Sharks to Combine

Charlie Collins, a spokesman for the Montauk Rugby Club, said this week that the Sharks, who have, like the East Hampton High School football program, a numbers problem, will combine with the Suffolk Bull Moose club of Farmingville to play in the Empire Geographical Union’s Division III fall season. 

“Whenever we’ve played away games with Bull Moose in the past it’s been on a field in Center Moriches, but there will be a couple of games played here,” Collins said, at East Hampton’s Herrick Park.

The locals have some very good young players, but most are collegians, and as a result would largely be unavailable for Saturday matches. “Rugby has a strong tradition here — there were days when people feared us, when I feared us — so we don’t want to let it die,” Collins said.

Hoop Classic

A very competitive five-on-five basketball tournament to benefit the LuMind Research Down Syndrome Foundation is to be held Saturday at the Sportime Arena in Amagansett from 9 a.m.

A number of East Hampton High School graduates have starred in this tourney in the past, including Brian Marciniak, Marcus Edwards, Kyle McKee, Jenel Russell, Jerome Russell, Jarred Bowe, and Will Shapiro.

A fund-raising party at Anthony Providenti’s house is to be held that evening.

Run for Rotary

East Hampton’s Rotary Club will play host to 10 and 5K races at Fresh Pond Park in Amagansett this Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. Simon Mayeur, a Frenchman from Alsace, won the 5K, in 19 minutes and 24 seconds, and Ryan Fowkes of East Hampton won the 10K, in 38:03, last year.

“There are a lot of great events in the Hamptons,” Charlie Collins said Sunday evening as the final games of the Travis Field memorial softball tournament were being played at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett, “but this, in my humble opinion, is the biggest local event — the best weekend of the summer.”

And the populous crowd that night — the biggest this writer has ever seen watching slow-pitch softball here — drove home Collins’s point.

“It’s amazing the job Brian [Anderson], Austin [Bahns], and Mike [Graham] have done,” he added.

A teammate of Travis Field’s on East Hampton High School’s baseball team, Collins remembers being “devastated” by the news, imparted to him by his brother, Bill, one May morning a decade ago, that his 20-year-old teammate and friend had died in an auto accident. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, he said, but soon after, at Luigi’s, Mike McGuire confirmed what Bill Collins had said.

Soon after, Anderson, Bahns, Graham, Andy Tuthill, and David Samot Jr. alit upon an idea to keep Travis Field’s name alive — through a softball tournament benefiting scholarships in his name that is now in its 11th year and has grown from 10 to 18 teams. Any more and another field will probably have to be added, “at least for early-round games,” said Collins. As it was, three teams had to be turned away this year. 

Then there was the weather — namely a very rainy Saturday. But the games went on, until the lights went out shortly before midnight in the fifth inning of the Catchers in the Rye and Hideaway game, which was resumed Sunday morning.

“There wasn’t much downtime at all despite the rain,” Mike Graham said. “Chris McGuire, Mike’s son, came back with sand from Bistrian’s, and shovels, we even had blowers, and we had the field ready to go again in 20 to 30 minutes.”

Fittingly, the East Hampton High School baseball team, sponsored by the East Hampton Village Police Benevolent Association, won the tourney’s B bracket, besting Camp Anawanna 8-6 in the final, a game bracketed by two encounters between the Pink Panthers (a team made up of the tournament’s founders and others of Travis Field’s contemporaries) and the Raptors of Montauk, who, if there were a prize given out for joie de vivre, would have won running away.

Because the tournament was double-elimination, the once-defeated Panthers, who were to three-peat as the A bracket champions, had to beat the theretofore undefeated Raptors twice Sunday night. And they did, by scores of 12-10 and 12-5.

The Raptors, some of whose players are on the Gig Shack men’s slow-pitch softball team in Montauk, seemed to take the losses in stride, for when the championship game ended, at about 11 p.m., they assailed their opponents with bear hugs, well wishes, and volleys of sprayed champagne.

At first it didn’t look too promising for the Panthers, who made three errors in the top of the first inning, which resulted in the Raptors scoring three runs.

Matt Brierley wiped that lead out with a two-out, three-run clout over the left field fence in the bottom half.

Colin Davis, the Raptors’ pitcher, walked the first two batters to face him (Anderson and Austin Bahns) in the bottom of the third. One out later, Brenden Mott drove Anderson home with a sacrifice fly, and, with two outs and runners at first and second, Brierley found the parking lot again for a 7-3 Panther lead, a blow that proved to be the clincher.

After Brierley had cleared the bases, Dylan Field singled, and was heading for second when Brent Davis, the Raptors’ first baseman, made a spectacular diving, flat-out catch of Tuthill’s rocketed low line drive over the first-base line to end the inning.

Leo Daunt had a chance to pull the Raptors closer in their next at-bat, but, with runners at second and third and two out, he flied out to left.

Austin Bahns drove in two more runs for the Panthers in the bottom of the fourth, after which Mott, with two outs, added still two more with a triple, effectively putting the game out of reach, at 11-3.

But, as aforesaid, the Raptors were to remain rapturous no matter the outcome.

Four scholarships of $1,000 each were given out this year in Travis Field’s name. The recipients were Maddie Schenck, Riley Duchemin (who pitched for the B-bracket winners), Keitlyn Cabrera, and Eamon Spencer. 

Schenck, who played for the Schenck Fuels team in the tournament, and Duchemin threw out the first balls before the opener last Thursday afternoon.

The three new teams this year were Catchers in the Rye, sponsored by Hummel Construction, the Hideaway, and Female Detail, a very competitive team, Collins said, that included Annemarie Cangiolosi, Melanie Anderson, and My Lan Eckardt, all Lou Reale protégées and top-notch college players in their time.

Asked who the man was on the Female Detail team (men’s teams must have at least one female in the field at all times, and vice versa), Collins said he didn’t know, adding, “It didn’t matter.”

July 22, 1993

Grady Mathews, who, according to Bob Medved, Bailey’s Billiards’ owner, “is one of the top five all-around pool players in the world,” blew into town last week to give an exhibition and to play nine-ball and straight pool matches.

Mathews, who says he may appear to be older than his 50 years “because of all those nights I stayed up playing this wonderful sport,” can still play “50 to 60 hours straight — though not as regularly as I used to.”

“He’s one of the great road players,” Medved said of the lanky, articulate visitor, who defeated Bill Legakic of Lindenhurst 9-5 in a nine-ball match, and downed Joe Quinn, a very good local player, 150-55 in a straight pool contest.

. . . During a conversation that followed the exhibition and matches, the affable, bespectacled Texan, who has, by his account, “lived many places,” said that the “hustler” label would be misapplied in his case. “Whenever I went into a room, I would say right out that I was a good player, that I liked to gamble, and, most times, the owner would get on the phone and somebody would come down. If that didn’t happen, I’d have a cup of coffee, shoot the breeze, and off I’d go.”

“The good players knew me,” he said in answer to another question. “To be honest, I’m going to tell you this: In 30 years, I never lost to somebody who would play me even [no handicap] that I didn’t know.”

. . . Mathews, who had a bit part in “The Color of Money,” which in his view “wasn’t nearly as good a film as ‘The Hustler,’ ” didn’t begin playing in tournaments until the age of 40. He won world championships in 1983, ’84, and ’85, “but, frankly, there’s not enough money in tournaments to make an adequate living. When I gambled, I only had to beat one guy, not 10 or 12 guys playing for small money.”

“These guys don’t get anywhere near the recognition they deserve,” Medved was to say after Mathews had departed. “They’re like grand masters in chess, even better when you consider they not only have to have the mental agility to think many moves ahead, but they also have to have the eye-hand coordination on top of that. To be able to run 100 balls, like they do, you’ve got to be a genius. It’s mind-boggling what they do.”

Fielding a common question that beginning players have, concerning eye movement between the cue ball and object ball, Mathews replied with two questions of his own.

“When you go to take a jump shot in basketball, do you look at the ball last, or at the basket? Say you’re a quarterback and you’re going back to pass — do you look at the ball last, or at the receiver? Likewise in pool, you look at the object ball last.”

. . . “And now,” he said, in bidding farewell to Medved and those who remained from the group of 25 or so aficionados who had watched him play, “I think I’ll get something light to eat, and then I’m off for Philadelphia.”

Bob Miller, who has been overseeing for a decade “ocean challenge” swims helping to underwrite the construction of a four-lane, 25-yard pool at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center, a project expected to begin by year’s end, told the record number of participants at Montauk’s Ditch Plain early Saturday morning that their cause was a worthy one.

“We’re surrounded by water and yet we don’t have a pool in which everyone can learn to swim,” he said, adding that everyone ought to be availed of swimming instruction. 

Moreover, he said, the Playhouse, with its planned aquatic and cultural centers, would indeed be for everyone, young and old. A rehabilitation pool is part of the aquatic center project. 

“My goal,” Miller said during a conversation later that morning, “is that in order for a child to graduate from Montauk School, he or she would have to be able to tread water for at least five minutes and be able to swim at least 100 yards. . . . The pool should be part of the school program. Everyone out here should be drownproofed.”

The ocean conditions Saturday were hardly pool-like. There was a strong westerly current and chop, which challenged the event’s 142 participants — the milers and half-milers the whole way, and the 5K swimmers on their return leg. 

About 40 members of the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad were on hand to assure that the swimmers were safe. A dozen starters — seven in the mile and five in the half-miler — were “pulled,” though with no untoward consequences, T.J. Calabrese, one of the squad’s members, said afterward.

Jonathan Boffa, a 25-year-old native of Verona, Italy, living in New York City, where he works as a graphic designer, was, as last year, the winner of the 5K, in 1 hour, 9 minutes, and 52 seconds, a little more than five minutes slower than last year, the rough conditions presumably having made the difference.

A freestyler on Italy’s national team and when he was a student at North Carolina State, Boffa is relatively new to open water swimming. In fact, last year here marked the first time he’d swum such a long distance.

When told that Lori King, who was to finish seventh among the 5K’s 17 entrants, in 1:31:12, had swum the Catalina Channel and the Eight Bridges race along the Hudson River, among other open water swims, Boffa said he would “stick to this” for the present. 

The 5K’s runner-up, as last year, was Mike Petrzela, 43, a native of the Czech Republic, in 1:21:25. His 2017 time was 1:11:56.

“It was very choppy,” Petrzela, a part-time East Hampton resident, said. “It must have taken me twice as long to come back as it did going out. A half-hour or so going out, and about 50 minutes coming back.”

“I didn’t see any sharks, though maybe one got my timer, the Velcro thing we wear around our ankles,” he said before adding that the swim was, as always, “very well protected by the Ocean Rescue Squad.”

He has been in every one of the 10 ocean challenge swims to date. The former Syracuse University swimmer and David Powers tied for first two years ago.

  Petrzela, who generally breathes to the left, rotating once in a while, gets a pretty much uninterrupted view of Montauk’s cliffs on the return to Ditch Plain. 

Asked if he thought about anything as he moved along, he said, “You’re enjoying the moment . . . and realizing how lucky you are to be swimming and to be living out here.”

“ ‘Oh, this is not going to be fun,’ ” Matthew O’Grady, the 5K’s fourth-place finisher, recalled thinking to himself on setting out almost an hour and a half earlier. “It was like a washing machine,” he said, as Boffa, and relatives of his from Italy, all of whom were staying at O’Grady’s house in Sag Harbor, nodded.

The one-miler was won by Gabriel Mathews, in 35:53. Boris Talan (36:26) was second, followed by the female winners, Sophia Swanson and Elise Fong, each in 37:19. Sophia Taylor was fifth, in 37:44, and Angelika Cruz was sixth, in 37:47, followed not long after by Lars Merseburg (38:04), William Garry (38:05), and Caitlin Dowd (39:58), who had the week before been the women’s winner in the Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon.

The half-mile race, which drew 66 entrants, was won by Thor Warnken, in 18:52. Six of the top 10 in that race were females, namely Summer Jones, who was third, in 20:26, Frances Michaels (20:35), Giselle Michaels (21:08), Ava Soldo (21:55), Olivia Brabant (22:17), and Margaux Reyl (22:29). Thinley Edwards (22:48) and Brennan Kelly (22:50) rounded out the top 10.

King, who was the second woman and seventh over all in a 27K (17 mile) open water swim in Ibiza this past year, said, “This is so well run — the Ocean Rescue Squad is top-notch. You should be here in the morning when they’re setting up. You never feel alone in these swims, and it’s great to see that younger swimmers are doing them, that they’re getting the feel of them, how the water is moving. I never did any open water swimming until I’d graduated from college. . . . Matt O’Grady did the Lake Zurich 27K. I’d love to do that one too. I hear it’s beautiful . . . and cold.”

Lifeguarding Tourney

East Hampton Town’s men’s and women’s A teams were edged, each by a half-point, by Jones Beach counterparts in last Thursday’s invitational lifeguard tournament at East Hampton’s Main Beach. 

“It was the biggest tournament we’ve ever had,” said John Ryan Sr. — “10 men’s teams and six women’s teams. It was the first time in a decade that Jones Beach sent a team.”

While municipalities nationwide are apparently hurting for lifeguards, the South Fork, Ryan said, was not. “We’ve got more than 400 certified guards now that our lifeguard trainees are coming of age.” There are 350 in East Hampton’s junior lifeguard program, he added. 

Next up is a junior lifeguard tournament next week, and the national lifeguard tournament, in Virginia Beach, Va., in two weeks.

Kisner Second at Open

Kevin Kisner, whose caddie is Duane Bock, an East Hampton High School graduate, finished in a tie for second at the British Open this past week, which yielded about $700,000 in prize money. The result also moved the South Carolinian up in the P.G.A. rankings to 25th from 33rd.

The Montauk Rugby Club’s 7s side, a group, aside from Steve Turza, who’s 35, of hard-charging college-age players, ran roughshod over three other teams at Montauk’s Hank Zebrowski field Saturday in the first of what the young Sharks hope will be a revival of the large 7s tournaments played at East Hampton’s Herrick Park and at the high school in years past.

(A recent “25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports” column noted that 20 teams participated in the Montauk R.C.’s 7s tournament at East Hampton High School in June 1993, and that “it was the first time in the tourney’s five-year history that the host side made it into the final four.”)

Though treated rudely — the Sharks went 5-0 on the day, allowing only three tries to the opposition, and those in their final game — the sides who made the trip — Mitchell (College) Old Boys, St. A’s Alums, and Suffolk Bull Moose of Farmingville — were happy to have done so.

“We’re happy to promote the sport,” said Drew Castagna, president of the Mitchell Old Boys (M.O.B.), whose ranks include 60 to 80 alumni living in the tristate area. First and foremost, he said, the camaraderie in rugby couldn’t be beat. It was what had attracted him, he said, when he, a cross-country runner initially, was a sophomore at Mitchell, which is in New London, Conn.

He liked, he added, that in rugby “you can be yourself, you can make your own decisions, while at the same time being part of a team — there’s structure and individuality.”

Montauk’s side comprised Turza — “our mentor” — Calderon, Brandon Johnson, Nate Campbell, Jordan Johnson, Brian Anderson, Morgan Rojas, and Josh King.

There was some mixing and matching inasmuch as not all the sides, aside from Montauk, were at full strength. 

The Bull Moose started the tournament off with a 21-14 win over the M.O.B., but then Montauk announced itself with a 32-0 shellacking of St. A’s, augmented by two Bull Moose players. Fittingly, Turza was the first to score a try for the locals, followed by Campbell for a 10-0 halftime lead.

Campbell, who plays for Jamaica’s national team, ran back the opening kickoff of the second half, and followed up with a drop kick through the posts for 17-0. Moments later, after stripping the ball from an opponent, the Jamaican dashed off for another score before feeding Jordan Johnson for a try that began with a lineout play, and converting another stripped ball for the 32-0 final.

Montauk’s second outing, versus M.O.B., was similarly lopsided, with Jordan Johnson, Campbell (two), Brandon Johnson (three), and Calderon making tries in a 36-0 romp. 

Brandon Johnson, who, like Campbell, was unstoppable in the open field, is apparently on a path to playing some day for the Eagles, the United States’ national team. He added two conversion kicks as well in the rout of M.O.B.

And so it went.

It was the second 7s tournament victory for the Montauk Rugby Club, which last month played impressively in winning the Hell Gate Sevens tournament on Randalls Island in New York City.

Asked how many teams there were, Jordan Johnson said, before Saturday’s action began, “Too many to count . . . 75 games were played.”

Following that triumph, Calderon, who frequently flattens opponents with his tackles, said during an interview, “We’ve got athletes all over the field.”

There has been some talk, because of Montauk’s declining numbers in recent years, of combining with the Bull Moose club, though whether that will happen this fall remains to be seen. Charlie Collins said the Empire Geographical Union’s Division III schedule had yet to be published as of earlier this week.

Brandon Johnson has been playing 15s and 7s at Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland, Jordan, his first cousin, is to attend New England College this fall, Rojas is playing at York College in Pennsylvania, and Calderon, who has been attending Suffolk Community College, hopes to transfer to a college that offers architectural courses.

Steve Early of Sag Harbor, who has played and coached at the collegiate level, and who played with the Sharks on Randalls Island, helped with the reffing Saturday.

Brian Anderson, up for the summer from Raleigh, N.C., where he teaches, was given a chance to plug the Travis Field memorial softball tournament that is to be contested at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett from Aug. 2 through 5.

“We’ve got 18 teams this year — the most ever, enough for two divisions of nine teams,” he said, adding that “four scholarships were given out to East Hampton High School seniors this year.”

A pre-tournament Bracket Bash party, which is to include a Smokin’ Wolf buffet, cash bar, raffles, and a 50-50 drawing, is to be held tomorrow at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. 

It was a little after 7 a.m. on a postcard-pretty Saturday and the water on Sag Harbor Cove was glimmering and still as cars began to pull into the parking lot where the Sag Harbor Community Rowing Club meets.

Among the 20 people who showed up that day was a mother and daughter duo who decided to enjoy the sport together, and three high school-age girls who were tweaking the lone boy in their group about balking at being assigned to share a four-person scull with them. There was Robert Montgomery, a former Citibank exec with a deep FM radio voice and rakish canvas hat atop his head. He first took up rowing in 1973. And there was Jill Scheerer, who said she joined the club just three weeks ago after much good-natured “nagging” from her friend Rachael Sweeney, whom she graduated from East Hampton High School with in 1973.

“I was nagging her,” Sweeney admitted with a laugh.

Scheerer laughed, too, saying, “She mentioned something about coming here and having a lesson, and I said, ‘A lesson? For rowing? Don’t you just row? What is there to it?’ Then I thought, ‘Boy, either I look like I’m a complete klutz or there’s more to it than I know.’ And sure enough, there is a bit more to it than you think.”

Still, none of it is too complicated to learn — which is among the reasons the Sag Harbor Community Rowing Club remains vibrant and growing 10 years after Lee Oldak, a member of the Breakwater Yacht Club in Sag Harbor and current owner of the Amagansett Beach and Bicycle Company, started the group to promote the sport. 

Oldak said he was already stocking some recreational rowing sculls at his shop when he went to a regatta in Riverhead back in 2008 to check out the racing side of the sport. “What I saw there was all these teams, a whole tailgate scene, everybody was happy, and I said to myself, ‘Okay. I can do this,’ ” Oldak recalled.

He went to Gregory Ferraris, the mayor of Sag Harbor at the time, and asked if there was anywhere in the village where his new nonprofit club could row. 

“He said, ‘I’ve got this lot off Redwood Road doing nothing. Why don’t you use that?’ And that was pretty much our start,” Oldak said.

A decade later, two things remain important to Oldak to stress. “We’re a community rowing club, so it’s open to everyone — it’s not a private club that’s expensive,” he explained. “We charge $325 for an adult membership. And from May 1 to Nov. 1, anyone [who is a member] can come on their own and row at any hour, any day of the week, so long as there’s daylight. It’s easily one of the best deals in the Hamptons.”

Nowadays the club’s rowers range from 10 years old into their 70s. Youth memberships are $159 a year. Members get on-site use of the club’s lightweight torpedo-shape sculls that come in two types (racing and recreational) and three configurations: single, double, or quads (four-person). The narrow hulls feature a sliding seat for each rower that’s mounted on tracks, a footboard with Velcro bindings to strap their feet into, and collared locks for the 10-foot-long oars, which are also provided. The boats are stored on outdoor racks at the Redwood Road lot, which also features an equipment trailer and a grassy shore where the rowers wade in and launch the boats.

Everyone from beginners to advanced rowers is welcome. There are weekly Saturday morning and Tuesday evening group sessions where everybody seems to know everyone’s name, and the camaraderie is free and easy as the rowers carry the boats down to the shore and decide who will team up with whom that day. There are competitive teams for middle schoolers and high schoolers. The club also provides lessons.

As an added twist, Oldak has invited in a different college rowing coach each week this summer and boarded them at a member’s house. (Numerous colleges offer scholarships or financial aid for their rowing teams, particularly on the women’s side of the sport, as universities try to meet the gender-equity requirements of federal laws such as Title IX.) 

On July 14, Paul Casey, an assistant rowing coach at Princeton, was wrapping up his week in residence by zipping back and forth across the cove in a motorized skiff to chat with the rowers in each scull, offer personalized suggestions on their form, and answer their questions. He also had some private lessons booked after the group session finished.

“Learning how to row is something you can pick up in just a few weeks,” said Vivienne Keegan of Sag Harbor, who joined the club three years ago after her son went to college. She enjoys learning about the technical side of the sport, she said. 

The basic rowing stroke has four parts, starting with the “catch,” where the rower sits with his or her seat forward, knees bent, and oar handles rotated forward with the blades ready to dip into the water. Second is the “drive,” where you push against the footboard with your legs and pull the oars through the water as the seat sides backward. Next is the “finish,” which involves rotating the oar handles toward your stomach, causing the blades to lift or “feather” out of the water. Last is the “recovery,” where the rower slides back into the original forward position with their oar blades skimming just inches above the water, preparing to repeat the stroke all over again. 

When sharing a scull, there’s the added challenge of working in tandem so everyone moves in the same rhythm.

The goal, of course, is to integrate all four phases of the stroke into a smooth motion that can seem almost effortless and makes you feel as if the boat is flying lightly over the water. 

“That’s the part that can feel almost addictive,” Keegan said, “because the closer your stroke gets to perfection, the more it feels almost liquid. Just magical.”

The reasons people join the club are as individual as they themselves are. Some say they row to get in shape and they love the full-body workout. Some row to get outdoors. Some row because they’ve tried other sports but, for them, nothing is quite as meditative or serene as being out on the glass-smooth water as the sun peeks over the Sag Harbor bridge and the village begins to wake up or wind down for another day.

Montgomery, the oldest member of the club at 73, joked that when he was growing up in Idaho, “the only thing I knew about rowing was that’s something those Ivy League schools and the English do.” But he was aware some American squads had great success at the Olympics, and he eventually helped start the rowing team at the University of California-Santa Clara back in the early 1970s.

By the time Montgomery moved to Philadelphia to pick up an M.B.A. at the Wharton School before embarking on a 32-year Citibank career, he was hooked on rowing. He said he lived for a while near 10 other boathouses in an attic room at the Vesper Boat Club “with the river as my backyard” and the 9,000-acre Fairmont Park unfurling all around him, with its three museums, gorgeous grounds, and seven antebellum mansions scattered about.

“And do you know what my rent was? Zero,” he said, laughing. “The only condition to live there was you had to row competitively.”

To this day, Montgomery remains the most decorated competitive rower in the Sag Harbor club other than Dan Kirrane, a self-described Hamptons “summer kid” who rowed collegiately at Columbia University and competed for a U.S. under-23 squad and U.S. senior national team at the 2012 and 2014 world championships, respectively.

“I probably never would have been able to accomplish that if I didn’t have this summer program to train with here,” he said.

Montgomery took a 40-year break from the sport once work and family and life intervened, returning to it only when Oldak started the Sag Harbor club in 2008. But now that he’s back in the water, Montgomery said, the allure of rowing is the same, and as gripping as it was back when he had an epiphany as a young man still living at the Vesper Club.

“I remember noticing this man who would begin coming to the club in early spring, and by late fall he’d still be rowing,” Montgomery said. “He’d arrive every day at 3 o’clock. You could set your watch by it. And he’d go out to the rocks and back every day, which was a six-mile row.”

“By my last year there he was 83 years old. That’s when it really hit me that this is something you can do your entire life.”

Montgomery smiled and added that he’s had many jobs and traveled to many places in his life. His Citibank career took him to London. He had earlier jobs as a factory worker, a construction laborer, a merchant mariner, and a U.S. foreign serviceman, among other things. But the memory of that man at the Vesper Club, like the personal joy he still gets from rowing, reminds him of a line he once read in a book.

“It’s called ‘The Wind in the Willows,’ ” he said, “and there’s a character named Rat that says to his friend, ‘There is nothing better in the world than messing about in a boat.’ ”

Jensen Butler, a recent graduate of Florida State University, where he made the varsity football squad as a walk-on, pedaled into town this past week, on the last leg of a 4,000-plus-mile cycling trek across the United States.

When this writer asked during a conversation at The Star on July 18 if the width of the country weren’t more like 3,000 miles, Jensen, a 6-foot-2-inch, 190-pounder who turned 22 midway through the trip, which was to raise money for research into rare types of cancer, smiled and said he’d gone 1,000 miles out of his way, through Arizona, New Mexico, and a lot of Texas, to see his girlfriend, who lives in Austin.

A three-sport athlete at Governor Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights, N.J., near his hometown of Westfield, Jensen (whose father, Nat, is an East Hampton High School graduate who grew up in Montauk) never played football, he said, until his senior year. 

“I loved it . . . the camaraderie, the experience. . . . I’m always up for new challenges.”

His decision to ride across the country for a worthy cause was an example. “Cycling was entirely new to me. I didn’t train; I didn’t know how to change a flat tire. I got a Fuji touring bike, a hybrid, which is meant for long-haul trips. I’d wanted to do a cross-country cycling trip for a long time, since I was a kid. My dad had said he’d wanted to do one and regretted that he hadn’t. So, I did it for both of us. I didn’t want to look back some day and say I wish I’d done that.”

But he added that he didn’t want to do it without some purpose, “something that would help motivate me. I chose to raise money on the way for Cycle for Survival, which is affiliated with Memorial Sloan-Kettering and has raised more than $180 million for cancer research over the past decade. . . . My goal was to raise $10,000. As of this morning, $13,300 has been raised, and I expect that more will come in when I reach Montauk Point later today.”

Jensen said in answer to a question that he had stayed off the main highways, by and large, and that people had been friendly, especially so when he told them of his aim to raise money for cancer research. Just about everyone, he said, had been touched in some way by the disease.

“I remember one fellow in particular, in Safford, Ariz. He opened up his door to me and invited me to his church. I sat in the back as he spoke and introduced me to the congregation. Then he called me to come up front, where he presented me with what was in the collection plates. It was very humbling. A ton of people have been either directly or indirectly touched by cancer. When they told me my trip was inspiring, it was incredibly humbling. . . . My journey pales in comparison to the battles that other people have faced or are facing. Their battles are so much harder.”

Having set forth from the pier in Santa Monica, Calif., on May 14, it took him two months to reach the lighthouse here, averaging about 80 miles per day along off-highway routes he’d laid out using Adventure Cycling Association maps. 

On Long Island, after pedaling through New York City bookended by the George Washington and Williamsburg Bridges, he headed east on roads that paralleled the L.I.E. “I have Google Maps,” he said, “to thank for that.”

He had cycled with a taillight that was always visible, and with a mirror on his helmet. He’d gotten friendly honks and not-so-friendly honks, Jensen said, though he’d never been genuinely worried for himself. 

The weather? “Hot, in general. The hottest part was riding through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. . . . It’s very peaceful when you’re out there, though you do sometimes wish you had some human interaction.” 

“You really do come to appreciate the outdoors on such a trip,” Jensen said. “We live in a very big and beautiful country, whose climate, terrain, and culture vary tremendously. The connections I made with strangers, some of whom were cancer survivors, some of whom had lost a relative to the disease, were very motivating.”

Jensen’s uncle, Olman Sanabria, had died of cancer at a young age, this writer recalled. 

“I would like to add,” Jensen said, “that this was not by any means a one-man show. There were a ton of people who have contributed . . . the donors, people who have spread the word, people who have contributed in any way they can, my friends and family. . . . It was a total team effort.”

Jensen’s father, finding himself with some free time after having photographed the National Basketball Association playoffs, joined his son in Austin. “It was really important for both of us for him to be part of the trip. He’s been driving ahead of or behind me since. He’s given me moral support. He brought a bike in the car and we rode a few miles together. . . .”

Finishing in Montauk had particular meaning for him, Jensen said. In doing so he was paying tribute to his grandfather Capt. William Butler, a former East Hampton High School teacher and Montauk party boat captain who had died this past October — “I wanted to dedicate my journey to him” — and to his father as well.

As his son set out for Montauk from Amagansett that afternoon, Nat Butler confessed that given the teeming traffic out here he couldn’t wait for his son’s journey to end — at the lighthouse, where he was to cap the 4,150-mile journey by jumping into the water.

As for what would be next adventure-wise, Jensen said, “I’m gonna sleep a little bit. . . . I’m going to work this summer with a currency-trading firm in New Jersey. My life will be changing, but it’s exciting to know that I had this window of opportunity. I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. People would see my Cycle for Survival shirt in Mississippi and ask where I was coming from. When I’d say California, they’d say, ‘What do you mean?’ And that’s how a conversation would start.”

Peter Ventura, who was the runner-up at the Robert J. Aaron memorial triathlon in Montauk in June, won the Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon Sunday, prompting the announcer, Terry Bisogno, to hail his “resurgence.”

Asked after he’d crossed the line (in 1 hour, 5 minutes, and 25.5 seconds) what Bisogno had meant, Ventura, a 39-year-old Huntington resident, said that he hadn’t been among the top triathletic contenders in the past decade owing to fatherhood. Now, he said, he has more time to train.

The run, though mostly flat, had been tough, he said, in answer to a question. “You have to push yourself.” He nodded when this writer recalled Dr. George Sheehan saying that “if you hurt when you’re training you’re doing something wrong — if you hurt in a race you’re doing something right.”

Tom Eickelberg, the swimming coach at the State University at New Paltz, who has owned this race (half-mile swim, 14-mile bike, and 5K trail run) in recent times, was a no-show for the second year in a row — “he should get a girlfriend and get married,” Ventura said with a grin — but Eickelberg’s sister, Betsy, of Leonia, N.J., who won here in 2016, was among the competitors, finishing second among the women, in 1:12:37.8, to Smithtown’s Caitlin Dowd (1:11:57.5).

Eickelberg, who was the runner-up last year as well (to Kira Garry), is the head cross-country coach at SUNY Purchase. Her brother, she said, was busy at the moment recruiting swimmers.

The big news for the 27-year-old Dowd, who’s a nurse in the electrophysiology department at Stony Brook University Hospital, and thus doesn’t have all that much time to train, is that she qualified last month to compete in the world half-Ironman championships in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in September.

She had, she said, been a competitive cyclist, but the numerous crashes persuaded her to switch to triathlons. 

Dowd and Eickelberg are friendly rivals. Asked about their head-to-head duel that day, Eickelberg said she’d been first out of the water, at Gin Beach, but that “20 seconds into the bike Caitlin passed me.”

It wasn’t as if Dowd had left Eickelberg in the dust, however; they finished less than a minute apart.

The local winner, and 14th over all, was Mike Bahel, in 1:13:11.6, followed close behind by John Broich of Sag Harbor, in 1:13:19.6. Both are in their mid-50s. 

Asked how he felt, Bahel said, “It gets harder and harder . . . the conditions were perfect in the swim, and the bike was perfect too, with some wind, and the run, as always, was hot and muggy.”

“It’s torture,” interjected Peter Canoll.

Thomas Brierley, 26th in 1:17:11.4, edged his father, Craig, 33rd in 1:18:30.2, by a little over a minute. 

“He’s getting closer and closer,” said the younger Brierley, who is lifeguarding at Nick’s Beach in Montauk this summer and assists his father in coaching East Hampton High’s girls and boys swimming teams.

“It was a gorgeous day for it,” Thomas said, “overcast with the temperature around 70. . . . Now, I’m going to lie down and rest up before work.”

Evan Drutman of Sag Harbor was 37th, in 1:19:06.6, Tim Treadwell of Amagansett was 39th, in 1:19:30.9, Robert Reich of Montauk was 41st, in 1:19:53.2, Katrina Garry of Montauk was 42nd, in 1:20:08.3, Angelika Cruz, who helps in the coaching of the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter youth swim team, the Hurricanes, was 46th, in 1:20:20.6, and Kevin Barry, who coaches East Hampton High’s boys cross-country team, was 74th, in 1:23:25.1.

Tyler Pawlowski, 15, of Freeport, topping 124 finishers, three-peated as the winner of I-Tri’s youth triathlon (300-yard bay swim, 7-mile bike, and 1.5-mile run) Saturday at Noyac’s Long Beach in  30 minutes and 15.35 seconds.

A sophomore at Long Island Lutheran, Pawlowski also swims for the Long Island Aquatic Club at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow. A freestyler, his strongest distances range from 200 to 400 meters.

Asked after crossing the finish line, somewhat out of breath, if he were going to “warm down,” he replied, “I’m going to sit down.”

His time was a record, for the course was somewhat shorter this year, its race director, Sharon McCobb, said. She had been persuaded to shift everything eastward along the long beach so as not to interfere with town beach users that morning, thus shortening the bike course, which took participants through North Haven to the South Ferry landing and back. The out-and-back run spanned the beach. 

McCobb, I-Tri’s athletic director, who, with about half a dozen others, has been training the fast-growing empowerment program’s junior high-age girls since February, said she changed the start time from late afternoon to early morning “because there’s less traffic.”

Just eight years ago, I-Tri (“transformation through triathlon”), founded by Theresa Roden, numbered 12. There were said to be 135 in the I-Tri photo taken before Saturday’s race began, a number of whom could not ride a bike or swim a stroke before McCobb, Diane O’Donnell, Amanda Foscolo, Jill Raynor, Daniela Medaglia, Alyssa Channin, and Natalie Sisco began training them at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter this past winter.

“Some of them couldn’t even put their face in the water,” said O’Donnell, who coaches East Hampton High School’s girls cross-country team. 

“Now, they can all swim,” said Foscolo, who is herself a long-distance swimmer.

Besides the present large group of I-Triers, there were also numerous I-Tri alums — “coaches” now — on hand, among them Tali Friedman, a Ross School graduate and competitive dancer who won this race “a couple of times,” and who habitually was I-Tri’s top finisher. 

“I-Tri gave me more confidence,” she said when asked what her experience with the empowerment program had been. 

“But you were always athletic. . . .”

“I was athletic, but I wasn’t confident,” said Friedman, who, because of I-Tri, learned she could do whatever it was she wanted to do, and could, in turn, help others to do things they hadn’t thought they could do.

“It was so small when I was in it, only Springs and Montauk [Schools]. It’s so big now — it’s been amazing watching it grow. Theresa has been such an inspiration.”

David Powers, a veteran top-notch triathlete who now is a member of I-Tri’s board, advised Pawlowski, a competitive high school swimmer, to give triathlon, beginning with the sprint distances (half-mile swim, 20-kilometer bike, and 5K run) a try.

“You’re outdoors,” Powers began, “no longer staring down at a black line, the music is blaring . . . everyone’s doing the same thing together, it’s much more social.” Looking about him as finisher after finisher received hugs from friends and parents and exchanged high-fives, he concluded, “It’s more of a . . . festival.”

Caelan Clayton, 14, of Huntington was the runner-up to Pawlowski, in 37:26.54. Michael Benin, 14, of East Northport was third, in 39:56.88, and Bella Tarbet, 15, of East Hampton was fourth, in 40:47.87. 

Dylan Cashin, 11, of East Hampton and Isabelle Caplin, 11, of Sag Harbor topped the 11-and-under group, and Leslie Samuel, 12, and Elijah Lam, 12, did the same in the 12-and-under division, which had 55 entries. 

The awards keep coming for I-Tri, which uses triathlon as a fulcrum for boosting preteen and teenage girls’ self-confidence in general.

It is being considered by the International Triathlon Union’s women’s committee as a recipient of its “award of excellence.” Roden said she would learn whether I-Tri had won it later in the summer. The presentation is to made in September in Australia.

The I.T.U., triathlon’s international governing body, said of the award in a release, “Gender equality is a central element of the work that I.T.U. does, and has always been in the DNA of triathlon. . . . There are people the world over doing vital work that helps women, young and old, discover triathlon and to overcome the barriers to participation. This award shines a light on that work. . . .”

In addition, Roden has been invited to attend the U.S.A. Triathlon national championships in Cleveland next month with one of I-Tri’s girls, and is developing a science of triathlon curriculum “that will be integrated into all aspects of our training next season.”

“And we are also in the beginning stages of planning to take I-Tri to the national and, ultimately, to the international level,” Roden said.