the 16-year-old bench-press-beach-run event, which requires that women lift 35 percent (40 pounds in Cashin’s case) of their weight and men 60 percent of theirs, each rep resulting in a three-second credit on the run to and from Indian Wells Beach, about 1.7 miles all told. 

This year, runners were sent out in order, based on their time credits. Cashin, who had 133 reps, consequently was the first to go out, three minutes and nine seconds ahead of the runner-up, Alyssa Bahel, a Denison University student whose father, Mike, Body Tech’s owner, oversees the competition.

“We used to have a mass start on the run” and the time credits were figured in afterward, “but it’s better this way,” said Cashin. “You get to see who you have to chase down. The first to cross the line wins.”

Besides Cashin and Bahel, who did 70 reps, Geo Espinoza, Mike Bahel, Ryan Fowkes, Omar Leon, Thomas Brierley, Matthew Maya, Christina Winters, and Paul Hamilton rounded out the top 10.

The proceeds will help fund the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s scholarships and its youth athletic programs, Jennifer Fowkes said.

Cashin, who has three children and is training for the New York marathon in November along with Sinead FitzGibbon, Holly Li, Beth Feit, and Sue De Lara, said with a sly grin on Monday morning, that “women are taking over.”

Nine Sag Harbor sailing crews participated in this year’s Antigua and Barbuda Hamptons Challenge sailing regatta on Aug. 18, with the Breakwater Yacht Club boat Seventh Heaven, captained by Greg and Jennifer Ames, coming in second place. Osprey, another boat from Sag Harbor and captained by George Martin, finished third.

The crew of the winning boat, August Sky, captained by Phil Walters, won a free trip to Antigua for the 2019 Antigua Race Week in April, courtesy of the government of Antigua and Barbuda. August Sky races out of the Lloyd Harbor and Centerport Yacht Clubs.

The race was held in Noyac Bay. There were 24 boats in three divisions.

Following the nearly two-hour race was an award ceremony and party at Havens Beach in Sag Harbor, where the Honorable H. Charles Fernandez, the Antiguan minister of tourism and development, announced the regatta’s winners. The event included a fundraiser for i-tri, a local charity that works to empower young girls and women through triathlon training.

There also was a moment of silence for the late Rob Roden, who organized the regatta each year. Mr. Roden, 70, died on Aug. 11 of cancer.

2018 ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA HAMPTONS CHALLENGE REGATTA RESULTS

OVERALL

SKIPPER

Boat

Club

1

Philip Walters

August Sky

Lloyd Harbor/Centerport

2

Greg and Jennifer Ames

Seventh Heaven

Breakwater 

3

George Martin

Osprey

Sag Harbor/Breakwater

4

William Coster

Silent Passage

Peconic Bay Sailing Association

5

Andrew Ward

Bravo

Shelter Island YC/NYYC

6

Peter Carroll

Firefly

Peconic Bay Sailing Association

7

WIlliam Rogers

Big Boat

Breakwater Yacht Club

8

James Sanders

Team Tonic

Ocean Yacht Club

9

Bob Voelkel

Shamrock

Peconic Bay Sailing Association

10

Peter Kreiling

Yawateg

Peconic Bay Sailing Association

11

Jody LoCascio

Boogie Van

Breakwater Yacht Club

12

Beth Fleisher

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Peconic Bay Sailing Association & Southold Yacht Club

13T

Daniel Montero

Gracious

Breakwater Yacht Club

14T

Louis Grignon

Street Fighter

Sag Harbor Yacht Club

15

Daniel Whelan

Angel Under the Moon

Breakwater Yacht Club

16

Blake Marriner

MilfordSailingFoundation.org

Windjammers Sailing Club

17

Steve & Liam Kenny

Gossip

Breakwater Yacht Club

18

Dan Corcoran

Strider

Loyd Harbor Yacht Club

19

Lee Oldak

Purple Haze

Breakwater Yacht Club

20

Greg Cukor

Corossol

Peconic Bay Sailing Association 

21

Paul Kreiling

Zoop!

Peconic Bay Sailing Association

22

Adam Sandberg

Embla

Manhattan Yacht Club

23

John Breuer

Tangled Up in Blue

Wet Pants Sailing Assocation

24

Tom Wacker

Trading Places

Old Cove Yacht Club

Forty-two intrepid stand-up paddlers, plus two on prone boards and five in kayaks, spanned 18 miles of the open ocean Saturday morning between the Montauk Lighthouse and Block Island’s New Harbor.

“It’s magical out there on Block Island Sound,” Lars Svanberg, who led the group, said during a conversation at The Star Monday morning. “Most people would never attempt this on their own. . . . The most magical moment, I would say, is when we gather at the mouth of the New Harbor inlet and all paddle in together as people on the shore — the crowd gets bigger every year — greet us.”

This year’s crossing — Paddlers 4 Humanity’s 13th — took longer than usual, owing to full moon tides that didn’t provide the accustomed push at the end.

“We left at around 6:30, but, because of the strong tides, we probably should have left at 8:30 or 9,” said Fred Doss, who, with Svanberg, Ed Cashin, Dan Farnham, and Emily Hammond, sits on P4H’s board of directors.

The water was calm, by and large, and the wind was out of the southeast, said Svanberg, who added that he would have preferred it to have been out of the west.

The distance between the lighthouse and Block Island is said to be 18 miles, “though we probably did 20,” Doss said. The crossing took about seven hours.

The youngest paddler was Tom O’Donoghue’s daughter, Maeve. Sixteen-year-old Elijah White, a star on Bridgehampton High School’s boys basketball team, the Killer Bees, did it as well, as did three Bridgehampton teachers, Jeff Neubauer, Meredith McArdle, and Kameron Kaiser.

Bridgehampton is one of the schools — Springs and Montauk are others — that benefit from Paddlers 4 Humanity’s grants, which, in sum, said Doss, are intended to better children’s lives here. 

In the 13 years that P4H has been in existence, “We’ve raised $1.85 million,” said Svanberg, adding that “a lot of these programs we help fund have come to rely on us. . . . What’s most amazing to me is the amount of money the paddle raised. We’re hoping for $140,000, which is quite a bit when you consider that there were 49 participants.”

“While we appreciate everyone’s efforts, three of them, Geoff Haenn, Katie Osiecki, and Pino Daddi, deserve shout-outs because each of them raised between $6,000 and $7,000,” said Doss.

I-Tri, BuildOn, Project Most, the Retreat, and PIBS, most of them familiar names here, are among the child-centered programs Paddlers 4 Humanity supports.

“A few years ago,” said Doss, “we narrowed our mission slightly to focus on programs involved with mental health issues, such as anti-bullying and early intervention programs, though the mission is still relatively broad. . . . The after-school program Project Most has named its arts and crafts program for us, we’ve helped expand Bridgehampton’s Positive Intervention Behavioral Support [PIBS] program, and because of the Retreat’s involvement with kids who come there and the advocacy work the Retreat does in the school system, not only are the kids benefiting, but their families are too.”

BuildOn, said Doss, “is a nonprofit in Connecticut whose mission is twofold, to run after-school programs in this country and to build schools in developing countries. We got a local chapter into East Hampton High School a few years ago, with Bill Barbour as our teacher liaison. Each year, 17 or 18 kids from East Hampton go to a developing country to help build schools — they’ve been to Nicaragua, Malawi, and Nepal — and to experience life as it is lived by the majority of people in the world, something they might never have experienced otherwise, and something they’ll never forget.”

Svanberg said that P4H — donations can be made through its website, p4h.org — also has been helping to provide low-income children in the Catskills’ Sullivan County with free dental services.

The crossing wasn’t a race, they said, in reply to a question. “Obviously some paddlers are faster than others, just as you have marathoners who run at 10-minute and 6-minute paces,” said Svanberg, who’s competed at an elite level in open water SUP races, “but we try to keep everyone in a pod. If you fall back by a half-mile, the Ocean Rescue Squad has Jet Skis with sleds on the back that will pull you up to the front.”

Despite bucking tides, no one had given up, Doss said. “They were all troupers. Everyone was smiling. It was a remarkable group of paddlers and volunteers. One of the volunteers on our main support boat, Dan Farnham’s boat, became teary in thinking about the camaraderie and spirit. She said it was overwhelming.”

The Hampton Lifeguard Association took 100 junior and senior guards to the United States Lifesaving Association’s national tournament in Virginia Beach, Va., this past week, with the 47-member senior guard team finishing sixth among 33 teams vying for the championship trophy.

“The point is not winning,” John Ryan Jr., who heads East Hampton Town’s guards, has said in the past. “We engage in these competitions so that we can become better lifeguards.”

East Hampton finished third in 2016 and fifth last year.

This year, Chasen Dubs, who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., but continues to compete for the H.L.A., won the U-19 distance swim, and placed second in the board race and Ironguard; Amanda Calabrese won the lifeguards’ beach flags event for the fourth year in a row and anchored the fifth-place 4-by-100 relay team; Ryan Paroz won the lifeguards’ board race, placed second in surf ski, and fifth in Ironguard, and Luke Castillo, competing in the juniors’ 9-10-11 division, won the distance run, won the board race, placed third, with Liam Knight, in the rescue race, and, with Knight, Cloe Ceva, Olivia Walsh, and Lylah Metz, placed third in the swim relay.

Other local first-place winners were Lila Ferraro and Val Ferraro, in U-19 beach flags; Lizzie Neville and William Schlegel, in the 14-15 A division’s beach flags; Joey Badilla and Kevin Pineda, in that division’s rescue race; Rodin McKenna and Nicky Badilla in the 12-13 B group’s rescue race, and Evan Schaefer, in the 9-10-11 division’s beach flags.

Runners-up included Patricia Haggerty and Ryan Fowkes, in the U-19 distance run; Olivia Duca, in the 14-15 A division’s distance run; Sophia Swanson, in the 14-15s’ run-swim-run, and Lyla Wilson in 12-13 B beach flags.

Among the third-place finishers were: Gio Espinoza, in the U-19 distance run; Oona Rae, Olivia Brabant, Katarina Dombrowski, and Amanda Nasti in the U-19 rescue race; Swanson and Owen McCormac, in 14-15 A beach flags; Badilla, in the 12-13 B distance swim, and McKenna, in that group’s Ironguard competition.

Swanson was fourth in the 14-15 A division’s Ironguard competition; Patricia Haggerty was fourth and Fowkes was sixth in the lifeguards’ 2K beach runs.

Two champions were crowned here this past week — East Hampton F.C.-Pool Shark in men’s 7-on-7 soccer and the Police Benevolent Association team in women’s slow-pitch softball.

It was a first, apparently, for the P.B.A., which finished the season at 12-2, but not for East Hampton F.C., which has won several 7-on-7 championships in the recent past.

First the women. It looked for a while as if P.B.A., behind the high-arc pitching of Meg Pintauro, would cruise to an easy sweep in what proved to be the championship clincher at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett last Thursday. But then Groundworks, whose ranks have included top college-age players such as Kathryn Hess, Meghan Hess, and Kaylie Titus in the past, rallied with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning to tie the score at 4-4.

Emma Beudert, Groundworks’ pitcher, got it going as she came all the way around from second on the cleanup hitter Casey Brooks’s single, after which Kim Hren drove in two more with an opposite-field line drive to right. The fourth run scored as the result of an error. Michelle Grant, with runners at second and third — and still two outs — made a credible bid to drive in one more, but Rachel Haab made a sliding catch of Grant’s drive over third to end the inning.

Neither side scored in the seventh, sending the game into extra innings. 

The P.B.A. put it away in the top of the eighth. Sara Van Asco, Catherine Curti, and Pintauro led off with singles, after which Elise Thorsen and “Lolo” collected r.b.i. Two outs later, and with the bases loaded, Katla Thorsen made it 7-4 with a hard line drive into the outfield that Brooks just missed, and Kate Cooper, the third hitter in P.B.A.’s lineup, drove in two more for an unassailable 9-4 lead, which proved to be the final score.

When this writer said afterward that Groundworks usually won, Tara Fordham, the third baseman — and the coach David Martin’s daughter — said, with finality, “Not this year.”

Much of it was owing to Pintauro’s canny pitching, though Martin said later that the team, whose roster was pretty much the same as it has been in recent years, did well in all aspects of the game — pitching, hitting, fielding, and baserunning. “Especially in that final game,” he added.

The P.B.A. had won game one of the best-of-three final series by a score of 3-1. It had advanced to the final after a sweep of Schenck Fuels.

Martin had Dale Brabant as an assistant during the final games of the playoffs. Brabant, who is 64, was a founder of this league, in 1973, she said, “when we only had two teams, the Springs Streakers and Bonac Tire. . . . I was 19, just out of high school. I’m planning a comeback next year!”

Men’s Soccer 

As for men’s soccer, East Hampton F.C.-Pool Shark won the championship on Aug. 8 at East Hampton’s Herrick Park by defeating Tortorella Pools 2-1 thanks to a backheader by Gerber Garcia of an Eddy Juarez chip in the second overtime period that slipped into Tortorella’s goal off its leaping goalie Chris Caiazca’s gloved hands.

Tortorella got on the scoreboard first, with 10 minutes to play in the first 30-minute half, thanks to a rocketed penalty kick by Nick Escalante that had been awarded when Stiven Orrego, who had taken the ball coast-to-coast, was taken down in the box from behind by Danny Bedoya.

Caiazca, who was a rock in the goal for Tortorella, was finally beaten near the end of regulation after being drawn far to his left to defend against Fabian Arias’s high cross toward the right post, a blast that was contested by Caiazca and high-leaping F.C.-Pool Shark forwards. Meanwhile, Gehider Garcia, who, at 35, was the league’s “goleador” (its high-scorer), slipped into the circle unmarked, and, from a few feet out, tapped in the rebound, which had landed at his feet.

Because of the humidity, which was causing players to cramp up, it was decided to play two 10-minute, rather than 15-minute, overtime periods.

The first was scoreless, thanks largely to acrobatic saves by Caiazca, who batted back several goal-bound blasts, all coming, it seemed, on top of one another.

East Hampton F.C. really put the pressure on in the second O.T., and, as aforesaid, won it when Gerber Garcia’s backheader slipped back through Caiazca’s hands.

Leslie Czeladko, the league’s spokesman and Tortorella’s manager, said the fall season, at East Hampton’s Herrick Park, will begin “either on Sept. 5 or 12.”

Double Dip Tourney

A highly competitive eight-team five-on-five basketball tournament, a benefit for the LuMind Research Down Syndrome Foundation and the IDEAL School of Manhattan, was held at the Sportime Arena in Amagansett Saturday, with Jason Grossman’s White Team, which included Nick Tuths of East Hampton, emerging as the winner. The Whites defeated the Purple Team, on which David Locascio, formerly of Sag Harbor, played, 11-5 in the final. Tuths had a lot to do with the White Team’s success, blocking shots and knocking down shots from long range. Others on the winning team were Cliff Teller, Sam Teller, Reese Grossman, and Andrew Chung. 

Anthony Provident puts the tournament on and is the host of a fund-raising party in the evening. Besides Tuths, other former East Hampton High School basketballers who played were Brandon Kennedy-Gay (the day’s high-scorer), Kyle McKee, Brian Marciniak, and Will Shapiro. While the games were hotly contested, only one player, Ethan Feldman, who is on New York University’s team, came to grief, suffering an ankle injury crashing into the boards after making a layup.

Sailing Race Is On

The Antigua & Barbuda Hamptons Challenge sailing race in and around Noyac Bay is to be held in Sag Harbor Saturday, with a tentative starting time of 10 a.m. The winner’s prize, said to be the largest sailing prize offered between Maine and Florida, is to be an all-expense-paid trip to Antigua for the captain and crew to Antigua’s Sailing Week in 2019.

Rob Roden, the race’s founder, died Saturday, at the age of 70, though his wife, Theresa, has said the race will go on. Roden’s life will be celebrated at the awards party, which is to be held at Havens Beach from 5 to 8 p.m. that day. Proceeds will benefit Theresa Roden’s popular I-Tri “transformation through triathlon” program for adolescent girls.

Runs Scratched

The East Hampton Rotary Club’s 5 and 10K road races scheduled to be held at Fresh Pond in Amagansett at 9 a.m. Saturday were canceled, the timer, Bob Beattie, said, because of an electrical storm. The decision, he said, was made at 7 a.m. Soon after, he added, a house nearby was struck by lightning. Beattie said, in reply to a question, that the races may be rescheduled for October. “It takes 30 days to get a permit,” he said.

Add a Paddler

In reporting the results of the recent Paddle for Pink paddleboard races in Sag Harbor, Josette Lata’s name was omitted in listing the winners: She was the first female among the 14-foot stand-up paddleboarders in the 6-mile race. Kim Nalepinski was the top female paddler in that category in the 3-miler.

Saturday promises to be the sportiest weekend day of the summer inasmuch as four events here, namely Fighting Chance distance swims, the Artists and Writers Softball Game, a Hamptons Hoops Academy basketball clinic with the Brooklyn Nets’ Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, and the Hampton Cup junior tennis tournament at Hampton Racquet, a benefit for Project Most, are vying for attention.

Not to forget that Ellen’s Run, now in its 23rd year of raising money that’s been spent here for breast cancer prevention, treatment, and counseling, is to be held Sunday at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Parrish Hall, at 9 a.m.

Back to Saturday, two-mile, one-mile, and half-mile We Swim for You swims to benefit Fighting Chance, a free cancer counseling center in Sag Harbor, are to be held at Sag Harbor’s Havens Beach from 6 to 9:30 a.m. East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad members will be on hand to assure that the swimmers are safe.

The Artists-Writers’ beefed-up offerings will include a throw-bat-run skills challenge for 5 through 11-year-olds from 10:30 to noon, a home run challenge for registered hitter-pitcher combinations from 1 to 2, batting practice from 2 to 3, and The Game, from 4 to 6, a starting time two hours later than in the past.

The Artists lost to the Writers last year by a score of 9-6. It was the second win in five encounters, however, for the Writers, who still hold the lead in the modern fund-raising era that dates to the late 1960s.

Mike Lupica, a Writers’ stalwart, limped off the field last year with a pulled quad muscle, but the victory, he said, had allayed the pain. “I’m icing it all the way back to Connecticut,” he said, beaming, as he left the after-party at Dopo.

The cradle of The Game is said to have been Wilfrid Zogbaum’s front yard in Springs, where, beginning in 1948, antics ran rampant, and Philip Pavia, the late heavy-hitting sculptor, smashed to smithereens a grapefruit painted to look like a softball. Though when it comes to verisimilitude, Leif Hope, The Game’s impresario, has come to prefer a turnip.

One never knows who will show up. Dick Cavett, Carl Bernstein, Paul Simon, Chevy Chase, Alec Baldwin, Gerry Cooney, Bill Clinton, John Irving, Jay McInerney, Kristin Davis, Rod Gilbert, Josh Charles, and Pelé, among others, have in the past.

Also beginning at 10:30 Saturday is the Hamptons Hoops Academy’s clinic with Hollis-Jefferson for 7 through 16-year-old boys and girls at the Sportime Arena in Amagansett. The clinic is to go from 10:30 to 1:30. A “family fun” event at the Clubhouse, in Wainscott, which is to include mini golf, bowling, a game arcade, and bocce, is to begin at 4.

A flier put out by the Academy’s Nick Worrall says that United Way of Long Island is to benefit from the $150-per-child fees. “Scholarships will be available,” the flier says. Prospective clinic-takers can register with Worrall by calling 631-394-5796.

The junior tennis tournament for boys and girls from 5 on up at Hampton Racquet, a tourney that is, as aforesaid, to benefit Project Most, is to be contested from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. According to a flier, the $40 entry fee is to include a barbecue. Non-players can partake of the barbecue for $25.

Julie Ratner, who launched a foundation after her sister, Ellen P. Hermanson, died of breast cancer almost a quarter-century ago, said during a conversation at The Star this week that she’s proud of the fact that virtually all the money raised by Ellen’s Run and associated events has stayed here, the Ellen P. Hermanson Breast Center at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital being the chief result.

“I feel it’s my responsibility to give back to the community that supports me,” she said. “I think this is a beautiful community, and I love it that people come out to help others here, whether you know them or not.”

While research obviously was critical, “this is where you need the money, where it can impact and transform lives. And that’s what we’ve done. We’ve paid for two state-of-the-art tomosynthesis 3-D mammography machines, one at the Ellen Hermanson Breast Center and one for the satellite center in Hampton Bays. It’s the same equipment you’d expect to find at Memorial Sloan-Kettering or Weill Cornell.”

“This year,” she added, “we have several goals. One was to fund 10 chemotherapy chairs at the Phillips Cancer Center, which is being built in Southampton. They’re $10,000 each, and we’ve funded all of them. Another is to boost Ellen’s Well, our outreach program to reduce anxiety that includes the services of a full-time oncological social worker.”

In that regard, she was happy to announce that through State Senator Ken LaValle’s efforts, “we’re due to receive a $75,000 grant from the state for Ellen’s Well. Because of that we’ll be able to fund so many more services for women.”

There once was some concern that traffic would prove a dampener for East Hamptoners driving to Southampton for the race, which originally had been held at East Hampton High School.

“But, as we all know by now, there’s nobody out and about on Sunday mornings,” Ratner said. “There’s no line at Starbucks, it’s a clear shot. It takes 20 minutes from my house in Northwest. And when you arrive, we’ll greet you with open arms and lots of love.”