With a week left before the close of the 2012 striped bass season for sport fishermen and with schools of herring schooling right outside the Montauk Harbor Inlet, things could be worse. Bass are still being caught, although the bite has slowed and the fish are smaller.

    For boating anglers, what’s lacking in the striped bass department is being made up for in the bottom-feeding world of blackfish,  a k a tautog from the Algonkian language.

    “They’re biting like ticks,” was how Richie (Nasty) Nessel put in on Monday, with plans to head out to the tautog grounds the next day.  

    ’Togs, as they’re called, can grow to grouper-like sizes, up to about three feet long and weighing over 20 pounds. Most harvested from this area weigh in the two to eight-pound range, with an occasional monster thrown in. Lately the blackfish being caught at Southwest Ledge are bigger than those at the otherwise tried and true, rocky grounds around Fisher’s Island.

    Blackfish, Tautoga onitis, are bucktoothed. They are a member of the wrasse family and are found from Nova Scotia south to the Carolinas. Their impressive front teeth have evolved to crack open the shells of mussels, crabs, and clams. The baits of choice are white, green, and hermit crabs. Hermits are highest on the tautog menu, but they are also expensive, about $80 per bushel.

    Many a blackfish is lost because the angler has not developed the practiced feel for the fish’s eating habits, and its habitat. Hooking them requires the angler to first feel his or her rod for the taps that indicate that the tasting, the initial shell crushing, has begun. An early swing at this point will take the bait out of the blackfish’s mouth. It’s in the second eating stage that the hook is set, after the fish begins to eat. The timing is telegraphed by a more steady tapping.

    The second hurdle is to remember why the tautog’s skin is slimy. It’s to help it move along reefs and slide past rock outcroppings without injury. Once hooked, they will attempt to hike behind and between rocks. Best to reel and pull gingerly so as not to part the line.

    Michael Potts, captain of the Blue Fin IV charter boat, agreed the blackfish fishing had been good, and that the cod catch was beginning to improve. He said that while the striped bass bite had begun to taper off, herring were relatively thick in Fort Pond Bay and as far east as Shagwong Point as of Tuesday.

    He said the absence of gannets — the diving birds whose cascading attacks on baitfish mark the presence of feeding fish — nearshore was explained by the corresponding absence of feeding predators that normally chase their small prey to the surface.

    But wait. At this time of year, anglers might focus on the prey, herring in this case, as food and not bait. Pickled herring is a Christmas necessity in many households. With big schools near at hand, it would not take more than an hour to land enough herring to supply all of East Hampton Town with holiday herring.

    The East Hampton High School boys and girls basketball teams began their seasons on the right foot this past week as the boys, thanks to a 20-4 third quarter, reeled in the Eastport-Manor Sharks, and as Ashley Rojas, in cool-cookie fashion, made both ends of a one-and-one in the final seconds to defeat Westhampton Beach 31-29.

    “My stomach can’t take any more of this,” a weary, but elated Howard Wood said after his team’s win here Saturday afternoon. “But I will say this, they’re the best group I’ve ever had. They’re young and willing to work, and they don’t complain. . . . We played good defense today, a 2-3 zone that we’d just put in. It was Ashley’s first time in that situation, and having been through it myself, I can tell you it’s not easy, especially when the other coach calls a timeout after you’ve made the first one.”

    The boys, who played here Friday evening, were cold in the first half of their nonleaguer with Eastport-South Manor. “We had open shots, but for whatever reason they weren’t dropping,” Bill McKee, the boys coach, said after the 53-33 win.

    Things began to jell in the third, however, as Rolando Garces, an explosive senior who has improved greatly since last year, Juan Cuevas (two), and Danny McKee knocked down 3s, and as Thomas King, who did a good job in distributing the ball to them, went 2-for-2 from the foul line. In addition, Garces made good on two fast-break layups, and McKee put back a Cuevas miss that had been rebounded by Thomas Nelson.

    Afterward, Bob Vacca, Bill McKee’s assistant, said, eyeing the stat sheet, “We were 6-for-31 in the first half, but in the second half we were 12-for-21, including 5-for-10 from 3-point range. And our defense was very good. It helped us until we could get the ball in the basket.”

    “It was a good first game — we moved the ball well and were a little more patient in the second half, and we played consistent defense,” said McKee, who added that four of his players had contributed significantly under the boards — King with eight rebounds, and Garces, Nelson, and Cuevas with seven each.

    The scoring was balanced as well. King, who did not have a particularly good shooting night, but who, in the words of his coach, “did many other things well,” finished with 15 points; Cuevas had 13, Garces 11, and Danny McKee 9.

    Back to the girls, they too got off to a slow start, shooting 1-for-14 from the floor in the first quarter. Going into the second period, they trailed 11-4, prompting Wood to say in the huddle, “You’ve had 10 layups and missed them all — stop trying to look for Kaelyn [Ward, East Hampton’s stellar guard]. And their little bitty guards are killing us on the boards. You should be up by 7 rather than down by 7 now.”

    The second quarter, during which the Bonackers played better defense, things began to go better. It ended at 17-13 in the visitors’ favor as Rojas was fighting for possession of the ball.

    Two quick baskets by Ward, the second following a steal by Sophia DePasquale, enabled East Hampton to tie the score at 17-17 in the opening minutes of the third, and the battle was joined.

   Wood and Louis O’Neal’s charges trailed by 4 points at the one-minute mark, but a big 3 by Ward brought the Bonackers to within one, at 29-28, and, with 13.5 seconds left, Jackie Messemer was fouled. She went to the line for a 1-and-1, and coolly made the first to tie the game, after which Westhampton’s coach called for a timeout.     When play resumed — and after Wood had urged his young players to shout “Victory on three” — Messemer’s second shot bounced off the back of the rim and Westhampton rebounded. At the other end of the court, however, Rojas stole the ball and was promptly fouled, earning herself a 1-and-1. She made the first, wresting a 30-29 lead back for the home team. And, following another Westhampton timeout, and with five seconds left on the clock, as aforesaid, Rojas calmly swished her second attempt through the nets.

    Westhampton dashed down the court for a last chance, but DePasquale deflected a pass, and the ball was in Messemer’s hands when time ran out.

   Three watermen, Scott Bradley, Ed Cashin, and Fred Doss — and one waterwoman, Shelter Island’s Amanda Clark, a two-time Olympic sailor — were among the honorees at Monday’s Old Montauk Athletic Club holiday dinner.

    Bradley, who recently won his age group in the world paddleboarding championships’ 11-mile open-water race in Cabo San Lucas, was the club’s athlete of the year. Cashin, who oversees the Exceed Fitness studio on Plank Road, and Doss, a consultant to nonprofit organizations, were the recipients of OMAC’s community service award.

    A native of Sayville, Bradley, who also has eight Ironman triathlons to his credit, and who cited Cashin’s training regimen as the reason for his competitive paddleboarding success, took to the water at an early age. “My mom taught me how to surf on Fire Island when I was 9,” he said during an interview at Cashin’s studio Saturday morning. “I hung out with the local Dutchmen on the bay, dug clams, swam, surfed. . . .”

    Sixteen months ago, when he began to seriously train with Cashin, Bradley, a Clydesdale competitor in triathlons, weighed 240 pounds. He’s a trim 195 now.

    “There’s paddleboarding and then there’s paddleboarding,” Cashin interjected. While the great majority held the paddle in front of them while gliding along on the water, “Scott uses 100 percent of his core and doesn’t bend his elbows when he digs in. I’ve developed a specific upper body endurance program for him. We call it ‘the Bradley.’ ”

    “Hawaiians have used paddleboards as a mode of transport for 100 years,” Bradley said. “It goes even further back in Indonesia. It’s only been in the last 10 years that it’s become a popular sport. Laird Hamilton, who has been pushing the limits in all the water sports, surfing, windsurfing, and paddling, has put it on the map.”

    Asked what he loved in particular about paddleboarding, Bradley, who was a swimmer and threw the javelin in college, said, “It’s something I’m passionate about. . . . It’s not all about racing. At the end of a stressful day at work, it’s just you and the paddle and the water. No distractions. It doesn’t have to be long . . . 20 minutes will do.”

    Paddleboarding, he added, was a sport for everyone. “It can be whatever you want it to be.”

    Not only has the sport served to unite Bradley, Cashin, and Doss as athletes, but also as serious fund-raisers.

    Doss, whose proposed start-up, Good Circle, would have companies sponsor nonprofits “in a very creative way,” and who first met Cashin when they were Miracle House board members, estimated that since the founding of Paddlers 4 Humanity in 2004 — primarily at Cashin’s suggestion — the organization had contributed about $800,000 to various nonprofits here and in New York City, among them the Retreat, the East Hampton Day Learning Center, and the Montauk Community Playhouse Aquatics Center.

    “Just about all of what we do is for the benefit of children and families,” said Bradley, whose fellow P4H board members are Doss, Cashin, Lars Svanberg (who also competed in the recent world championships), Dan Farnham, and Christine Moynihan.

    On the subject of children, Doss said he would meet soon with East Hampton High’s principal, Adam Fine, to set up a chapter here of buildOn, which, with the help of high school students, builds schools in developing countries. Paddlers 4 Humanity has given $15,000 to get that “life affirming” chapter started here, he said.

    Paddlers 4 Humanity’s events in the coming year will include a half marathon in Hither Hills on May 5, a four-mile paddle for women on Gardiner’s Bay on July 14, a swim-paddle-run at Maidstone Park, “to integrate the different athletic communities,” in late July, and a Montauk-to-Block Island paddle — “kayakers are welcome,” said Doss — on Aug. 3.

    “We used to have the Block Island paddle, which is our signature event, in September, but, because of all the storms, we had to cancel it this year,” said Doss. “Because of the tides, we’re limited to certain days. And since we want to get as many participants as possible, we want to make sure the conditions are safe and that the tides are optimum. That’s why we’re moving it up to August this year.”

    Bradley, when asked, said the swim-paddle-run event — new in 2013 — would probably comprise a quarter-mile swim, a half-mile paddle, and a mile run.

    Though P4H had done quite a bit as the result of its fund-raising paddle events over the past seven years — and had fun doing it — the three said they want to do more. “Frankly, we haven’t had the support we’d hoped from the corporate folks,” said Bradley. “We’re hoping the word gets out.”

    “We’re always looking for more participants and more donors and more volunteers so that we can keep going,” said Doss.

   As the result of semifinal-round victories, Maidstone Market, the nine-time defending champion, and Tortorella Pools were to have met once again in a Wednesday evening 7-on-7 championship game at East Hampton’s Herrick Park earlier this week.

    The same teams vied in the summer final in August, with the Market coming out on top 3-1.

    Tortorella had the easier time of it in the semis on Nov. 28 as two goals by David Rodriguez, with 75 Main a man down in the second half as the result of Tony Shoshi’s red-carding, put Leslie Czeladko’s team over the top.

    Jose Almonsa, a new Tortorella recruit, treated his team to a 1-0 lead in the first half, though 75 Main’s Geovanny Robles’s header, which converted a throw-in by Walter Arias, tied it at 1-1 early in the second, before Shoshi was shown the door, as it were, by the referee, Alex Ramirez.

    Fourth-seeded Bateman Painting gave the Market all it could handle in Nov. 21’s first game, which, following a 1-1 tie in regulation and two scoreless overtime periods, went to penalty kicks.

    Appropriately, Gehider Garcia, Maidstone’s “Golden Boot” award winner, and the third to go in the Market’s five-man penalty kick lineup, clinched the win for the perennial champions.

    “It’s not easy,” John Romero, Maidstone’s manager, said in leaving the field that cold night.

    In other men’s soccer action this past week, Virgen del Milagro won its first indoor championship at the Sportime arena in Amagansett Saturday night, shutting out La Calle 2-0 in the men’s open final, and thus avenging itself on a team to which it had lost 2-1 in the regular season.

    Missael Piadranarte, arguably the best ball handler on the tiled floor, put Virgen up 1-0 as the result of a breakaway with 2 minutes and 30 seconds left to play in the first half. Although La Calle played stronger in the second half, V.D.M.’s goalie, Juan Guazhambo, was up to the task, making several great saves.

    Meanwhile, Virgen del Milagro put the game away when, with 1:16 left on the clock, Franklin Bermeo, after receiving a pass from Eduardo Gavilanes, slipped the ball by La Calle’s keeper, Camillo Padilla, for the 2-0 victory. It was the first time, said Piadranarte (who came very close to scoring twice more in the second half), that he and his teammates had won a title at Sportime.

    In other finals that night, Correcamino came back in a men’s 38-plus battle to defeat El Veneno 3-2 in overtime.

    El Veneno had taken a 2-0 first-half lead, thanks to goals by Walter Criollo and Jose Pacheo, but with Sergio Morales’s red carding early in the second, which forced El Veneno to play a man down thereafter, the latter team’s defeat seemed inevitable.

    Segundo Granda scored twice in the second half for Correcamino to tie the count, and, ultimately, to extend the contest.

    Criollo, who apparently was winded, took himself out with a half-minute left in regulation, and, after collapsing on the floor of El Veneno’s bench, was ministered to by concerned teammates and onlookers for a time before he recovered sufficiently to re-enter the game midway through the second O.T.

    With 1:40 left, Criollo and Angel Guanga each came very close to beating Correcamino’s goalie, Jose Rupercio, but Criollo’s lofted shot headed for the right corner of the cage bounced out onto the floor, and Rupercio recovered in time to parry Guanga’s bid. Thirty seconds later, a blast into El Veneno’s nets by Fausto Pintado treated Correcamino to its 3-2 victory.

    The women’s championship was won by favored Union Latina, whose organized attack, involving Zully Escalante, Claudia Meza, Rosie Velez, and Zonia Martinez, proved too much for Los Andes. Goals by Velez, with 7:23 left in the first half, and by Escalante, with 5:34 to play in regulation, earned the title for Union Latina.

    Raymond Naula, who oversees the indoor 7-on-7 leagues at Sportime, said a new season is to begin there Friday, Dec. 14.

Thursday, December 13

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

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

Friday, December 14

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4 p.m.

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

Saturday, December 15

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Hampton Bays tournament, 7:30 a.m.

BOYS WINTER TRACK, East Hampton at crossover meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 4:30 p.m.

Sunday, December 16

GIRLS WINTER TRACK, East Hampton at crossover meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 9 a.m.

Tuesday, December 18

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

Wednesday, December 19

BOYS BASKETBALL, Miller Place at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

    Connor Miller and James Lock shared the Montauk Rugby Club’s player of the year award at the club’s holiday dinner at Page at 63 Main restaurant in Sag Harbor on Friday.

    Miller, a 23-year-old inside center who was a wrestler in high school and college, and the English-born Lock, who is in his early 30s, were key factors in the Sharks’ 6-1 fall season, a finish that resulted in their receiving a bye in the first round of this coming spring’s regional playoffs.

    Meanwhile, in other men’s sports news this week, Maidstone Market, the Yankees, as it were, of soccer here, won their ninth championship in Herrick Park’s 7-on-7 league, besting Tortorella Pools 2-1 in the final on Dec. 3.

    Leslie Czeladko, the league’s spokesman and Tortorella’s manager, said that Tortorella had made a game of it despite the fact that one of its scoring threats, Jose Almonsa, arrived late, and that another, David Rodriguez, was hobbled by an ankle injury.

    Craig Caiazca, Tortorella’s goalie, kept his team in the game in the early going, parrying several serious Maidstone shots.

    Midway through the first half, John Romero slipped by a defender, Steven Orrego, who had fallen down, and blasted a shot by Caiazca from about 10 yards out. What proved to be the game-winner came just before the halftime break as Hector Marles slid in at the left post to convert a pass from Antonio Padilla.

    Though trailing 2-0, Tortorella, according to Czeladko, played very well in the second half. Oscar Reinoso made it 2-1 with about 15 minutes to play when, after Almonsa had received a pass from Danny Salazar and had kicked the ball by the onrushing Maidstone goalie, Alex Meza, he slid in for the kill at the far post.

    Tortorella played the last 12 or so minutes a man-up — the result of Gerber Garcia’s ejection after tripping Rodolfo Marin — though the perennial champions’ defense held.

    Czeladko said afterward that it was the fifth time Maidstone and Tortorella had met in the championship match.

    Teams got together by John Romero Sr., Maidstone’s manager, and by Duvan Castro are playing in an indoor league this winter at the Southampton Recreation Center. Indoor 7-on-7 leagues at the Sportime arena in Amagansett are to begin this week.

    Back to the rugby dinner, Rich Brierley, the Sharks’ coach, said Nick Finazzo, a veteran second-row forward, had received the clubman of the year award “for his fund-raising and organizational work off the field. . . . He’s the one when we need something done.”

    A new “lifetime achievement” award — one that the club intends to give periodically henceforth, said Brierley — was bestowed upon the club’s founder, Charlie Whitmore.

    “He’s been with us the whole way,” said Brierley, who added that other alumni, players who’ve been retired for at least 15 years, would be considered as recipients of lifetime achievement awards in the future.

    As for the spring, “We and Danbury are the top two [Empire Geographical Union] teams,” said Brierley. “The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth teams are to play off on April 20. We’ll play the higher-seeded team among those four over the May 4-5 weekend, probably at Randall’s Island in New York City. If we win both games we play that weekend, we’ll go on to the national Sweet 16. Those games were played in Pittsburgh last year.”

    Meanwhile, the side is holding practice sessions — to which all comers are welcome — Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in East Hampton High School’s gym.

    Regarding the club’s co-players of the year, Montauk’s coach said, “James had been a wing forward, but immediately volunteered when we said we needed someone to move up to prop forward in the absence of Danny Fagan. They’re quite different positions. Wing forwards play in the loose — they’re like linebackers. Props are in ‘the engine room.’ They’ve got to be able to win the ball in the scrums. If they don’t, it’s hard to get any momentum going. James not only did well in that phase of play, but he was also very good in the loose.”

    “Connor is a natural tackler, he’s extremely fast, and he has great body position. He knows how to get tackled so that he can keep recycling the ball. He also has the ability to break loose. He gets us a lot of big yards.”

   This past fall was a breakout season for the East Hampton High School boys and girls cross-country teams.

    Kevin Barry, the boys coach, recently said that although he had the youngest team in the county, it was the best squad he’d had in five years, and, in time, might well prove to be the best he’s had in a decade.

    “We won county championships in 2001 and ’02, with Chris Reich [who now coaches the boys winter and spring teams] and Joe Sullivan and the Ahearn twins. . . . That was a long time ago, but these kids seem to want it.”

    “My team,” said the girls coach, Diane O’Donnell, “was probably the best I’ve had in eight years. I’ve had good individuals in that span, but not the seven consistent scorers that I had this year. It was a very exciting season, though, because of the hurricane and the cancellation of the state qualifier meet, it ended with a whimper.”

    Likewise, because of the superstorm, Barry’s top three freshmen — Erik Engstrom, Jackson Rafferty, and T.J. Paradiso — weren’t able to compete in the county’s freshman-sophomore meet. Had they and their fellow ninth graders done so, “I think we would have finished in the top three,” said the coach, who added that Engstrom, the county’s second-ranked freshman runner, had, because of his 18th-place finish in the recent Foot Locker regional meet at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, been ranked 13th among all the freshmen in New York State.

    The Van Cortlandt race for freshmen “from Maryland to Maine” was one and a half miles long (high school cross-country courses are usually 3.1 miles). Engstrom ran it in 7 minutes and 53 seconds, good for 18th place among 147 entrants.

    The boys finished the league season with a 4-3 record. Their losses were by narrow margins. “One,” said Barry, “was by two points, one was by three, and one, to league-champion Harborfields, was by five. The Shoreham coach — he was the state’s coach of the year two years ago — gave us a big compliment when he said, after seeing our scores at the meet with Harborfields, ‘East Hampton’s back.’ ”

    Adam Cebulski, a junior, who was East Hampton’s number-one (followed by Engstrom, Thomas Brierley, a junior, Rafferty, Jack Link, a sophomore, Paradiso, and Paul King, a first-time sophomore) broke Reich’s mark at Indian Island, the Riverhead course that has served as the site for East Hampton’s “home” meets in recent years, by running the 5K course in 16:57.

    “Erik pretty much rewrote the record book for East Hampton freshmen, in the mile and a half, the 3-mile, and in the 5K — at Indian Island and Sunken Meadow,” said Barry. “Chris Reich had a few of those records too.”

    As for the winter, Barry said, “T.J. and Thomas are swimming, but others are doing winter track.”

    One reason the boys had been so good, said Barry, was that Cebulski’s younger sister, Dana, a sophomore who has been to the state cross-country meet in each of the past two years, pushed them in practice.

    “The girls and boys train together and they travel to meets together, so there’s a great camaraderie, probably more so than in any other sport,” said O’Donnell.

    “Oh yes, she’ll improve every year,” O’Donnell said in answer to a question. “Her best time at Indian Island this fall was a very solid 19:43, in the meet with Westhampton. She was second, but a very close second. Her best 3-mile time at Sunken Meadow, which is a very tough course, was 19:38.”

    Cebulski, who took over at number-one last year when Ashley West (now doing very well at Susquehanna University) became injured, was the team’s number-one this fall, followed by Jennie DiSunno, a senior, Jackie Messemer, a sophomore, Emma Newburger, a junior, Devon Brown, a ninth grader, Jamie Staubitser, a senior, Merissah Gilbert, a sophomore, and Brittany Rivkind, a junior.

    O’Donnell also has her eye on “a couple of other young runners [one being Liana Paradiso] Bill [Herzog] had on his middle school team this year. . . . Liana’s an eighth grader. We’ll find out in August whether she’ll be able to come up next fall.”

    She and Barry and Herzog are planning to oversee workouts for the boys and girls this summer, to keep them sharp.

    Barry added that he and O’Donnell hope to get a 2.7-mile course he’s laid out at Cedar Point County Park certified by the county’s head track official, Tony Toro, so that the teams will be able to hold two home meets there next fall — for the first time in at least 20 years.

    Maidstone Market, the nine-time champion, not unsurprisingly headed into the men’s 7-on-7 soccer league playoffs at East Hampton’s Herrick Park yesterday having clinched the top seed, though going into the final night of regular-season play, on Monday, there was a chance that three teams — Maidstone, Bateman Painting, and Tortorella Pools — might wind up in a three-way tie for first place, with 18 points each.

    “It’s been very competitive this season — the top four have been beating each other,” said Leslie Czeladko, of Tortorella, who also oversees the league’s Web site.

    On Monday, Maidstone defeated Bateman Painting 3-1. Gehider Garcia, the league’s leading scorer, had two of the Market’s goals, and Wilson Betancur had one, all coming in the first half. Esteban Uchupaille scored for Bateman, also in the first frame. Espo’s was to have played Tortorella in the evening’s opener, but forfeited. Tuxpan, which narrowly missed making the playoffs, defeated 75 Main 4-2 in the nightcap.

    The 7-on-7 outdoor final is to be played at Herrick Monday at 6:30 p.m. In addition, the finals of 7-on-7 futsal leagues overseen by Raymond Naula at the Sportime arena in Amagansett are to be played Saturday night, with the women’s final set for 8, the 38-plus men’s final at 9, and the men’s open final at 10.

    In other recent 7-on-7 outdoor games, Maidstone Market crushed Tortorella Pools 5-1, knocking Tortorella out of first place, but was upset 1-0 by 75 Main, a game in which the Restaurateurs’ Geovanni Robles, a very quick forward, was the sole player to score.

    Robles’s all-important goal came midway through the first half. Taking possession at midfield, he dashed forward, and after vaulting over Hector Marles’s attempted slide tackle, went one-on-one with Maidstone’s goalie, Alex Meza, beating him to the lower left corner of the cage from about 15 yards out.

    The Market was the more aggressive team in the first half, though 75 Main, which counter-attacked whenever it could, had the better chances. Cesar Galea narrowly missed making it 2-0 when his 30-yard high, rocketed shot soon after Robles’s goal bounced directly down from the underside of the crossbar.

    Still, it didn’t seem as if that one-goal lead would hold up — Maidstone’s forwards, Antonio Padilla, Gehider Garcia, and John Romero among them, are always formidable — but 75 Main’s defense was sufficiently tenacious in the second half to assure a shutout.

    The win enabled 75 Main to take over second place and ousted F.C. Tuxpan, which had defeated Tortorella 2-1 earlier that night (Nov. 21), from playoff contention.

    Romero had three goals and Padilla three assists in Maidstone’s blowout of Tortorella on the 19th. Tortorella played most of the game a man-down because of David Rodriguez’s ankle injury. Still, Tortorella managed to keep the Market off the scoreboard in the first half.

    The second half was a different story. Romero got it going, one-touching a chest-high ball past Tortorella’s goalie, Craig Caiazca, that Padilla had fired goalward from 10 yards out. Four more goals were to follow — two more by Romero and one each by Wilson Betancur and Gehider Garcia. A breakaway by Steven Orrego accounted for Tortorella’s scoring.

    In other action that night, 75 Main and Bateman played to a 1-1 tie. Following a scoreless first half, Uchupaille got Bateman on the scoreboard, assisted by Julian Munoz. But Geovanni Robles, assisted by Tony Shoshi, salvaged the tie.

    Tuxpan, which shut out Espo’s 4-0 in the nightcap with Nettie Sanchez netting two goals and with Alberto Larios and Juan Velasquez scoring the others, kept itself in playoff contention with its aforementioned 2-1 win over Tortorella on the 21st, though its dreams were to vanish two hours later with 75 Main’s 1-0 upset of Maidstone Market.

    Last night’s semifinals were rematches of Monday night’s games, with Bateman Painting, the fourth seed, versus Maidstone, and with Tortorella vs. 75 Main. The final, as aforesaid, is to be played Monday at 6:30 p.m.

    Another record number turned out for the East Hampton Town-John Keeshan Realty 3 and 6-mile Turkey Trots in Montauk on Thanksgiving Day.

    Seven hundred and forty had registered, 641 finished — 551 in the 3-miler and 90 in the 6 — and the weather couldn’t have been better.

    Two days later, in Sag Harbor, far fewer turned out for the Old Whalers Community House 5K, which is in its second year — the Montauk races were celebrating their 36th anniversary — though the 74 Harbor runners were no less enthusiastic.

    Kira Garry, a 19-year-old Yale sophomore, won the 6-miler, in 36 minutes and 49.56 seconds. Jason Hancock, a 38-year-old Amagansett School teacher, was second, and Jim MacWhinnie, who has in the past few years made a remarkable recovery from a nigh-fatal accident, was third.

    Entire families flock to the Thanksgiving Day races in Montauk, and if there were a family prize it probably would have gone to the Garrys (though the Brierleys and the Naulas would also have been in the running). Kira’s younger sister, Katrina, a Friends Academy junior, topped the females in the 3-miler, placing 18th over all in 19:27.62; Kira and Katrina’s father, Bill (who has once again qualified for the world triathlon championships), was 16th in the 6-miler and placed second in the 50-to-59-year-old age group. The girls’ mother, Louisa, placed fourth in the 6-miler’s female 40-49 group in 47:15.81.

    Tim Rossi, 20, an Emory College cross-country and track runner from New York City whose family has a house on Shelter Island, was the 3-miler’s winner, in 17:04.

    It was his third time at Montauk and his best finish — he was third last year, he said, adding that he had run with a pack to begin with before taking the lead at mile 2.

    The Old Whalers 5K winner was Spencer Carlson, a philosophy major at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 19:05.58. The women’s winner — eighth over all — was Julia Marino, a 17-year-old Sacred Heart High School runner from New York City, in 22:03.88.

    Liz Yennie, one of the church’s elders, said the proceeds would help underwrite the costs of keeping its community house, “a building that dates to 1840 or ’60, even longer than you’ve been around, open to any group that wants to use it.”

    Among those that do at present are Sag Harbor’s Food Pantry — “the oldest on the East End,” said Yennie — Weight Watchers, and Alcoholics Anonymous.

    “Eventually,” said Bruce Beyer, who heads the church’s property committee, “we’d like to fix it up — it needs a new floor and ceiling — so that it can be available for such occasions as wedding receptions or baby showers.”

    A northeast wind was whipping over the water as he spoke, a few feet from the finish line, leading Beyer to recall that “the water was the highest I’ve ever seen it during the hurricane. It was over the top of that bulkhead, but there ­wasn’t too much damage. Winds out of the northeast here generally switch around to the south — that’s what it did during the hurricane.”

    Dermot Quinn, 43, of Springs, who was seventh, in 21:57.79, and who had two days before placed 18th among the 6-milers in Montauk in 43:23.81, said, when asked about the wind, “For the most part the course was pretty sheltered — it’s a nice course. And we had the wind at our backs when we finished, which was great.” Quinn’s son, Adrie, who’ll be 3 years old in February, ran with him in the final yards.

    Back to the Montauk races, George Watson, whose son, Chris, recently revived the 3.4-mile Dock race over which his father used to preside, confided to this writer as he walked by that he too could be counted among the white men over 64 who’d voted for Obama.

    Watson, 68, who placed 254th in the 3-miler in 30:05.80, good enough for second place in the men’s 60-69 division, behind the fleet 65-year-old Eddie McDonald (24:21.92), wondered, as did Kevin Barry, where John Conner was. In San Remo, Italy, they were reminded, attending a cousin’s ordination.

    Before he left for Italy, Conner, a former three-time world track record holder and the coach of a number of runners here, was interviewed in these pages. Watson said, with a smile, that he’d read it and had duly “sent John an insulting message.”

    Erik Engstrom, one of the young runners Conner coaches — as do Barry and Bill Herzog — was to have run, along with Adam Cebulski and Jack Link, in the Foot Locker invitational in the Bronx this past weekend.

    Engstrom, 14, reportedly the second-ranked freshman runner in Suffolk County, ran the 6-miler on Thanksgiving, finishing fourth in 38:18.77.

    Veteran Turkey Trotters remembered the days when, in the words of one of them, “it would take a long time for the turkeys [frozen ones provided by John Keeshan] to come out.”

    Bob Beattie, who timed both last Thursday and Saturday’s races, recalled the hand-held days some 20 years ago, when he’d have volunteers strip off the bottoms of the runners’ number bibs as they came through the chute, after which they’d put them in order on a spindle. The names, ages, and genders on the strips would then be aligned with the clicked-off times by Beattie, who, in turn, would record the results by hand.

    “I’d get the results out about an hour later. . . . We didn’t use tongue depressors, though it was basically the same thing.”

    “Now,” Beattie said, “we’ve got two $50,000 rigs and a state-of-the-art Jaguar timing system, which has 70 percent of the market. It was invented by an R.F.I.D. [radio frequency identification] technician who was also a triathlete, and who kept saying to himself, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ ”

    “Racing’s done out here for the season — this is the last one,” Beattie added, “though we’ve got a race in Patchogue coming up and one in Connetquot. Also, we’ll be doing two in New York City, for the first time. My brother, Ron, will be doing the one in Central Park and I’ll be doing the one in Riverside Park.”

    “Bob actually got his start using an abacus,” said Ron, who was listening in.

    As for the coming year, Bob Beattie said, “We’re definitely going to have an Andy Neidnig 5K — on this course, in the spring, probably in May. His house, you know, is the one-mile mark. We should have a big crowd.”

November 5, 1987

    The East Hampton-Pierson cross-country team continued its stellar season Saturday by adding the Conference Four title to the league championship it had already won.

    Led by Jim Lattanzio, East Hampton-Pierson won five of the top 10 places in the 3.1-mile race over the hilly Sunken Meadow State Park course to easily defeat its rival, Stony Brook, 25 to 38. East Hampton and Stony Brook, in turn, bested Mattituck, Westhampton, Hampton Bays, LaSalle Military Academy, and Center Moriches.

    Among the 22,000 New York City marathoners Sunday were at least several local participants who came away with buoyed spirits, and bodies that apparently were not unduly affected by the rigorous 26.2-mile ordeal.

    “It was like being in the Super Bowl,” said Tim Fitzpatrick, a former Bank of New York East Hampton branch employee, now a mortgage consultant with Southold Savings Bank’s main office, who finished 918th in 2 hours, 58 minutes, and 16 seconds.

    Johanna Pfund, 32, of Montauk, who was running New York for the first time, did a cartwheel at the finish line, but the TV cameras, as had been the case with the tape-breaking of the winner, Ibrahim Hussein, missed it.

    . . . It was not a personal best for either Billy O’Donnell or Pfund — he had run a 2:56 at Atlantic City, N.J., in 1978, and she had run a 3:32 in her first venture four years ago — though both were pleased to report they felt good at the end.

November 17, 1987

    Two East Hampton High School football team linemen, David DiSunno and Bill Barbour Jr., have been named by League Seven’s head coaches to the all-Suffolk County team.

    “It’s the first time in a long while that East Hampton has had two players make all-county,” said the team’s coach, Ted Meyer. DiSunno, this year’s captain, and Barbour, the captain-elect, made the all-league team as well, as did another lineman, Nick Algios, and a running back, Mauricio Castillo.

    There was the drumming of gunfire along the Mohawk and beyond this week with the opening of this year’s deer-hunting season.

    . . . State wildlife officials are anxious to see adult doe quotas “realized” so that population buildups due to lower-than-usual hunting success can be reversed.

November 26, 1987

    Beginning next spring, scientists from the County Health Department will make the first concentrated effort to sample the kinds and amounts of organic nutrients entering East End bays. The nutrients are thought to feed the brown algae, called Aureococcus anorexefferens, the creature responsible for wiping out the million-dollar local scallop industry, and for chasing a great variety of finfish from their natural haunts.

    . . . “It’s time to get to the guts of it, to look at the action in the bay,” said Chris Smith, a county Sea Grant agent and chairman of the county’s algae task force. “We don’t know the relative inputs of sewage treatment and road runoff into the bays. . . .”