Thursday, April 12

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Bellport, 10 a.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 10 a.m.

Friday, April 13

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Kings Park, 10:30 a.m.

Saturday, April 14

RUGBY, Montauk vs. Village Lions, Randalls Island, New York City, 1 p.m.

Monday, April 16

BOYS LACROSSE, Mattituck-Greenport-Southold at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Islip at East Hampton, nonleague, and William Floyd at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 17

GIRLS LACROSSE, Deer Park at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

TRACK, Ross-Pierson boys and girls at Port Jefferson, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, April 18

SOFTBALL, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Eastport-South Manor at Ross, and East Hampton at William Floyd, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Center Moriches, 7 p.m.

Trip of a Lifetime

    The East Hampton High School Coaches Association is to have a golf outing at the South Fork Country Club this Saturday, and at the dinner that night the winner of a “trip of a lifetime raffle,” whose tickets cost $20, will be announced.

    The possible destinations — the winner may choose one — include the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl, the Indy 500, the Kentucky Derby, the Major League Baseball all-star game, the National Hockey League all-star game, the Stanley Cup finals, the U.S. (tennis) Open, the U.S. (golf) Open, the Masters golf tournament, the N.C.A.A. Final Four, the B.C.S. championship bowl game, Disney World, Disneyland, Hawaii, St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, a Carnival cruise to the Caribbean, and a Carnival cruise to Alaska.

Preiss Qualifies

    Marina Preiss, an East Hampton High School sophomore who after the girls season ended in the fall began swimming as an unattached USA Swimming athlete, qualified for national competition in the 100-meter backstroke, the 100-meter freestyle, and in the 50-meter freestyle at USA Swimming’s Eastern Zone north regional meet in Buffalo over the March 22-25 weekend.

    According to a release, she is “the first East Hampton swimmer to qualify and swim at this level . . . USA Swimming’s junior national meet is one qualifying step lower than the Olympic trials, which are to be held in Nebraska this summer.”

Ross Awards

    At the Ross School’s recent winter athletic awards dinner, the following were cited: Hayden Aldredge, most valuable player in boys basketball, Emma Betuel, the m.v.p. in girls basketball, Joe Lin, m.v.p. in boys indoor track, Max Rowen, most-improved in boys basketball, and Ajiah Jones-King, m.v.p. in girls basketball. Riko Kawahara was the m.v.p. and Riri Kamata was most-improved in cheerleading.

    Coach’s awards went to Roosevelt Odidi in boys basketball, Isabel Milligan in girls basketball, Lily Steele in girls indoor track, John Chang in boys indoor track, and Suna Garcia in cheerleading.

    Moreover, Ironman/woman awards went to Liam Chaskey in boys basketball and to Jessica Kim in girls basketball. Geige Silver and April Sygman received elite stunter cheerleading awards, as well.

Ward­ Cited

    Hayden Ward, of Montauk, who helped lead Oswego State’s men’s basketball team to an undefeated season in the State University of New York Athletic Conference, the first time Oswego had finished at the top of the SUNYAC heap since 1965, was named recently to the Eastern College Athletic Conference’s Division III Upstate first team. The junior forward averaged 15.7 points and 9.1 rebounds per game this season, and had 13 double-doubles.

   The East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch league, which is down to five entries, has put out a call for a few more good teams. Whether they will materialize is questionable, but league officials are hoping, given the success each summer of the Travis Field memorial scholarship tournaments, that they may.

    “We’re down to five teams now. We had six last year,” said the league’s spokesman, Rich Schneider, who can remember the days when 14 teams played in two divisions at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett.

    The dropout from last year is the Independent, the league’s storied team under various banners in the past 20 years. Some of its players, such as Barry Mackin, Tim Brenneman, Ken Weldon, and Rob Nicoletti — the latter two especially — go back even further.

    Schenck Fuels broke the Independent’s string of playoff victories last August, though when Indy won the trophy in 2010, it was the team’s third straight championship and its fourth in the past five years. Moreover, that title was the 20th for Weldon, a 75-year-old pitcher, who, according to Nicoletti, went 6-0 last season and was ready to play again this year for the Independent had it fielded a team.

    Nicoletti, who recently turned 56, said, “Kenny and I have played together for 38 years. Before that, he coached me for three years in Babe Ruth baseball.”

    While in recent years the team was bolstered by the addition of its older players’ sons — Zach and Tyler Brenneman, Pierce and Peyton Kelley, and Charlie Collins among them — they have decamped, or are about to.

    When asked why he thought the enthusiasm for slow-pitch softball had waned in East Hampton, Schneider said, “There are probably many reasons. Probably the fee [at $1,600 the past two years] is part of the problem. The Parks Department still mows the outfield grass, but they don’t maintain the infield or the batter’s box. Matt Bennett, one of the umpires, does that. They used to give us all of our softballs, then they gave us half, and now none. The town’s cutting corners — it’s all part of the economic downturn here.”

    The need to make hay while the sun shines also may have led to a slackening of interest in playing three nights a week, he said. “A lot of these guys have to work long hours. They may not have the time, though we could be more accommodating with the schedule.”

    Then, too, people were growing older and moving away, and many of the young reportedly can’t afford to stay. Then baseball’s not necessarily the sport anymore, what with soccer and lacrosse grabbing the attention of the young.

    When a similar question was posed to Nicoletti, who also plays in Montauk’s seven-team league, which he described as competitive though more casual, he said, “People are just getting old; they’re not moving away.”

    Schneider, who can be contacted through the East Hampton Village Police Department, said the next meeting for managers, sponsors, and players is to be at the village’s Emergency Services Building on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

   In high school tennis matches here Monday, Half Hollow Hills East, the defending county champion, bageled Ross 7-0 and Southampton edged East Hampton 4-3.

Ross’s coach, Vinicius Carmo, who saw the rout coming, lamented the fact that his Ross Tennis Academy students were not allowed by Section XI to play in league matches. “With them,” said Carmo, “we would have won.”

   In a nonleague match played at Ross Saturday, Northport prevailed 4-3.

Michelle Kennedy, East Hampton’s coach, said that first doubles proved to be the deciding point in the match with Southampton. The Mariners’ team won it in a third set tiebreaker. East Hampton’s top three singles players lost, though the Bonackers had wins at fourth singles (by default), and at second (Nicky Neubert and Peter Davis) and third (Juan Agudelo and Max Snow) doubles.

Neubert-Davis won 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, and Agudelo and Snow won 7-6, 6-3.

   As Matt Maloney had predicted, the East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team was well tuned for its league opener at Center Moriches Friday.

    The Bonackers, who had prevailed, thanks to Amanda Seekamp’s last-minute goal, 13-12 in a nonleaguer at Westhampton Beach two days before, routed the Red Devils 14-2 behind Maggie Pizzo’s five-goal, two-assist performance. The all-county midfielder was joined in the scoring column by Amanda Seekamp, who had two goals and four assists, Carly Seekamp, who had two goals and two assists, and by Melanie Mackin (one and one), Cassidy Walsh (two and one), and Gabriella Penati (one and two). Allison Charde, the goalie, was credited with eight saves.

    “We only took 25 shots,” said Maloney, “and made good on more than half of them. . . . We started off strong, playing well in all phases of the game.”

    Admittedly, Center Moriches was “not that strong a team, they’re a new program,” Maloney said, adding that “from now on we’ll be facing tougher competition.” His charges were to have played Bellport earlier this week, and are to play at top-ranked Hauppauge this afternoon.

    As for the nonleaguer at Westhampton, Maloney said that Seekamp scored the game-winner following a penalty assessed the home team. “She went one on one with their goalie, and put a right-handed shot into the lower left corner.”

    East Hampton led 9-7 at the half, “but we didn’t play too much defense in the second half. . . . Allison made 13 saves, a couple of them coming at the end of the game after Amanda’s shot. Still, a win’s a win. Bronte Marino [a midfielder] had her first goal as a varsity player. She was on our team last year but didn’t score. She finished with two goals and one assist.”

    Carly Seekamp finished with five goals and one assist; Pizzo had three goals; Mackin had two and two, and Amanda Seekamp had one and four.

The Boys

    Turning to East Hampton’s boys, their coach, Mike Vitulli, said they played well in the first half of a nonleaguer here with William Floyd Friday. The Bonackers, thanks to goals by Drew Griffiths, Bryan Seekamp, and Drew Harvey, led 3-1 at the half, but stumbled in the second frame on the way to a 5-4 loss.

    “We failed to clear the ball in the second half,” Vitulli said. “We played a lot of defense that day and I think we got a little tired. It was 3-3 after three quarters. We took the lead on a man-up goal by Jaime Wolf. They tied it with five minutes to play, scoring on a fast break off a turnover, and they got the game-winner with about a minute left.”

    “We’ve got to take more shots and we’ve got to play better between the boxes,” the coach said in parting. “We’ve got to improve.”

    The league opener for the boys was to have been played here yesterday with Rocky Point.

   Lou Reale, East Hampton High’s softball coach, spent much of Saturday morning’s practice schooling his three new infielders in cutoff plays and the like.

    They still need some work, as evidenced by a couple of errors committed on infield flies in the league opener at Westhampton Beach Monday, though, by and large, Reale said during a conversation Tuesday morning that he was quite pleased with his team’s performance. “We hit the ball really well, Casey [Waleko] had 11 strikeouts, and Sam Mathews hit a 280-foot shot in the top of the fifth that would have landed in our tennis courts if the game had been played here. They’ve got a 10-foot-high fence at Westhampton, just like at Terry King, and it’s 275 feet from home plate. The ball cleared the fence and hit a pickup truck in the parking lot.”

    But the big star in the 8-3 win was Ellie Cassel, a sophomore up from the junior varsity, who bats fifth in the lineup. Cassel accounted for four of East Hampton’s runs with r.b.i. hits in the first, third, and seventh innings.

    Kathryn Hess, the hard-hitting senior catcher, also went 3-for-4 at the plate, with a run driven in and three scored, and Mathews went 2-for-4 with the aforementioned solo home run.

    East Hampton jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the top of the first. Dana Dragone led off with a single to right-center and stole second. Waleko’s fielder’s choice grounder advanced Dragone to hird, after which Deryn Hahn singled and moved on to second. Hess followed with a single that drove Dragone in, and, following a strikeout by Mathews, Cassel came through with a two-out, two-run double to left. Ilsa Brzezinski, the first baseman, struck out to end the inning.

    Waleko struck out the side in the bottom of the first. In the top of the third, Hess singled and stole second. She moved up to third on a single by Mathews and scored on a base hit by Cassel, her third r.b.i. of the game.

    The Bonackers made it 6-0 in the fourth. A slap single by Ceire Kenny, the second baseman, got it going. After Dragone had fouled out to third, Waleko tripled to drive in Kenny and subsequently scored on a passed ball.

    Mathews’s aforementioned bomb led off East Hampton’s fifth for 7-0.

    “We made a couple of errors on catchable fly balls in the bottom of the sixth,” Reale said. “The first batter Casey faced reached on an error by Casey. The second batter singled, putting runners at first and second. Casey then got a strikeout before walking the fourth hitter, which loaded the bases. The next one popped the ball up in the infield, a ball that either Casey, the first baseman, the second baseman, the third baseman, or the shortstop could have caught, but they let it drop. A run scored on that error, and then another scored when our shortstop, Ali Harned, and Deryn bumped into each other and fell down in going for another infield pop. That made it 7-2.”

    Answering a question concerning infield flies, Reale said, “Whoever is deeper on the play has priority.”

    East Hampton tacked on its eighth run in the top of the seventh. Hess singled and stole second and was doubled home by Cassel, her fourth r.b.i. of the day.

    Westhampton scored its third and final run in the bottom of the seventh as “Ellie turned the wrong way on a long fly ball.”

    Waleko struck out 11, as aforesaid, gave up 4 hits and 2 walks, and hit one batter.

    East Hampton was to have played Rocky Point at home yesterday and is to play a nonleaguer with Pierson-Bridgehampton at Sag Harbor’s Mash­ashimuet Park Saturday at 10 a.m. A fund-raising spaghetti dinner is to be held at 5:30 that day at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett.

    Reale and his assistant, Erin Abran, are to oversee a clinic for third through eighth graders and their coaches at the high school field on Sunday at 10 a.m. “In the last clinic we emphasized hitting, in this one we’ll work on fielding,” said the veteran coach.

    The team will leave for spring training in Orlando, Fla., next Thursday.

   The East Hampton High School baseball team made the playoffs last year — for the first time since 2007 — and, despite the removal of one of its key pitchers, Maykell Guzman, to the Dominican Republic, the senior-heavy team can be expected to make them again this spring.

    Ed Bahns, the head coach, and his assistant, Will Collins, are counting on their “core six,” all senior returnees, to lead the way.

    “I think we’ll be competitive,” Collins said during a conversation over the weekend. “We’ve lost Rocky Point, Miller Place, Westhampton, and Sayville from our league, but Bayport, Mount Sinai, and John Glenn, all good teams, have moved in. I would guess that Shoreham-Wading River, which went 16-2 last year and had a lot of kids back, would be the team to beat.”

    East Hampton’s pitching, said Collins, “ought to be pretty decent. We’re excited about Deilyn [Guzman, Maykell’s older brother] and A.J. [Bennett]. They’ve looked good in our scrimmages. And then there’s Michael Abreu [who was to start in the league opener at Amityville Monday] and Cameron [Yusko], who consistently throws strikes.”

    The lineup is pretty much as it was last year, with Ryan Joudeh, the catcher, leading off, followed by Brandon Brophy, the left fielder, Guzman, the shortstop when he’s not pitching, Yusko, the third baseman, Bennett, the first baseman, and Abreu, the center fielder or shortstop depending on who’s pitching. All are seniors.

    The seventh through ninth spots were, said Collins, “a bit up in the air. Brendan Hughes, a sophomore who’s up from the junior varsity and who is A.J.’s backup at first, probably will hit seventh, with Jimmy McMullan, a senior who seems to have the edge in the competition for second base, could bat eighth, and either Brady Yusko, a freshman who didn’t play last year, or Peter Vaziri, a junior up from the jayvee, will hit ninth.”

    Others on the squad are Pete Shilowich, a sophomore up from the jayvee, whose pitching in a recent scrimmage with Pierson at Mashashimuet Park impressed Bahns and Collins; Riley McMahon, a junior who because of a shoulder problem that hampers his throwing will probably be limited to pinch-running; Andrew Rodriguez, a junior utility man who can play second, short, and third, and three other seniors, Russ Young, Mike Messemer, an outfielder who has a hamstring injury, and Fausto Mateo.

    Last season, the team went 10-8 in league play (11-9 counting nonleaguers), and went 0-2 in the playoffs. “We’re counting on our seniors, who’ve had playoff experience, to provide us with the leadership we’ll need to get back to the playoffs again,” said Bahns, who added that “15 is a nice number to work with.”

    “We’ll play 20 league games this year against five opponents,” said Collins, “starting off with single games against each of them followed by three-game series. . . . To make the playoffs we’ll have to finish above .500.”

    Also of note, he said, is the fact that “the bats are different this year. They’re still aluminum, but they sound and hit like wood bats. Colleges used them last year, in response, I guess, to the injuries the livelier aluminum bats were causing. They’re the same weight, but I’m sure you’ll see far fewer home runs this year.”

    He had thought, for instance, that a fly ball Guzman had hit to left at Mashashimuet Park the day of the East Hampton-Pierson scrimmage there “was gone, but the ball held up and their left fielder [Colman Vila] was able to catch Riley McMahon with his throw home.”

    The Ross School’s boys tennis team, which has only one senior, Felipe Reis, its number-one, is set, nevertheless, to challenge Westhampton Beach for the league championship. Ross and Westhampton are to play their first match tomorrow.

    While the coach, Vinicius Carmo, expects the Cosmos to make the playoffs, he’s not sure how deep this year’s team, which includes two seventh graders who play singles and three freshmen, will go. Ross was the county runner-up to Half Hollow Hills East the past two years.

    Reis, a native of Brazil who, with Henry Lee, won the county championship last spring and then made it to the quarterfinal round of the state tourney, said that he thought the Cosmos would do well this season, though he, too, was not making any overly optimistic predictions.

    The Cosmos easily handled East Hampton in the private school’s bubble on Friday by a score of 6-1. It was the league opener for Ross, and the second league match for East Hampton, which had bested Eastport-South Manor 5-2 a few days before.

    Bonac’s sole win came at second singles as Dan Okin, a freshman, prevailed in three sets over his brother, Ben, a Ross junior who went to East Hampton last year.

    While it lost, East Hampton ought to be competitive. During a recent conversation, Michelle Kennedy, who coaches Bonac’s boys and girls, as well, said “we’re deep — we’ve got 10 kids, including three sophomores from Pierson, competing for third doubles.”

    At number-one East Hampton has in Marco Silimbergo, whom Carmo also coaches at times, a former highly-ranked junior from Florida who is, after a two-year hiatus, getting back into the swing of things.

    “We like him a lot,” Carmo said of the transfer student. “I want to help him get back into U.S.T.A. tournament shape.”

    A sophomore, Silimbergo grew up in Miami, later moving to Sarasota. When he gave up playing, “because of an unsettled family situation,” he said, he was among Florida’s top-ranked 12-and-under players. “I love tennis, though,” he said following his 6-2, 6-0 loss to Reis. “I know I have some work to do, but I’m positive I’ll get back to where I was.”

    Concerning his match against West Islip’s number-one in East Hampton’s recent season-opener, a match that East Hampton won 4-3, Silimbergo said, with equanimity, “I lost . . . it was close — a good match. I know why I lost. Sometimes I think I’m in my good days when the fact is I’m not yet and I get frustrated.”

    Dan Okin prevailed 4-6, 7-6, 6-2 in a tense battle on Friday with his older brother, Ben. At third singles, one of Ross’s seventh graders, Jonas Linnman-Feurring, defeated Collin Kavanaugh, a junior, 6-1, 6-2, and at fourth, his fellow seventh grader, Mikey Petersen, and longtime rival in tournament play, defeated Julian MacGurn, an eighth grader, 6-1, 7-5.

    In doubles, Ross’s first team of Jack Brinkley-Cook and Louis Caiola, both juniors, defeated East Hampton’s Dan Ruggiero, a senior, and Andrew Davis, a junior, 6-1, 6-1. At second doubles, the Cosmos’ Harrison Rowen, a freshman, and Pedro Zagury, a junior from Brazil, defeated Peter Davis, a junior, and Nicky Neubert, a freshman, 7-6, 6-1, and at third doubles Jordan Schwimmer and Will Greenberg, both Ross freshmen, defeated Alex Cohen, a sophomore, and Andrew Dixon 6-3, 6-4.

    East Hampton’s captains are Ruggiero, Kavanaugh, and Juan Agudelo.

    Section XI has ruled that the Ross Tennis Academy students — there are seven boys and one girl at the moment — cannot play in high school matches. They looked on Friday from the stone terrace that borders the first court, and one of them, Trippie Tuff, a freshman who played on Ross’s county finalist teams the past two years, said that he missed it.

    “Section XI said that we recruit, which isn’t true,” said Carmo. “I think the ruling’s very unfair. We’re a private school and kids come here because they like the school. Besides our tennis academy we have math and science academies too. I’m going back to Section XI, though not this season. I want to understand why they won’t let these kids play. I feel for them. They’re all watching over there, dying to play.”

    As for the tennis academy, which is in its first year, Carmo, who is among four pros who coach these students daily, said, “Next year I think we’ll have 14 . . . the word is getting around. People see our kids playing in tournaments and they’re impressed. I think this year a lot of people were waiting to see what would happen. Trippie’s the most improved — he’s doing very well in the 14s. And James [Ignatowich, an 11-year-old sixth grader] just won a U.S.T.A. sectional tournament and is going to play in the nationals.”

    A number of the above-mentioned played over the weekend in a U.S.T.A. Level 1B tournament at Ross overseen by Peggy Stankevich.

    In the boys 16s, Spilimbergo defeated Ben Okin 6-0, 2-6, 10-4 in the first round, and defeated Rowen 6-1, 6-3 in the second before losing to the top seed, Ross’s Fernando Fernandes — an academy player — 6-1, 6-1 in the semis. Tuff, who had wins over the second seed, Michael Lesser, Zagury, and Ignatowich (who was playing up) in the first three rounds, lost 6-4, 6-0 to Fernandes in the final.

    Linnman-Feurring and Petersen met in the boys 12s final, with the former prevailing 6-4, 6-2. Ben Snow, a Pierson seventh-grader, defeated Lucas Larese, an academy student, 6-1, 6-0 in the boys 14s final.

    Caiola made the final round of the boys 18s where he lost to Roger Young 7-6, 6-2.

    Allison Huber won the girls 16s, defeating Julia Zbarsky 6-0, 6-2 in the final. The girls 14s winner was Courtney Kowalsky, who defeated Brynn April 6-1, 6-1, and the girls 12s winner was Rory Gallaher, who defeated Ava Ignatowich 4-6, 7-5, 10-7.

Monday, April 9

BASEBALL, Amityville at East Hampton, noon.

Tuesday, April 10

GIRLS LACROSSE, Ward Melville at East Hampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Sayville, 10:30 a.m.

SOFTBALL, Pierson-Bridgehampton at Center Moriches, 10 a.m.

BASEBALL, Pierson-Bridgehampton at Port Jefferson, noon.

Wednesday, April 11

BASEBALL, Port Jefferson vs. Pierson-Bridgehampton, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, noon.

Thursday, April 12

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 10 a.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Bellport, 10 a.m.

   There was good news and bad for the East Hampton High School lacrosse teams last week.

    The boys, who as of earlier this week were 1-1 in division play, bounced back from a 15-8 loss here to Rocky Point by thumping Southampton 15-2 Friday, and the girls, after routing Bellport 18-5, were, in turn, polished off 15-4 by Hauppauge, dropping them to 2-1 in division play.

    Given East Hampton’s performance in the game here on March 27 with Bellport, the girls coach, Matt Maloney, thought “we would continue moving forward,” but his charges “didn’t have their best day at Hauppauge . . . and you have to be at your best when you’re up against a team of Hauppauge’s caliber.”

    Newsday rated Hauppauge as the top Class B school in its preseason issue Sunday. “Hauppauge is loaded this year and is indisputably the team to beat in Class B. It is led by All-Americans Stephanie Peragallo, the number-two defender in the nation, and Taylor Ranftle, the number-four attack. . . .”

    “We started off the way we wanted to at Hauppauge, causing three or four turnovers in the first 10 minutes,” Maloney said. “However, every time we caused a turnover we either gave it right back or did not capitalize on offense. You have to take advantage of the mistakes of a team like that, which we did not do.”

    Maggie Pizzo, who had scored seven goals in the Bellport game, found the nets three times at Hauppauge. Amanda Seekamp had the other goal, and she had one assist. Bronte Marino was credited with an assist also.

    As for the boys’ loss to Rocky Point — they were losing 10-3 at halftime — their coach, Mike Vitulli, said, “We played a good first quarter, but a bad second quarter. At halftime we made a couple of adjustments and played with more enthusiasm thereafter. We started to see some positive things. It was a good game for us, but we’ve got to play all 48 minutes to win. . . . We’ve got to cut down on our turnovers between the boxes and move the ball better, make that extra pass.”

    The scoring in the second half was even, at 5-5. Drew Griffiths finished with three goals for the Bonackers. James Budd, Cortland Heneveld, Bryan Seekamp, Drew Harvey, and Ryan Fitzgerald each scored one.