East Hampton High School’s boys basketball team commenced its season with an impressive win in the Kendall Madison Tip-Off tournament here this past weekend, trouncing McGann-Mercy 80-48 on Friday before besting Pierson (Sag Harbor) 60-47 in Saturday’s championship game.

Jack Reese, Bonac’s senior point guard, led the way with 18 points, 7 assists, and at least as many steals in the final. He was adjudged the tournament’s most valuable player. 

Reese, Malachi Miller, who guarded Pierson’s chief scoring threat, Will Martin, in what East Hampton’s coach, Dan White, called “a sagging man-for-man defense” designed to keep Martin from getting into the paint, and Jeremy Vizcaino, a sophomore guard who scored 16 points in the win over Mercy, were named to the all-tournament team, along with Pierson’s Martin and Henry Brooks, who, like his brother, Tom, is a serious 3-point threat.

With Martin exploding for 36 points, and with Henry Brooks draining five 3-pointers, Pierson defeated Mattituck 56-49 in Friday’s other semifinal. Mattituck placed third in the tourney by defeating Mercy in Saturday’s consolation game.

East Hampton’s junior varsity, coached by Joe McKee, also won a trophy, defeating Mattituck’s jayvee in the final as Pierson beat Mercy for third place.

There was a Slammin’ Santa youth tournament here this past weekend as well, with East Hampton’s third-and-fourth-grade team, Sag Harbor’s fifth-and-sixth-grade team, and Westhampton Beach’s seventh-and-eighth-grade team winning the brackets.

It was no surprise that the White-coached Bonackers handled the Whalers with relative ease in the Kendall Madison tournament’s championship game, for White, who had been at Sag Harbor for a number of years before coming here last season, had coached most of Pierson’s varsity players since they were third graders.

(He’ll be doing the same with East Hampton’s youngsters as of Saturday, overseeing a revived Saturday morning Biddy Basketball program at the John M. Marshall Elementary School.)

East Hampton led 15-5 after the first quarter, and was up 28-15 at the half. Thanks largely to Miller’s attentiveness, Martin was limited to 12 points for the game.

When the Whalers cut the lead to 9 early in the third, on a 3-pointer by Cooper Schiavoni, Reese, after a 3-point try by Miller went in and out, replied with two successive steals and layups for 32-19. 

A 3-pointer by Martin, who found himself whenever he tried to penetrate double and sometimes triple-teamed, pulled Pierson to within 7, at 36-29 with about three and a half minutes to go in the third, but that was as close as the Whalers were to come. A buzzer-beater by Vizcaino treated the Bonackers to a 45-36 lead at the end of the third period, a lead they were to extend to 21 before White and Hank Katz began to send in the subs.

Reese, Noah Lappin, Ruben Aquino, and Chris Stoecker (a 6-foot-8-inch center), the team’s senior captains, accepted the trophy from Carl Johnson, the former coach of Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees.

The tournament’s program said the late Kendall Madison, after whom the tourney is named, “was a beloved son  of the East Hampton community. He played football, basketball, and ran track in the spring. He was a member of the 1989 Class B state-championship boys basketball team. He was an all-league, all-county, and M.V.P. football player who went on to play football at the University of Connecticut on a full scholarship.”

“The Kendall Madison Foundation and the Kendall Madison scholarship fund were established in his memory to assist others to achieve their dreams. . . . Kendall was inducted into the East Hampton High School Hall of Fame in 2012.” 

After Saturday’s game, White said Reese was “probably the best point guard I’ve ever coached. . . . If anything, he’s a little too unselfish.”

Katz, when questioned, said his team had “played hard,” and that he’d been impressed by his players’ rebounding, “but our ball movement needs to be better.”

Martin couldn’t do it all, he said, “and he realizes that — he’s a leader, he does his best to orchestrate things, to keep his teammates involved.”

While a good, hard-working team, the Whalers can expect to have a lot of competition in Class C this winter. “Stony Brook’s always strong, Port Jefferson ought to be good, and Greenport is really good,” Katz said.

For his part, White said he’d have a better idea as to how the Bonackers may fare this season once Monday’s nonleaguer at Southampton is under their belts.

Thursday, December 14

BOYS SWIMMING, Deer Park vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Islip at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Islip, and Pierson at Comsewogue, 6:45 p.m.

Friday, December 15

WRESTLING, East Islip at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Bridgehampton at Port Jefferson, mandatory nonleague, 4:30 p.m.; Pierson at Stony Brook, 7, and Ross School at Shelter Island, 7:15.

Monday, December 18

BOYS BASKETBALL, Ross School at Stony Brook, mandatory nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, December 19

BOYS SWIMMING, East Hampton at Hauppauge, 5 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Harborfields, 6:45 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Bridgehampton at Center Moriches, mandatory nonleague, and Harborfields at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

Wednesday, December 20

BOYS BASKETBALL, Stony Brook at Bridgehampton, mandatory nonleague, 6 p.m., and Port Jefferson at Pierson, Sag Harbor, mandatory nonleague, 6:15 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Pierson at Southold-Greenport, 6:15 p.m.

The top two seeds in the East End 7-on-7 Soccer League, the Maidstone Market and Hampton F.C.-Bill Miller, went at it in the playoff final at East Hampton’s Herrick Park recently, with the former winning 3-1.

It was the third straight season that the Market, managed by John Romero Sr., has won the playoff trophy. 

The champion finished the regular season in first place, with 20 points, by virtue of its 6-2-2 record. Bill Miller and F.C. Tuxpan, each at 4-2-4 (16 points) and Tortorella Pools, at 4-4-2 (14 points), followed. Bateman Painting, which has won championships in the past, was next to last, with a 3-6-1 mark, and Sag Harbor United, whose record improved to 2-7-1 this fall, rounded out the standings.

To get to the final, the Market shut out Tortorella 2-0 in one semifinal, and Bill Miller prevailed 3-0 in a penalty kick shootout over Tuxpan in the other, after the teams had finished the second half tied.

The final, played under a huge golden moon, began ominously for Bill Miller as its goalie, Olger (Quique) Araya, in coming out to counter a Maidstone attack in the first minute, left the cage wide open behind him, giving Mario Olaya, who’d received a pass from the left, an easy chance, one that he did not pass up.

With Eddy Juarez and Tono Gonzalez orchestrating attacks of its own, Bill Miller did not go quietly, though of the two teams, Maidstone, with its deeper bench, moved the ball with more authority throughout the night.

Gehider Garcia, Bill Miller’s chief striker, had a good opportunity to knot the score in the first minute of the second half, having gathered in a pass from Juarez, but blew it. 

With 10 minutes gone in the second, Antonio Padilla, a particular thorn in Bill Miller’s side, made it 2-0 off a counter, assisted by Ernesto Valverde. 

A diving save by Araya of a high, hard shot by Olaya prevented a third Maidstone goal midway through the final period, but two minutes later Maidstone got it, on a blast by Valverde, who had brought the ball all the way up the sideline. 

Alex Mesa, Maidstone’s goalie, was waved off the field for two minutes with 11 minutes left after taking Andrey Cruz, a Bill Miller forward, down in the penalty box. Gonzalez, after Padilla had put on Mesa’s shirt and replaced him in the goal, converted the penalty kick for 3-1, but that was as close as Bill Miller, whose attacks were frequently stymied that night by Julian Barahona and the Romeros, Mathew and John Jr., was to get.

Back to the semifinals, Maidstone advanced over Tortorella on goals scored by Valverde (with an assist from Barahona) in the first half, and by Mesa, on a penalty kick, late in the second. The penalty kick was awarded after Tortorella’s goalie, Craig Caiazca, whose acrobatic goaltending had kept his team in the game, was charged with taking an onrushing Padilla down in the box.

Rodolfo Marin, one of Tortorella’s defenders, argued the call, and ultimately received a red card for doing so. 

Both teams handled the ball well that night, dribbling with their feet as well as point guards do with their hands on a basketball court, but Maidstone’s attacks were the more organized.

“It went down to a shootout and Tuxpan didn’t have any shooters,” Leslie Czeladko, the league’s correspondent, said when asked the next day how the Bill Miller-Tuxpan semifinal had ended. 

Gehider Garcia gave Bill Miller the lead about 23 minutes into the first half, converting a pass from Cruz, and Juarez was to add another score soon after, for a 2-0 lead. But just before the first half ended, Tuxpan got on the board, a shot having been deflected by Cruz’s raised hand into Bill Miller’s nets.

“Play was very physical and fast in the second half,” Czeladko said in his eastendsoccer.org account. “Time was called several times due to an injured player. . . . With about 12 minutes left, Tuxpan’s Faustino Meza deked Araya, who had come out, and was about to follow up when one of his teammates, Andres Perez, blasted it into the net.”

Scoring in the shootout for Bill Miller were Gehider Garcia, Gerber Garcia, and Jason Granados. Perez, Gorge Santo, and Meza came up empty for Tuxpan.

In other men’s soccer action, the Hampton United over-30 team goes into the winter break in first place in the Suffolk men’s league’s first division, and, by virtue of its 2-0 win over S.F.C. Newcastle Sunday at Hampton Bays High School, as a quarterfinalist in the President’s Cup tournament, the rest of whose games are to be played in the spring.

Craig Brierley has a dozen freshmen on the East Hampton High School boys swimming team he coaches, but you’d never know it the way the Bonackers have been performing. As of earlier this week, they were 2-1 over all and 1-0 in League II.

In last week’s meets, the boys lost 92-78 to Northport, a nonleague opponent from League 1, but there was no shame in that inasmuch as Northport was the fifth-place finisher in last year’s county meet.

It went down to the wire. A one-two finish in the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, would have given East Hampton the victory, but Northport won it, with East Hampton (Aidan Forst, Owen McCormac, Joey Badilla, and Ethan McCormac) second and fourth (Kevin Pineda, Thomas Treadwell, Will Midson, and Ryan Bahel).

The Bonackers took second and third in the leadoff 200 medley relay, with an A team comprising Badilla, Ryan Duryea, Fernando Menjura, and Owen McCormac, and a B team comprising Forst, Jack Duryea, Colin Harrison, and Thor Botero. 

Badilla, Jack Duryea, Harrison, Owen McCormac, and Menjura are freshmen.

Ethan McCormac, a junior, won the 200 free, in 1 minute and 47.81 seconds, well ahead of the runner-up, Aidan Greenfield of Northport. 

A fellow junior, Ryan Duryea, was second, and Badilla was third in the 200 individual medley. 

Menjura and Owen McCormac, both freshmen, as aforementioned, were third and fourth in the 50 free. With Menjura, Harrison, and Pineda, a sophomore, the Bonackers placed second, third, and fifth in the 100 butterfly, before Ethan McCormac returned to win his second event of the day, the 100 freestyle.

Northport’s Greenfield swam away with the 500, though Forst was second. East Hampton (Menjura, Harrison, Ryan Duryea, and Ethan McCormac) won the 200 free relay, and its B team of Pineda, Jordan Uribe, a junior, Treadwell, a senior, and Thor Botero, a junior, placed third.

Badilla was second in the 100 backstroke, and Ryan Duryea was the runner-up in the 100 breaststroke, with his younger brother, Jack, third.

In his recount of the meet, Brierley said 18 of his swimmers — he has 30 on the roster — had turned in “world record” times.

The team got back on track by defeating Stony Brook 93-69 at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter last Thursday. It was the Bonackers’ league opener.

Among East Hampton’s winners were the 200 medley relay team of Pineda, Ryan Duryea, and Ethan and Owen McCormac; Forst, in the 200 free and 100 back; Ryan Duryea, in the 200 individual medley; Ethan McCormac, in the 100 fly; Pineda, in the 500 free; the 200 free relay team of Ethan McCormac, Badilla, Owen McCormac, and Menjura, and, if truth be told, the 400 relay team of Ethan McCormac, Owen McCormac, Ryan Duryea, and Forst, which was “exhibitioned,” which is to say East Hampton forwent the 8 points.

East Hampton, with Ethan McCormac, Badilla, and Owen McCormac, swept the 100 fly, and placed one-two in the 500, the 200 I.M., and in the 200 free relay.

Treadwell, for his come-from-behind fourth-place finish in the 500, was named swimmer of the meet last Thursday. Cris Criollo, a first-year swimmer, earned the designation in the Northport meet for doing his best in preparing himself to lead off Bonac’s C team entry in the 400 relay.

As of earlier this week, the following had qualified for the county meet in various events: Forst, Ethan and Owen McCormac, Badilla, Menjura, Harrison, and Jack and Ryan Duryea.

The team’s captains — elected by their teammates — are Noah Gualtieri, Nick Sigua, and John Pinos, all seniors.

Max Bahi, a first-year junior, was picked as the Smithtown meet’s swimmer of the meet for having filled in for an ill teammate after having swum the two events he’d been scheduled to do.

Thursday, November 30

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Westhampton Beach at Pierson, Sag Harbor, nonleague, 4 p.m.

Friday, December 1

BOYS SWIMMING, Smithtown vs. East Hampton, mandatory nonleague meet, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Kendall Madison Foundation Tip-Off tournament, Mattituck vs. Pierson, 5 p.m., and East Hampton vs. McGann-Mercy, 6:15, East Hampton High School.

Saturday, December 2

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Pierson, Sag Harbor, nonleague, 3 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Kendall Madison Foundation Tip-Off tournament, junior varsity championship game, 3 p.m.; varsity consolation game, 4:30, and varsity championship game, 6, East Hampton High School.

Sunday, December 3

MEN’S SOCCER, over-30 league, Hampton United at Inter United, Baymen Soccer Complex, Sayville, 2:15 p.m.

Monday, December 4

BOYS SWIMMING, Northport vs. East Hampton, mandatory nonleague meet, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5 p.m.

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

OLD MONTAUK ATHLETIC CLUB, holiday dinner, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 6 p.m.

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 league, championship game, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 7 p.m.

Tuesday, December 5

GIRLS BASKETBALL, league opener, Kings Park at East Hampton, 6:45 p.m.

Wednesday, December 6

BOYS BASKETBALL, Babylon at Bridgehampton, mandatory nonleaguer, 6 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Mattituck at Pierson, Sag Harbor, 6:15 p.m.

November 19, 1992

The 1992 high school football season ended in East Hampton Saturday, but not before the gallant Bonackers gave undefeated Mount Sinai all it could handle.

If the heartbreaking 21-20 loss did little to console the losers, the fact that some veteran onlookers commented that the game was one of the finest ever played here certainly should.

East Hampton thus ends its season with a 4-4 mark, although in defeat the locals gave arguably their most impressive performance of the season, outplaying the tough-as-nails Mustangs for much of the game before being worn down in the late stages of the second half.

. . . Trevor Darrell and Paul Poutouves, East Hampton linebackers, were sensational in defeat, each recording numerous tackles and contributing some crushing blocks on the other side of the ball. Peter Maxey, playing with a badly bruised shoulder, hung tough for the entire game. Marcus Borowsky, the quarterback, was debited with throwing three interceptions, but only one of those passes was poorly thrown. In a nutshell, it was his versatility that played a major role in the near-upset.

And though Todd Carberry’s numbers were not up to par, his toughness on both sides of the ball was evident throughout. To say he was a marked man would be an understatement — each Mustang defensive player had Carberry’s number, 26, written on his helmet, a reminder to keep an eye on the elusive but powerful senior. 

Paul Blodorn, the young Mercy High School senior from Sag Harbor, continues to amaze on the cross-country trails. Blodorn celebrated his 17th birthday in Wappingers Falls Saturday by finishing a strong 10th in the New York State Federation meet, an open one with competitors from high schools of all sizes and stripes.

“Kevin [Barry] and I would have been happy with a top-30 finish, but Paul ran a super race,” said Cliff Clark, who has been advising the Mercy phenom. “The course was just as tough as Sunken Meadow, and it was rainy and slippery. Paul moved up from 18th to 10th in the last mile, and missed third or fourth by just seconds. The winner was only 20 seconds faster than Paul.”

In the process, Blodorn left Dave Garner, who had defeated him by 15 seconds in the state Class C meet, in the dust, as it were. Garner, of Walton, which is near Oneonta, finished 14th. . . . Blodorn’s time over the 3.1-mile overland course was 16 minutes and 37 seconds.

Frank Ackley, the East’s top-ranked 65-year-old United States Tennis Association singles player in 2015, said during a recent conversation at his house in Springs that he hadn’t played singles at the national level in a while, “ever since I broke my leg in a freaky accident on the grass courts at The Bridge.”

“It happened so quick,” he said. “I was going for a volley and my partner [Mike Dickens, of Melbourne, Fla.] was too. We ran into each other and I went down and was pushing myself back up when he fell on me. That sidelined me for eight months. When it happened we were getting ready to play in the [2016] national grass courts in Monmouth, N.J.”

In recent months, Ackley and Dickens have played in two national championships and, though unseeded, have done well. Last month, at the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club, said to be the oldest tennis club in the United States, they reached the quarterfinal round of the national clay courts, losing to the eventual winners, Andrew Rae, the world’s number-one in both singles and doubles in that age group, of Australia, and Daniel Grossman, of Tiburon, Calif.

In the first round, Ackley and Dickens toppled the fifth-seeded team 6-2, 6-2 and emerged as victors 7-6, 2-6, 6-3 in the second round before losing 6-2, 6-1 to Rae and Grossman in the quarters. “They were so solid — they play together all the time. They did everything right and took care of us. They beat Tom Smith and Paul Wolf, the top team in the U.S., the team that won the grass courts in New Jersey, 6-1 in the third set of the final.” 

“I didn’t play in the singles because I’m not in really good shape, which you need to be to play singles in these national events,” Ackley continued. “There are some guys that’s all they do, they travel all over playing tournaments. . . . If you’re not in shape, you begin sucking air after the first couple of games and your game drops — you start going for winners, hitting riskier shots, and that’s not my style.”

Earlier in the fall, he and Dickens had won a first-round match at the national grass courts before losing to the second seeds 6-4, 6-4 — “a guy from Australia and a guy from New England. They lost in the finals to Smith and Wolf.”

He would try to get himself into “fighting shape” this winter, said Ackley, who spends the winter in Melbourne, where he and Judy Soman have a condo, playing tennis and golf.

Asked how he compared the two sports, the former University of Tennessee’s women’s tennis coach said, “They’re totally different. One is physically demanding, a fistfight; golf is precision and mechanics. It’s always the same. You improvise in tennis a lot on the run, the ball takes funny bounces and you have to adjust — you gotta do what you gotta do. . . . I love golf too. I used to play at the Sag Harbor Golf Club. They called the greens in those days ‘the browns.’ They oiled them so they wouldn’t fall apart.”

He had come to golf first, when he was a student at Mercy High School in Riverhead, whose home course was the Baiting Hollow Country Club. “One day on the golf course I wound up watching the tennis team hitting balls and running around. Larry Chizever, Mercy’s volunteer tennis coach, showed me the game, and the next year I was on both teams. They let you do that then. I was number-one on the tennis team and was two or three on the golf team.”

“Golf is all mechanics and mental, and you don’t lose any weight. . . . You have to be tough mentally in tennis too.”

“Yes, the courts at Baiting Hollow were hard courts,” he said in answer to a question. “The only high school in the country that I know of that has Har-Tru courts is Ross.”

“I’d like to get ready again,” he said, summoning up the U.S.T.A. website on his laptop computer and looking at the long age-group tournament list. “We’ll end up the calendar year with only two tournaments. . . . They take your four best tournaments when they’re figuring out your rankings. Some guys play in 20. Andrew Rae does. Oh my God can he play — effortless. When you play him you’re the one moving around. There are tournaments all over, in Baton Rouge, South Carolina, Jackson, Miss., Atlanta, Texas, Indiana. . . . There’s one this summer in New Haven. That’s closer to home. There’s one coming up in Longboat Key, on the other coast. But my brother’s duck shoot at Spring Farm is that day and I can’t miss that. The day after the duck shoot we’re driving down.”

To get ready for the national clay courts he had been helped greatly at the East Hampton Tennis Club, he said, in the days leading up to it “by the pro there, Gary Clermont, and by Phil Koufmann and Greg Connor. We did serve and volley drills every day in the afternoon. It was a crash course. They’d adjust to try to help me out — it wasn’t a practice match. We wouldn’t have beaten the fifth seeds otherwise. . . . I haven’t hit a ball since that tournament in New Orleans.”

“Frankly,” Ackley confided, with a smile, “I really like beating seeded guys.”

Dan White, who is in his second year coaching the East Hampton High School boys basketball team, said following Saturday’s multiteam scrimmage at Mattituck, a scrimmage that also included Riverhead and Greenport, that he was “optimistic” when it came to the coming season.

East Hampton’s girls team scrimmaged too this past week, at Pierson High School in Sag Harbor on Nov. 22, and afterward Kelly McKee, Bonac’s coach, said that he was pleased with his numbers this year — he had 18 players available to him that day — in contrast to the eight he had on his varsity squad last winter. The plan apparently is to harry the opposition with waves upon waves of subs, who, it is hoped, will convert at least some of the turnovers.

The feather in the boys’ cap, as it were, was a 3-point overtime “win” over Riverhead after that school had jumped out to a 10-point lead. Led by their senior point guard, Jack Reese, the boys moved the ball well in that scrimmage, and shot well — Malachi Miller’s 3-pointer, following a steal by Reese, putting the Bonackers over the top, 44-41.

White’s optimism was not unbridled, however. “We’ve got to do better in transition, both offensively and defensively, but we’re unselfish, and I like that. We had a very young team last year, and it’s still a young team, with half a dozen sophomores and juniors, but we’re more experienced. The kids have been playing in the off-season.”

To bolster the program in general, White is reviving Biddy basketball sessions at the John M. Marshall Elementary School Saturday mornings this winter, beginning Dec. 9.

Third and fourth graders are to play from 8:30 to 10 a.m., fifth and sixth graders from 10 to 11:30, and seventh and eighth graders from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., said White, whose varsity players will help him.

The season begins in earnest with the Kendall Madison Tip-Off tournament here this weekend. Mattituck and Pierson are to play at 5 p.m. tomorrow, with East Hampton and McGann-Mercy to follow, at 6:15.

The varsity consolation and championship games are to be played Saturday, at 4:30 and 6 p.m.

“We’re hoping for an East Hampton-Pierson final,” said White, who was the Whalers’ coach before coming here.

The tournament, which includes junior varsity games, is to benefit the Kendall Madison Foundation, which each year presents four-year college scholarships to East Hampton High School seniors. This year’s winners were Andrew Wilson and Alex Rutkowski. The scholarships require that their recipients “give back,” by mentoring younger East Hampton student-athletes.

The girls squad, which has seven seniors on it — Maddie Schenck, Jayleen Schiappacasse, Danielle Lackner, Sophia Ledda, Melanie Barros, Tallulah Marino, and Olivia Brauer — is to play a nonleague game at Pierson Saturday at 3 p.m. It will follow up with its league opener against Kings Park here on Tuesday at 6:45 p.m.

The boys were to have scrimmaged yesterday at Wyandanch — a team that it upset in league play at the end of last season — and are to scrimmage at Huntington Monday. The Bonackers are to play a nonleague game at Southampton on Dec. 11, at 6:30 p.m.

Moreover, Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees are to play a mandatory nonleaguer with Babylon at the Bee Hive Wednesday, at 6 p.m., the same day that the Pierson Whalers are to play a mandatory nonleaguer at Center Moriches, at 5.

Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, said during a recent conversation concerning winter sports that East Hampton will field a varsity wrestling team rather than pursue talks for the moment about combining with South­ampton, whose wrestling program is also struggling.

Anthony Piscitello, a Ross School teacher, will be back coaching the team, whose numbers dwindled to eight or so last winter. There are 16 on the squad at the moment, Vas said. East Hampton is — as was the case last year — combined in the sport with Pierson, Ross, and Bridgehampton. 

Jim Stewart, East Hampton’s former longtime varsity coach, thinks that the program will right itself here in the near future, given the encouraging number of participants in the lower grades.

Boys swimming promises to be competitive, said Vas. Craig Brierley has 35 on his squad, which is based at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter. The winter track teams, by contrast, were thin, the A.D. said, with 12 to 15 on the boys team, coached by Ben Turnbull, and with half a dozen on the girls team, coached by Yani Cuesta.

East Hampton may revive its bowling team next winter, Vas said, at the East Hampton Indoor-Outdoor Tennis Club’s large Clubhouse annex — whose offerings are to include bowling. Billed as a family fun center, the Clubhouse is expected to be up and running come the spring.

The athletic director said in parting that he has begun providing up-to-date East Hampton High School sports news, photos, and videos on a Twitter account that can be summoned up on the school’s website, easthamptonschools. org.

The weather was good on Thanksgiving Day, warmer apparently than was expected, so the turnout at the East Hampton Town Recreation Department and John Keeshan Realty’s three and six-mile Turkey Trots in Montauk was bountiful.

So bountiful, in fact, that the 10 a.m. start time had to be pushed back 15 or 20 minutes so that the long lines of day-of-race attendees could be registered.

“All the money after we pay our expenses will go to the Montauk Food Pantry,” said Keeshan, who founded this race (as a six-miler) 41 years ago. “On this day of giving thanks it seems right that the food pantry should be our beneficiary.”

Bob Beattie, the race director, said before everyone lined up at the Circle that he thought the tally of participants might reach 1,000, which would have been a first. It was a first anyway, inasmuch as there were 688 finishers in the three-miler and 84 in the six, for a total of 772. “There were 650 last year, and that was the record until today,” said Beattie. “We’ve been setting turnout records for the past few years now.”

Billy O’Donnell, who has participated in Keeshan’s Thanksgiving Day runs since the beginning, suggested that “they put up a tent on the Circle to handle the registrations from now on. It’s a bottleneck in there,” he said, pointing to the lines about to descend the stairs in the small Chamber of Commerce building across the street from the start-finish line.

The Berglin twins, Nicholas and Christian, of Hampton Bays, who are collegiate runners now, were runners-up — Nicholas in the three, less than a second behind Dylan Fine, a Georgetown runner, whose time was given as 15 minutes and 38.4 seconds, and Christian in the six, several minutes behind Tim Rossi, 25, a Central Park Track Club member, Emory College alumnus, and part-time Sag Harborite who, while he was not listed among the six-mile finishers (Carlo DiFlorio was credited with the win, in 32:59.1), said, when asked afterward, that he had been the winner, which, if so, would have been a four-peat for him, dating to 2014.

Rossi, who has run a half-marathon in 1:15.59, bettered last year’s time by about a minute. But what he was happiest about, he said, was that his father, Steve, who had undergone quadruple bypass surgery about six months ago, was among those who walked the three-miler that day.

Alyssa Bahel, a Denison University field hockey player and runner, was the first female finisher (seventh over all) in the six, in 40:02.4, nine seconds ahead of Barbara Gubbins, 57, thus reversing their placements in 2015’s six-miler.

Rossi said he had been a soccer player to begin with, but switched to competitive running “at this race about six or seven years ago.” 

This writer was not able to catch up with Fine, though Rossi said he was an Amagansett summer resident spending the holiday with his family there.

A number of East Hampton High School’s 2015 and 2017 county-champion cross-country runners were on hand, though Erik Engstrom, the former county champion who is now among the University of Massachusetts’s top runners, sat it out.

Eric Perez, a 2015 graduate, was the third-place finisher in the three-miler, behind Fine and Nicholas Berglin, in 16:38.6. Omar Leon and Ethan McCormac, members of this year’s county-championship team, were sixth and seventh, each in 17:59.2, and Ryan Fowkes, who led the Bonackers this fall, was listed as third in the six-miler, in 36:22.8.

Keira Hughes was the three-miler’s female winner (and 10th over all), in 18:21.7. Bella Tarbet, a ninth grader who, with Ava Engstrom (Erik’s younger sister and a ninth grader as well) led East Hampton’s girls cross-country team this fall, was the runner-up, in 19:33.1. She was 19th over all.

When the question of Fine’s time came up, and whether it was a record, Kevin Barry, East Hampton’s longtime coach, said he doubted it. Artie Fisher’s name always comes up in such discussions, as does Wojtek Wysocki’s. He, himself, Barry said, had run a 15:40 on the way to his second counterclockwise loop around Fort Pond in the not-so-distant past.

Thursday, December 7

BOYS SWIMMING, Stony Brook vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at East Islip, 5 p.m.; Pierson at Center Moriches, 7.

Friday, December 8

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at Babylon, and Bridgehampton at Mattituck, mandatory nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, December 9

WRESTLING, Frank (Sprig) Gardner tournament, East Hampton High School, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

Monday, December 11

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Port Jefferson at Pierson, Sag Harbor, 6:15 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, mandatory nonleague, 6 p.m., Ross School at Center Moriches, mandatory nonleague, 6:15, and East Hampton at Southampton, nonleague, 6:30.

Wednesday, December 13

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Comsewogue, 6 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, McGann-Mercy at Bridgehampton, mandatory nonleague, 6 p.m.; Mattituck at Pierson, Sag Harbor, 6:15, and Babylon at Ross School, East Hampton, mandatory nonleague, 6:15.