Casey Waleko, the East Hampton High School softball team’s pitcher, had an almost-perfect (no hits, one walk) game going through the first six and two-thirds innings of a crossover game here with Islip on May 2 when, in coach Lou Reale’s words, “the wheels came off.”

    Though the Bonackers were to commit four errors in the final two frames on their way to a 4-2 loss — all of the visitors’ runs were unearned — Reale said he was to blame.

    “It just shows that I’ve got to do a better job of coaching, of getting them prepared,” he said in reviewing his missteps, which included calling for a screwball in the top of the sixth that a left-handed hitter lined past Bonac’s shortstop, Ali Harned — a two-out, two-run double that drove in runners from second and third base and tied the score.

    The visitors’ sixth began with a dropped fly ball in left. Waleko struck out the next two batters — her seventh and eighth strikeouts of the game — but her subsequent throw to first base after having fielded a little nubber hit her way went wide of Ceire Kenny, the second baseman, who was covering on the play.

    Reale said later he should have had Waleko, with the count 1-2, jam the lefty, but called instead for the fateful screwball. The hard liner enabled Islip to tie the score as its dugout erupted.

    Kenny retired the side with a nice running catch of a foul fly off the first-base line.

    East Hampton came up empty in the bottom of the sixth as a home run bid by Sam Mathews was caught — barely, there was a lot of ball showing — at the center-field fence 205 feet away from home plate.

   Things continued to go south in the top of the seventh. After the first batter was thrown out second-to-first, the next lofted a pop fly behind and to the left of second that was dropped amid the confusion, and the next hitter singled over third — Islip’s second hit of the afternoon.

   It looked as if the Bonackers might escape unscathed, but with two outs another error led to the visitors’ third run, and an infield hit plated the fourth. A flyout to left ended the inning.

   Ilsa Brzezinski, the first baseman, led off East Hampton’s seventh with a booming double to the right-field fence. She took third when Cecelia Fioriello, pinch-hitting for Courtney Dess, bounced the ball just in front of the plate and was thrown out by the catcher. Harned, after working the count to 2-2, watched a third strike fly by for out number two. That brought up Dana Dragone, East Hampton’s senior left-handed leadoff hitter, prompting the visitors’ coach to confer with his pitcher, Vanessa Juengerkes.

    When play resumed, Dragone made good contact, but her line drive was gathered in by the Buccaneers’ shortstop, a catch that sealed the victory.

    “They’re a good team,” Reale said. “They made the plays when they had to. There was that catch at the fence in center on the ball Sam hit, and then, in the fifth, their right fielder made a shoestring catch of a drive by Casey that would have scored Deryn [Hahn],” who had singled sharply after two were out, and who was rounding third when the catch was made.

    East Hampton outhit Islip 8-3, though that went for naught given the visitors’ four unearned runs.

    “We had runners in scoring position four times and didn’t score, though I’ll take the blame for that,” said Reale. “Casey did a great job — we just have to learn how to finish these games.”

    East Hampton scored its first run in the third as Dragone, who had singled with two outs, came all the way around on a rap to right by Hahn. Hahn was stranded at third, though, as Waleko popped out to first.

    The Bonackers made it 2-0 in the fourth. Kathryn Hess, the catcher, who was to make two nifty catches of foul balls behind the plate in the fifth, singled to lead off, after which Ellie Cassel bunted down the third-base line with the count 0-1. Caught by surprise, Islip’s catcher threw the ball into right field, which allowed Hess to score and Cassel to advance to second.

    Cassel remained there, however, as Mathews popped out to second, Brzezinski grounded out short-to-first, and as Dess popped out to first.

    It was only the second loss of the season for the Bonackers, who, going into it, were tied with Sayville for the League VI lead. Islip continued as the League V leader at 11-2 — the same record as East Hampton’s as of last Thursday morning.

    “It won’t get any easier,” said Reale, whose team as of last Thursday had regular-season games yet to play with Westhampton Beach, Rocky Point, Shoreham-Wading River, Sayville, and Miller Place.

   “Everything’s changing by the minute,” Kathy McGeehan, who assists Matt Maloney in coaching the East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team, said Monday morning.

    “Among the B schools we’re in seventh place [in the power-rated division] at the moment — and we’re hoping to end up there or higher, depending on what we and the other teams do in the final games — but we won’t know where we’ve finished until Friday,” she said.

    As of Monday, the Class B teams above East Hampton, which has in the program’s 12-year history never had a girls lacrosse team make the playoffs, were first-place Hauppauge (12-1), second-place Eastport-South Manor (10-2), fifth-place Sayville (9-3), sixth-place Harborfields (8-4), eighth-place Kings Park (7-5), and ninth-place Rocky Point (6-5). East Hampton, at 7-5 (and 9-5 over all), was in 10th place among the division’s 21 teams as of Monday morning.

    The eighth Class B team as of Monday was 12th-place Miller Place (6-6).

    The top three Class C teams are to make the Division II playoffs as well. The playoffs in girls lacrosse are to begin at the sites of the higher seeds on May 19.

    Maloney, in speaking with sportswriters following Friday’s 12-7 win here over Mattituck-Greenport-Southold, said, “Our chances [of making the playoffs] are 50-50 at this point. We need to win one of our last two. Nothing is guaranteed.”

    Sayville was to have played here Tuesday; East Hampton is to finish up the regular season today at 3-9 Elwood-John Glenn.

    “We didn’t have our good stuff today — we made a lot of turnovers,” Maloney said in regard to his team’s performance. “We were very fortunate to get a win. . . . We didn’t play up to our full potential.”

    He and McGeehan spent a long time talking to the team in the middle of the field following the contest, though Maloney said it wasn’t all about lacrosse. “There were some internal team things that needed addressing as well,” he said.

    It was somewhat of a moral victory for the North Forkers, according to The Suffolk Times’s sportswriter, Bob Liepa, who said the junior varsity’s goalie, Nikki L’Hommedieu, a sophomore, was making her varsity debut that day in the absence of Alex Zaweski, a senior who was on a class trip. L’Hommedieu finished with seven saves. Allison Charde made five and Cheyenne Mata made seven for East Hampton. The visitors, who as of Monday had only one win to their credit this spring, played well, especially considering the fact that it’s only their third year of varsity competition. The Bonackers outscored Mattituck 7-2 in the first half, but it was 5-5 in the second.

    With about five minutes gone in the second, and with East Hampton leading 8-2, Maloney pretty much emptied his bench. He reinserted his starters with 13 minutes remaining, but even with the change the visitors narrowed East Hampton’s lead to 9-6 with 7:31 to go.

    After an exchange of turnovers — East Hampton’s offensive forays frequently broke down when the last pass was made — Gabriella Penati, fed by Jenna Budd, beat L’Hommedieu to put the Bonackers up 10-6 with 4:54 on the clock.

    During a subsequent timeout, Maloney was heard to say, “Possess the ball and move your feet . . . pass and move your feet. Use your feet on offense and defense.” Two minutes later, after Mata had connected with Hailey Tracey on a clear, Melanie Mackin drove in and shot wide, though East Hampton retained possession and, following a foul, Maggie Pizzo, who was to score three goals that afternoon, put East Hampton ahead 11-6 with a free position shot.

    A free position goal by Amanda Seekamp closed out the scoring in the final half-minute.

    Maloney, who is in his fifth year as the varsity’s coach, said he has been “pushing for us to make the playoffs every year. We felt we should have made them last year. This year, we not only set making the playoffs as a goal, but we also wanted to make some noise in them.”

    Of Mattituck-Greenport-Southold, he said, “They’re improving — they probably won more draws than we did today — and they worked the ball around on defense. Their program’s on the rise — they’ll make the playoffs in a few years.”

    Back to his team, the coach said, “You can’t play sports with an on-off switch. You have to play your best at all times. That’s the task that’s before us.”

    A hearing called at the behest of the Ross School’s boys tennis coach, Vinicius Carmo, who alleged that his Westhampton Beach counterpart had unfairly juggled his lineup in a match with the Cosmos, was held at Section XI’s offices in Smithtown Tuesday morning.

    Later in the afternoon, Carmo reported that the governing body for Suffolk high school sports had ruled in Ross’s favor.

    Thus, the Cosmos, who were expected to finish the regular season with an 11-1 record — they were to have played their final match at 2-8 Eastport-South Manor yesterday — were declared the League VII champions. It was the third year in a row that Ross has won the league championship.

    Going into the hearing, Westhampton Beach had an 11-1 record as well, but because of Tuesday’s ruling it dropped to 10-2. “Even if we lose the match with Eastport-South Manor and finish with two losses, we’ll still win,” said Carmo, “because we will have had two wins over Westhampton.”

    Ross had defeated Westhampton 4-3 in a match played at the private school’s bubble on March 30.

    Carmo said this week that he had questioned the Westhampton coach John Czartosieski’s lineup before the April 28 match began, a match that Carmo had said would decide the league championship.

    “He had Sheel Patel, who has played fourth singles and third doubles for him, at first doubles with J.D. Sipala. His second-best player, Reid Paoletta, was matched at second doubles with Brian Schwartz. That would have been okay with me if they’d played a challenge match to see which team was best, but he [Czartosieski] said they hadn’t played a challenge match. Both A.D.s were there and heard what he said.”    

    “At first, I didn’t want to play the match — I told him he was breaking the rules,” Carmo continued, “but Jaye [Cohen, Ross’s athletic director] called Section XI and was told that we should play it and file a protest afterward.”

    The April 28 contest came down to third doubles, which matched Westhampton’s Michael Polan and Elan Assayag against Ross’s Jordan Schwimmer, a ninth grader, and Mikey Peterson, a seventh grader. Schwimmer and Peterson won the first set 6-0, lost the second 6-3, and the all-important third, as well, 7-5.

    “I thought Mike and Jordan would win — they were happy and confident,” Carmo said, with a smile. “They didn’t look scared. On the deciding point at 5-all, we had a forehand volley that hit the tape, rolled, and bounced back onto our side of the court. We were up 40-15 in the next game, but they came back to tie it and on the deuce point again — there’s no-add scoring in high school matches — we hit another volley, a backhand volley this time, that went just over the baseline. . . .”

    Ross went on to win matches with Southampton (5-2) and William Floyd (4-3), and was to have finished the regular season yesterday at Eastport-South Manor.

    Carmo himself was accused three years ago — his first in coaching — of unfairly juggling his lineup by the former East Hampton High School boys varsity coach, Claude Beudert. He said then that the doubles players he had at the time were interchangeable and that Beudert’s charges were “absurd.”

    East Hampton’s athletic director, Joe Vas, filed a complaint with Section XI, but apparently nothing came of it. In predicting that it would come to naught, Vas said at the time, “I don’t think there’s been enough history with this coach [Carmo] to make a real determination from the Section’s standpoint.”

    Nowadays, Carmo takes with him to team matches a list of his latest challenge match results lest there be any doubt as to the integrity of his lineups. “We play challenge matches all the time — they’re good for the kids,” he said.    Meanwhile, in conference tournament play at Shoreham-Wading River High School over the weekend, Ross’s number-one, Felipe Reis, the second seed, lost 6-3, 6-0 to top-seeded Jeremy Dubin of Southampton in Monday’s final. Reis won four matches on his way to the final.

    Two of Ross’s doubles teams — Jack Brinkley-Cook and Louis Caiola and Schwimmer and Peterson — are to join Reis in the county individual tourney given the fact that each pairing made it to the conference tourney’s semifinal round.

    In a match to determine the third-place finisher Monday, Brinkley-Cook and Caiola defeated Schwimmer and Peterson 6-2, 6-3.

    Carmo said Schwimmer and Peterson’s showing was “the surprise of the tournament.” To get to the semis, they defeated teams from Shoreham, Mattituck (the fifth seed), and from Ross, their fourth-seeded teammates Harrison Rowen and Pedro Zagury, whom they defeated 6-2, 3-6, 6-3.

    “We’re sending the most players [five] of any team in our division to the county tournament,” Carmo added.

    East Hampton’s Dan Ruggiero lost to Reis in the second round of the singles. Bonac’s Dan Okin and Colin Kavanaugh lost a second-round doubles match to Brinkley-Cook and Caiola, 6-0, 7-6, and East Hampton’s Peter Davis and Nicki Neubert lost 0-6, 7-5, 6-3 to Rowen and Zagury in the first round.

Friday, May 18

BOYS TENNIS, county team tournament, Ross-Mattituck winner at Harborfields, 4 p.m.

Saturday, May 19

RUNNING, East Hampton Day Care Learning Center races, 5K, mile, and 400-meter dash, 2 Gingerbread Lane Extension, 9 a.m., registration from 8.

GIRLS LACROSSE, playoffs, first round, East Hampton at Eastport-South Manor, noon.

Monday, May 21

BOYS TRACK, division meet, Comsewogue High School, 3 p.m.

BASEBALL, county Class C championship series, Southold vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, county team tournament, quarterfinal round match at Half Hollow Hills East, 4 p.m.

Tuesday, May 22

GIRLS TRACK, division meet, Bellport High School, 3 p.m.

Wednesday, May 23

BOYS TRACK, state qualifier meet, Comsewogue High School, 3 p.m.

BASEBALL, county Class C championship series, game two, Pierson vs. Southold, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4 p.m.

SOFTBALL, county Class A Class C tournaments, first round games, sites of higher seeds, 4 p.m.

MEN’S SOCCER, Bateman Painting vs. Tortorella Pools, 6:30 p.m., Tuxpan vs. Espo’s, 7:25, and Hamptons Arsenal vs. Maidstone Market, 8:20, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

Thursday, May 24

GIRLS TRACK, state qualifier meet, Bellport High School, 3 p.m.

BASEBALL, County Class C championship series, game three, if necessary, Southold vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4 p.m.

Day Care Races

    The East Hampton Day Care Learning Center will benefit from a 5K for those 10 and up, a mile race for 5-to-8-year-olds, and from a 400-meter race for 3-to-4-year-olds on Saturday at 9 a.m. Registration at the center, which is behind the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, is to begin at 8.

Girls Track

    Diane O’Donnell, who coaches East Hampton High School’s girls track team, said this week that Ashley West is to compete in the 200 and 400-meter races at the division meet at Bellport High School Tuesday, as well as with the 4-by-100 and 4-by-400 relay teams.

    O’Donnell and her assistant, Shani Cuesta, have also proposed that the following be taken into the division meet as well: Hannah Jacobs (discus), Saoirse McKeon (shot-put), Cole Brauer (3,000), Vanessa Cruz (3,000), Lena Vergnes (racewalk), Sedona Brosse (high jump), Charlotte Wiltshire (high jump), Amanda Calabrese (100), and Morgan German (400 hurdles). “We expect to take at least 18 girls to the divisions,” O’Donnell said.

   The East Hampton High School baseball team and its fans said farewell to 11 seniors Saturday, and they went out winners, defeating John Glenn 4-3.

    Thus the Bonackers finished the campaign at 9-11, though undoubtedly they and their coaches, Ed Bahns and Will Collins, would have preferred an 11-9 ending, which would have gotten them into the playoffs.

    East Hampton almost pulled it off, but a 13-11 loss to League VII’s co-champion Bayport-Blue Point in the finale of that penultimate three-game series proved fatal.

    In recounting Saturday’s game, Collins said that East Hampton’s starting pitcher, A.J. Bennett, drove in two runs with a single in the bottom of the first inning, and that Glenn came back to tie the score in the top of the second.

    “It was fairly tight thereafter,” said Collins. “They got a run in the fourth, but we came back to tie it at 3-3 in the fifth. Michael Abreu led it off with a single, Andrew Rodriguez laid down a sacrifice bunt, and Jimmy McMullan followed with a big r.b.i. single.”

    Deilyn Guzman, who was to get the win in relief of Bennett, led off East Hampton’s sixth with a base hit. After Brandon Brophy flied out, Ryan Joudeh, the catcher, walked, and Bennett singled to load the bases for Rodriguez, whose subsequent walk scored Guzman with what proved to be the winning run.

    Guzman closed out the visitors in their seventh to end the season on a bright note.

    Five Bonackers were named to the all-league team, Collins said — Joudeh, Brophy, Guzman, Cameron Yusko, and Abreu. Bennett was academic all-league.

    Abreu finished the season with a 4-3 pitching record. His earned run average was 3.15, and his batting average was .315. He drove in 13 runs.

    The team’s seniors were Joudeh, Bennett, Yusko, McMullan, Guzman, Abreu, Rodriguez, Brophy, Russell Young, Fausto Mateo, and Mike Messemer.

    “Next year,” Collins said, “we’ll be very young.”

   Assuming the rain held off, the East Hampton High School softball team was to have played for a share of the League VI league championship here with Sayville Tuesday afternoon.

   Sayville lost 3-1 to Shoreham-Wading River and East Hampton defeated Miller Place 6-2 in games played Monday. The win improved East Hampton’s record to 13-4 and dropped Sayville’s to 14-3.

   Lou Reale, East Hampton’s coach, said his pitcher, Casey Waleko, “didn’t have her best stuff at Miller Place, but she ground it out. The game was closer than the score indicated — they threatened in every inning.”

   The big guns for the Bonackers that day were Kathryn Hess, who went 2-for-3 with two doubles and a run batted in with a sacrifice fly, and Deryn Hahn, who also went 2-for-3 and scored three runs. Waleko doubled too, driving in East Hampton’s first run in the top of the first inning.    

    As the result of Friday’s 1-0 loss in 10 innings here to Shoreham-Wading River, the East Hampton High School softball team’s record dropped to 12-4 in league play.

    It was the third straight loss for the Bonackers, a rarity; though, as opposed to the two previous defeats, by 4-1 here to Islip and by 2-1 at Rocky Point, this game was very well played on the part of Lou Reale’s charges.

    As of Monday morning, East Hampton was in second place in League VI, behind 14-2 Sayville. Going into Friday’s contest, Reale said if his team won out, it would at least gain a share of the championship.

    “We’ve got three games left and the other teams have two,” the coach said during a conversation over the weekend. “Everything’s still up in the air — there are five teams that can win the A’s. Everybody’s beating everybody else.”

    East Hampton was to have played at 12-5 Miller Place Monday, and was to have played Sayville at home Tuesday, games that were to have had a bearing on the playoff seedings. East Hampton was to have finished the regular season at John Glenn yesterday. Rain was predicted for each of those days.

    “It was a good game,” Reale said of Friday’s clash, which had a playoff air. Casey Waleko, East Hampton’s pitcher, struck out 14, gave up four hits, and walked one. East Hampton committed only one error, by Waleko, on a squiggler in the sixth inning. Her opposite number struck out 11 and gave up nine hits, but East Hampton couldn’t bunch enough of them together to score a run or two.

    Deryn Hahn singled in the fourth, but, with Waleko at the plate, was thrown out trying to steal second. With two outs, Kathryn Hess, the catcher, doubled deep to left-center field, but she was stranded there as Ellie Cassel, who bats fifth in the lineup, flied out to left.

    With one out in the fifth, Ali Harned, the shortstop, beat out a bunt down the third-base line. She stole second as Shannon McCaffrey struck out, and slid safely into third after the catcher’s throw sailed into the outfield. But Courtney Dess, who recently replaced Ceire Kenny at second base, struck out to end the inning.

    Waleko got into a jam in the top of the sixth. Two infield hits sandwiched around her aforementioned throwing error enabled the visitors to load the bases with two outs. Jessie Stavola, East Hampton’s former record-setting all-state pitcher, who finished up her college career at Dowling last week, and who was looking on, came out to talk to her, after which Waleko struck out Shoreham’s cleanup hitter with an 0-2 riser.

    A two-out double by Shoreham in the top of the seventh went for naught as the next batter grounded out second-to-first.

    Ilsa Brzezinski, Bonac’s sophomore first baseman, drove a two-out double off the center-field fence in the bottom of the seventh, but, following a conference on the mound, Harned popped out to short.

    That brought on extra innings. Waleko walked the leadoff batter in the top of the eighth, her first walk of the afternoon. Following a flyout to right, a bunt was laid down, but Waleko fielded it cleanly and rifled a throw to Harned at second to catch the runner sliding in there. Brzezinski subsequently made a nice scoop of a low throw from Hahn to retire the side.

    McCaffrey lined a base hit to the outfield in leading off East Hampton’s eighth. After Dess struck out, Dana Dragone, who leads off, beat out a ground ball to short — her second hit of the day — putting runners at first and second for Hahn, whose hard grounder down the third-base line forced McCaffrey. Waleko then was caught looking at a two-strike changeup that floated over the plate.

    After each side had gone down in order in the ninth, the 10th began, as is customary, with a runner on second base.Waleko struck out the first two to face her, but the number-nine hitter, Alyssa Saler, jumped on the first pitch, a hanging curve, and belted it into center field, a drive that brought the runner around for a 1-0 Shoreham lead. A Dess-to-Brzezinski groundout ended the inning, but the damage had been done.

    Brzezinski began East Hampton’s 10th on second. Harned laid down a nice sacrifice bunt that advanced Brzezinski to third, but Brzezinski remained there as McCaffrey was caught looking at a third strike and as Dess was thrown out third-to-first.

    “We played pretty well — we didn’t beat ourselves, we just didn’t get the timely hits,” said Reale, who lost a good bat last week when Sam Mathews fractured an ankle during a rainy-day workout in the high school gym, a “freak injury” that finished her for the season.

    Reale did have some problems with the bottom of his lineup Friday. “They were swinging through bunts on run-and-bunt plays, and runners were getting thrown out.”

    Concerning Stavola, his former lights-out pitcher, whose torn labrum limited her effectiveness in the latter quarter of this past season, Reale said, “She’s had a great college career [at UConn and Dowling], and she’ll be a great coach too.”

    “She’ll do her student teaching in East Hampton in the fall, and she’ll coach softball, and maybe another sport, like field hockey. We don’t know at what level yet. She’s an academic all-American and she’s made the all-region team. . . . I had her go out there to talk to Casey in the sixth because she knows a lot more about the mechanics of pitching than I do. She’ll be a super coach.”

    Stavola is one of three former protégées who have been helping Reale this spring, the others being his assistant, Erin Bock Abran, and Catherine Curti, who is expected to transfer to the State University at Cortland, where she’s expected to play softball.

    “It’s great to have these kids coming back,” he said, adding that Molly Nolan, another of his former players, is transferring from Skidmore to Cornell, where she, too, is expected to play softball.

Half-Marathon

    Jason Hancock, 38, a Southamptoner who teaches at the Amagansett School, won the Paddlers for Humanity off-road half-marathon in Montauk’s Hither Woods Sunday in 1 hour and 33 minutes. Sinead FitzGibbon, 41, won among the women in 1:43.34. Paul Hamilton and John Doyle were the relay winners in 1:48.50.

T-Ball

    The East Hampton Kiwanis Club’s T-ball instructional baseball program for boys and girls 5 through 8 is to begin at the John M. Marshall Elementary School Saturday at 9 a.m. Mark McKee, who oversees the six-week session, says that the kids can sign up at the site.

Mother’s Day Run

    A 5K run and scooter stroll around Fort Pond will be held in downtown Montauk Sunday at 8:30 a.m. The suggested $10 donations are to go to a family in need. Registration, at the Circle’s start-finish line, will be from 7:30.

Roller Hockey

    Three Sportime Arena roller hockey players, Khloe Goncalves, a goalie, and Robby and Brett Nicholson, forwards, won gold medals in tournaments held in Mount Pleasant, Pa., this past weekend. Goncalves won the top goalie award in her age division, and Robby Nicholson won the high-scorer award in his. The three played under the Rapid Fire banner.

Swim Across America

    A Swim Across America fund-raising party is to be held Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Breakwater Yacht Club in Sag Harbor.

Special Olympics

    Whitney Reidlinger reported that “the Springs-East Hampton Special Olympics team had another fantastic showing at the Suffolk County Games this year.”

    Among the Springs School competitors, Lily Islami won a silver medal in the 8-to-11-year-old softball throw, and Paula Retana and Robbie Matz won silver medals in the 8-to-11 50-meter dash.

    Bronze medal winners were Isaiah Brodie, in the 8-to-11 javelin throw, a new event this year; Lily Islami and Isaiah Brodie, in the 8-to-11 50-meter dash, and Paula Retana and Juliana Figueroa, in the 8-to-11 softball throw.

    Robbie Matz placed fourth in the 8-to-11 javelin throw.

    Reidlinger said, moreover, that two members of East Hampton High School’s team, Joseph Hodgens and Anthony Palacios, won gold and silver medals in the 16-to-21-year-old running long jump.

Rowers

    Andrew Hart Adler reported that the Sag Harbor Community Rowing Club’s entrants in last weekend’s Long Island Junior championships in Oyster Bay “earned medals for three boats and picked up plenty of racing experience in the process.”

    Most notably, four Pierson sixth graders, Catherine Spolarich, India Attias, Ava Kiss, and Fallon Attias, won the girls under-14 quad race, moving up from third with 250 meters to go, and winning by a quarter of a length.

    Bronze medals were won by Gavin Nelson and Elias Van Sickle in the boys varsity lightweight double competition, and by Carly Grossman, Gabrielle Ment, Isabelle Milligan, and Julia Talasko in the girls novice quad race.

    Kate Nelson placed fifth in the lightweight singles, and Alex Kamper, Alejo Majcherski, Nathan Alford, and Teague Costello took fifth in the boys novice quad race.

    Moreover, Kate Nelson and Emma Betuel, who “had a run-in with a buoy,” placed sixth in the girls varsity lightweight doubles, and Kamper and Majcherski placed eighth in the boys novice doubles.

   “We just didn’t make the plays and they did,” Lou Reale, East Hampton High’s softball coach, said Tuesday following Monday’s 2-1 loss at Rocky Point.

    The first time around, the Bonackers shut out the Eagles 2-0 as Casey Waleko, their pitcher, dominated. But this time Waleko was not quite as sharp, and she and her teammates could manage only two hits off her opposite number.

    Two errors, on a ground ball and the subsequent throw, led to the home team’s first run. Reale said “two good hits” resulted in the game-winner in the bottom of the sixth inning.

    East Hampton was hoping to snap its two-game losing streak yesterday at home against Shoreham-Wading River.

    When this writer said, “It’s not getting easier,” Reale replied, “It’s not getting any easier — it’s getting harder. That loss yesterday will affect our seeding in the playoffs. We’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing.”