The news sports-wise, as of earlier this week at any rate, is that East Hampton High School’s spring teams have not been hampered by the ordinarily hostile weather of early March.

    “The weather’s been incredible, but I don’t want to jinx it,” Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, said during a preseason conversation on March 7.

    Numbers-wise things look good, except for junior varsity softball, which couldn’t field the requisite 11 for a team. Jayvee girls lacrosse’s numbers are thin, though, with 15 or so players as of Monday, sufficient.

    The good news for the softball program is that 32 — more than twice last year’s number — have turned out at the middle school, where Robyn Mott and Kalie Peters are the coaches.

    Vas said varsity girls lacrosse, with Maggie Pizzo, the Seekamp sisters, Amanda and Carly, Melanie Mackin, and the Budd twins, Jenna and Lydia, among its stronger players, “has high hopes,” as does boys tennis, which is being coached this season by Michelle Kennedy, who oversaw girls tennis last fall.

    Lou Reale rolled his eyes when asked the other day at practice how the softball team would do. While his pitcher, Casey Waleko, and catcher, Kathryn Hess, are back, as is his third baseman, Deryn Hahn, and two outfielders, Courtney Dess and Dana Dragone, most of the players are young and thus face a steep learning curve.

    Reale’s assistant, Erin Abran, was more sanguine during a conversation at the Special Olympics bowling event at East Hampton Bowl Sunday. “They’re improving every day,” she said of the softballers, who are to scrimmage nine times at Disney World over the spring break next month.

    To raise some money for the Florida trip, Reale and Abran are to oversee two-hour softball clinics for third-through-eighth-grade girls, parents, and youth coaches at the high school field, beginning Sunday at 10:30 a.m. Clinics will also be held on April 1, and — after the team’s return from Orlando — on April 22. The cost for the three sessions will be $30.

    A brief look at the four pitchers Kevin Brophy was coaching the other day — Deilyn Guzman, Michael Abreu, Fausto Mateo, and Cameron Yusko — would seem to augur well insofar as the baseball team’s chances are concerned. Brophy had them pitching to spots, using fastballs, sliders, curves, and change-ups.

    Varsity boys lacrosse, like softball, is young, with a number of sophomores and freshmen on the roster. “Very inexperienced, Jack,” the team’s coach, Mike Vitulli, said in an aside during Friday’s practice on the grass field near the tennis courts.

    How the team will do “depends on how strong the other teams in their league are,” the jayvee coach, Steve Redlus, said at Sunday’s Special Olympics tournament.

    The biggest turnouts were in boys and girls track. “All told, we’ve got about 80,” the boys coach, Chris Reich, said Friday as boys and girls, led in stretching exercises by his assistant, Luis Morales, spread themselves out along the length of the curve leading from the back stretch to the final straight.

    Over the weekend, Shani Cuesta, who coaches the girls with Diane O’Donnell, and who was among those who helped Ashley West, presumably the first female national-meet competitor Bonac’s ever had, rehab two leg stress fractures in the past months, said the girls team hasn’t had such numbers since 1993, the year she graduated.

    While she didn’t place, West’s personal-best 60.54-second time in the national meet’s 400 at Manhattan’s Armory Friday drew praise from Reich, O’Donnell, and Cuesta, who said that the Susquehanna-bound senior hadn’t been used to starting from blocks, which the national meet required.

    Leading up to the nationals, West ran a “phenomenal” 600-meter leg in the state’s intersectional medley relay. When she passed the baton to the relay’s anchor, after having run her 600 split in 1:38.57, Suffolk’s team was in first place. “The Miller Place girl led the whole way in the final 1,600,” said Cuesta, “but got outkicked in the last lap.” As a result of Suffolk’s third-place finish, West achieved all-state status.

    When intense leg pain forced her to drop out of the county cross-country race at Sunken Meadow last fall, she was, West said during a conversation over the weekend, “limping badly, very disappointed, and crying.”

    Bill Herzog, a longtime and well-regarded track coach here, advised that if her condition didn’t improve noticeably she ought to forgo the winter track season.

    West, however, a hard worker by nature, was determined, and, with Randi Cherill, the school’s trainer, providing physical therapy, which included stationary bike and treadmill work, and with Cuesta’s go-slow coaching approach, she was eventually cleared by her doctor to compete a few weeks into the indoor season.

    “The first stress fracture happened in the summer,” said Cuesta, “and she got a stress fracture in her other leg during cross-country season. . . . The recovery time is actually faster if you break your leg . . . if the break is clean. She wasn’t 100 percent until midseason, but even then we didn’t want to push her.”

    It helped, said Cuesta, that “in the winter, because of the time constraints — they have four meets a day at Suffolk Community’s track — you can’t do more than two events. . . . She’s in fine shape now, but we’re going to stay on top of her.”

    West suffered — momentarily — from what she thought would be another disappointment following her recent third-place finish in the state qualifier’s 600. She’d run a 1:40.24, a tenth of a second off the state-qualifying time. But the fact that the runner-up had met the 1:38.74 standard opened the door for her to run in the state’s intersectional medley relay while Suffolk’s top two competed in the open 600.

    “It actually worked out very well for Ashley,” said Herzog. “That third-place finish in the relay made her all-state.”

    “It’s harder to make the states in the spring,” said West, who is expected to run the 800, the 400, and in either the 4x100 or 4x400 relays this season.

    “Though I do want to make the nationals [open to those who’ve met qualifying time standards] if I can.”

Thursday, March 22

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Riverhead, scrimmage, and Pierson at Miller Place, nonleague, 4 p.m.

Friday, March 23

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, William Floyd at East Hampton, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Hampton Bays, scrimmage, 4 p.m., and Pierson at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, 4:30.

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Center Moriches, 6 p.m.

Saturday, March 24

GIRLS LACROSSE, multi-team scrimmage, East Hampton High School, 9 a.m.

SOFTBALL, Pierson at Center Moriches, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Northport at Ross, noon.

Monday, March 26

BOYS TENNIS,

Half Hollow Hills East at Ross, 4 p.m., and Southampton at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Amityville, 4:30 p.m.

TRACK, Ross-Pierson boys and girls at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, 4 p.m.

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Westhampton, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 27

BOYS TRACK, Miller Place at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS TRACK, East Hampton at Miller Place, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, Bellport at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Stony Brook vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, Port Jefferson vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 28

BOYS LACROSSE, Rocky Point at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Rocky Point at East Hampton, and Pierson at Port Jefferson, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, Southold vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, Ross at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

   East Hampton High’s boys and girls track teams, each about 40 strong, began the season with a scrimmage here Friday with their Southampton peers.

    Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, saw to it, even though it was a scrimmage, that judges were provided.

    Ashley West, the girls team’s all-state runner, competed in four events — the 200, which she won, the 400, which she won, and in the 4-by-100 and 4-by-400 relays. East Hampton, with Jennie Di­Sunno, West, Merissa Gilbert, and Saoirse McKeon, won the 4x1 handily. The 4x4 was disqualified because of a baton pass out of the lane.

    Besides the 4x1, Gilbert, a promising freshman, did the long jump, the triple jump, and the 100-meter hurdles. Mc­Keon, besides anchoring the 4x1, won the shot-put, did the long jump, and won the 100. The discus throwers, Hannah Jacobs, Charlotte Wiltshire, and Vicky Nardo, were unopposed, though the girls head coach, Diane O’Donnell, said that Wiltshire’s 70-foot-6-inch throw was a personal best for her.

    Lena Vergnes, who is closing in on Kathy Piacentine’s 32-year-old racewalk record, could not compete that day because she hadn’t had enough practices. Piacentine, née Ryan, who was there to watch her niece, Shannon Ryan, debut in the walk, said, when asked, that she had won the county event in 1980, but had, along with two other Downstaters, been d.q.’d at the state meet. “I don’t know,” she said with a smile, “I think it was home cookin’. Three of the top five were d.q.’d. . . . I think if we hadn’t been disqualified, I would have been second.”

    Vergnes, whose mother, Sharon McCobb, was the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s 2011 athlete of the year, has done the 1,500 racewalk in 7:45. Piacentine’s mark is 7:34.

    As for the boys, Chris Reich, the head coach, said in an e-mail, “The highlights for us were Adam Cebulski’s 5:04 and Mike Hamilton’s 5:14 in the mile, Will Ellis’s performances in the high jump and long jump, Keaton Crozier’s performance in the triple jump, Alex Osborne’s in the 800, and Donte Donegal’s win in the 100.”

    “As the season goes on and the athletes really warm up and loosen up, they will only get faster and throw farther. The biggest surprise of the day came from J.C. Barrientos, a soccer player, who won the 400 in 57.7 seconds. He’s never run track before. For someone with such little experience he is a gifted athlete. Nick West, another soccer player, broke 60 seconds in the 400, but he had sore legs.”

    “A number of my athletes are soccer players and they play it every chance they can get, but, while I love their spirit and work ethic, they’ve got to rest and recover on the days before meets.”

    Reich too rates an athletic mention: He ran in New York City’s half-marathon over the weekend, finishing 671st out of the 15,300 competitors in a time of 1:28.34.

    When spring practice first began at the beginning of this month, Lou Reale’s response on being asked how East Hampton High School’s softball team looked was to roll his eyes.

    He’s not rolling them anymore.

    Asked during a well-attended hitting and fielding clinic for third-through-eighth graders and their coaches Sunday morning how the varsity’s recent scrimmages with Hampton Bays and Center Moriches went, the coach said, brightening, “We did great! We’ve got a lot of young kids, but they’ve improved more over the first two weeks than any other group I’ve ever had. I don’t want to jinx them, but they’ve been unbelievable. We practiced for 3 hours and 40 minutes yesterday and nobody complained.”

    Casey Waleko, an all-state pitcher as an eighth grader, who has recovered from the wrist problem that bothered her last season, and Sam Mathews shared the mound in the scrimmages, and each, said Reale, threw well. The team hit well too, he said.

    If they’ve paid any attention to his instruction, that’s no surprise, for Reale, as he demonstrated Sunday in what could justly be called an hourlong master class for coaches on the subject, went through a number of drills, using various hitting aids, some oddly formed — and some, like a notched bleacher seat to test balance, of his own invention — designed to produce the perfect softball swing.

    Number one, he told the coaches, the hitting T should be placed about a foot in front of home plate, in “the hitting zone,” not on the plate, as is commonly done. “Home plate is not in the hitting zone,” Reale said.

    The “door-knocking knuckles should be aligned” when holding the bat, and its knob should face the ball. The feet should be shoulder-width apart, the lower elbow in the slot, and the legs slightly bowed (“I would have had no problem with that before my knee-replacement operation!”). The back shoulder should not be raised, but ought to point down.

    In coming through, the hips rotate down to give power, and the hands should be up, with one on top of the other, and should stay inside the ball and above it. Your weight’s going forward. Bat speed is generated from the hips down. . . . The lighter the bat the better for building muscles and bat speed. The follow-through is high.

    “The baseball swing is different,” Reale said during a brief conversation afterward. “There’s a slight uppercut, but in softball you want your swing to be level with the ball and you want to keep it in the hitting zone as long as possible. If you swing with an uppercut in softball, you won’t be able to hit the riser, you’ll be in and out of the zone too quick.”

    After his detailed talk on hitting, Reale joined his assistant, Erin Abran, and the varsity players, in overseeing the younger clinic-takers’ fielding drills. Outfielders, he said, ought to put two fingers in the pinky hole in order to more easily close their gloves, while infielders should have a finger in each hole to spread their hands out more.

    Outfielders were told to keep their heads steady and to run quietly when chasing fly balls, and to bend down on a knee and spread themselves out, thus creating a larger target, when fielding grounders. When charging a ball, they were told to field it on the inside of their glove-side foot and to follow through toward their target, holding the ball across the seams.

    Snap turns of the neck, which were to be executed smartly, alternately looking left and right as they tracked a ball blown by the wind while running backward, proved to be a problem for most. But there are more Sunday morning clinics to come, the next on April 1, and then, following the varsity’s spring training trip to Disney World, on April 22.

    Getting back to the team, Reale said Ilsa Brzezinski, a sophomore who was the junior varsity’s catcher last year, is on first; Ceire Kenny, a sophomore who pinch-ran last season, is on second; Ali Harned, a freshman who pitched for the Montauk School last spring, is the shortstop; Deryn Hahn, a senior, is back at third, and Kathryn Hess, a senior all-state catcher, is behind the plate.

    Dana Dragone, a senior, is in left field, backed up by Shannen McCaffrey, a sophomore up from the jayvee; Eli Cassel, a sophomore, also up from the jayvee, is in right, and Courtney Dess, a senior, with McCaffrey and Lia Makrianes, a freshman, as backups, is in center. Cecelia Fioriello, a sophomore who caught for the jayvee last spring, is Hess’s backup.

    And Waleko and Mathews, as aforesaid, are the pitchers, though Waleko is expected to do most of it. “We’ll get Sam into the lineup though — she’s too good a hitter,” said Reale. “Either DH-ing or at first base. In fact, because we don’t have that many players, we’re going to try to give everybody a chance at playing different positions.”

    The East Hampton High School girls lacrosse team, judging by its scrimmage here with William Floyd on March 14, looks as if it may well become the first in Bonac’s 12-year-old program to make the playoffs.

    Matt Maloney’s team, which plays in a power-rated division, just missed them last year although finishing with a program-best 9-7 record.

    Shots found the nets and posts were hit in the first quarter of the March 14 scrimmage, with Amanda Seekamp, Maggie Pizzo, and Jenna Budd getting the better of one of the best goalies in the county, though in the second quarter, with the starting midfielders (Pizzo, Amanda Seekamp, Cassidy Walsh, and Bronte Marino) watching from the sidelines, things turned around very quickly.

    The second middie line of Gabriella Penati, a junior, Hailey Tracey, a freshman, Dana Cebulski, a freshman, and Mariah Dempsey, a senior, obviously needed some work. In an e-mail later in the week, Maloney said, “They’re all working into our system, learning a new defense and offense.” In a telephone conversation Sunday, following a scrimmage at Comsewogue the day before, he was even more sanguine.

    “Yes,” the coach said, when asked if he thought the Bonackers would make the playoffs. It’s Maloney’s fifth year of coaching here. He followed Maureen Rutkowski, who, in turn, followed Krista Brooks. Brooks oversaw East Hampton’s first team, a junior varsity, in 2001.

    As for the Comsewogue scrimmage, during which, he said, he saw a lot of improvement, Maloney said, “We had a lot of scoring punch, our decision-making was good, and our toughness too.”

    Four of his top five scorers from last year — Amanda Seekamp, Pizzo, both sophomores, and Carly Seekamp and Jenna Budd, both freshmen — are back, as is “the entire defense, including our goalie,” Allison Charde.

    Pizzo, an all-county player, led the 2011 team in scoring, with 41 points; Amanda Seekamp, who was all-league, tallied 38.

    Jenna Budd’s twin, Lydia, is probably lost for the season because of a hip tear that is to be operated on soon. On the other hand, Maloney is happy to have Melanie Mackin, a junior attackman who’d missed last season because of an injury, back on the pitch.

    He’s carrying 26 on the squad, and pretty much all of them played in the off-season.

    Aside from the above-named, the attack includes Nicole Frank, a senior, and Katie Brierley, a freshman.

    Charde, Nicole Miksinski, and Katla Thorsen, all seniors, are the team’s captains and bolster the defense. Charde and Miksinski were all-league last spring, and Miksinski was an academic all-American. Other defenders are Emma Gambino, Linsey Kromer, Megan Dombkowski, Maricela Rosas, Sarah Johnson, and Emma Gomes, all seniors, and Jessica Gutierrez, a junior. Charde’s backups are Cheyenne Mata, a senior, and Madison Aldrich, a freshman.

    The team was to have played a nonleaguer at Westhampton Beach Tuesday, and was to have scrimmaged at home with Riverhead yesterday. Its league opener is to be tomorrow evening at Center Moriches. “We should be sharp for that,” said Maloney.

    Meanwhile, the boys team was reported by its coach, Mike Vitulli, to have played well in a multiteam scrimmage Saturday with West Babylon, Middle Country, and Sachem East.

    “We had some defensive breakdowns in the scrimmage with Sachem East, but we’ll work on that this week,” he said.

    Among the returnees are the senior captains, James Budd, a defender, and Drew Griffiths, a midfielder; Desmond Tavera, a senior defender; Ryan Fitzgerald, a senior attackman; Sawyer Bushman, a senior middie; Pat McGuirk, a senior defender; Jaime Wolf, a junior midfielder; John Pizzo, a junior midfielder; Cort Heneveld, a sophomore middie, and Drew Harvey, a sophomore attackman from Pierson High School.

    When it was noted he’d said during a recent practice that the team was “very inexperienced,” Vitulli said, “We are . . . we’ve got one freshman [Jack Lesser, a defender from Pierson] and five sophomores [Harvey, Heneveld, Joe Gengerella, a defender from Pierson, Seamus McLaughlin, a midfielder, and R.J. Notel, a midfielder] up from the jayvee. Needless to say, all our seniors will be playing.”

    A “pleasant surprise,” said the former all-American Southampton College goalie, had been the play in the goal of Mikey Jara, a junior, who tended the jayvee’s nets last year, and of Sergio Betancur, a junior who had switched over from midfield.

    “I think we’ve got a chance to be competitive,” Vitulli said in signing off. “We’ve got a tough schedule, but if we continue to work hard I think we’ll surprise some people.”

    The boys were to have played a nonleaguer at Riverhead Tuesday, and are to play another nonleaguer at home with William Floyd tomorrow.

    Young swimmers on the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s Hurricanes team set four state records at the Y state meet at Erie Community College in Buffalo this past weekend.

    Georgie Bogetti, a 12-year-old seventh grader who is expected to move up to East Hampton High School’s girls team this fall, set three of them, two in the 11-to-12-year-old 200-yard freestyle — breaking her own record, set in Friday’s preliminaries, in the finals the next day — and in the girls 11-12 200 individual medley.

    And Skye Marigold, who swam the backstroke, Mikayla Mott, who swam the breaststroke, Carly Drew, who swam the butterfly, and Maddie Minetree, who swam the freestyle, set a state record in Saturday’s open 200-yard medley relay.

    Tom Cohill, the Hurricanes’ coach, who has been taking large contingents to the Y state meets since 2005 — this time he took 29 — said Tuesday morning that “this was, from a team standpoint, the best we’ve ever done — in terms of the way we competed and in the way we, the kids and the parents, supported one another. . . . Also, speaking of records, the weather up there was so warm!”

    No better example of the solidarity that had so impressed him could be found, Cohill said, than in the person of Teague Costello, a 15-year-old Ross School student, whose parents, Bill and Johari, had met his plane from China at a city airport Friday night, and who, when it was announced sometime later that their flight to Buffalo had been canceled because of fog there, rented a car and drove overnight to that far-flung city, arriving just before Saturday morning’s events began.

    “When he walked out onto the pool deck, at 6:40 a.m., his teammates, who were warming up in the pool, were so excited to see him,” said Cohill. “Everyone was. It was the greatest thing. Teague was fatigued of course — he was just happy to be there.”

    The 200 medley relay team’s winning time of 1 minute, 51.44 seconds bested the 1:52.79 that Flushing’s team had swum in 2001. Bogetti, who by two-hundredths of a second missed setting another state record, in the 11-12 girls 100 freestyle preliminaries — a record that was set in 1982 — bettered with her 2:16.38 in the 200 individual medley the 2:16.78 Flushing’s Jennifer Arana swam in that event in 2009.

    Bogetti, as aforesaid, set two records in the 200 free. Her winning time of 1:59.12 eclipsed the 2:01.18 that had stood for 30 years.

    “Our 11 and 12-year-old girls placed third among their peers, and our 9-10 boys were fourth, missing out on third place by 4 points,” said Cohill. “In addition to the state records we had a number of firsts and great performances all around.”

    East Hampton’s swimmers ranged in age from 8 (Caroline Brown and Jack Duryea) to 18 (Maddie Minetree, who celebrated her birthday on Saturday, Haley Ryan, and Mott).

    Cohill said it was the first time the Y’s team had had high school seniors participate in “the senior walk.”

    Marigold, who’s a junior, Mott, who’s a senior, Drew, who’s an eighth grader, and Minetree, who’s a senior, placed fourth in the open 200 freestyle relay. Thomas Brierley won the open 200-yard backstroke in 2:01.07. Chasen Dubs won three events for 9 and 10-year-olds — the 200 free, the 100 free, and the 50 fly.

    Marigold won the mixed open 200 free time trial in 1:58.24. Drew won the 13-14 girls 100 butterfly in 1:01.16. Jack Duryea won the boys 8-and-under 25-yard breaststroke in 20.74, and was second in the 100 individual medley in 1:31.52. Drew placed second in the 13-14 girls 50 free in 25.66. The record in that event is held by East Hampton’s Marina Preiss, who swam a 24.61 last year.

    Julia Brierley placed second in the 9-10 girls 100 individual medley in 1:16.02, and was second in the 50 back as well, in 34.67. The Hurricane 11-12 girls 200 freestyle relay team placed second in 1:51.81. Ryan Duryea was second in the 9-10 boys 50-yard breaststroke.

    Marigold was third in the 15-18 girls 50 freestyle in 24.61, and, in the 9-10 boys 200 individual medley relay, Ryan Bahel, Jack Duryea (who was moved up), Dubs, and Ryan Duryea were sixth in 2:30.21.

    Two meets remain, said Cohill — the Y Nationals in Greensboro, N.C., “the first week of April,” and the Suffolk Y meet at Sachem High School over the April 21-22 weekend.

Thursday, March 29

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

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Hauppauge, 5:30 p.m.

Friday, March 30

BOYS TENNIS, Westhampton at Ross and Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, East Hampton at Southampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River and Pierson at Smithtown Christian, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, McGann-Mercy at Pierson, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 31

GIRLS LACROSSE, multi-team scrimmage, East Hampton High School, 10 a.m.

SOFTBALL, East Hampton vs. Pierson-Bridgehampton, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, nonleague, 10 a.m.; fund-raising spaghetti dinner at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett, 5:30 p.m.

Sunday, April 1

SOFTBALL, second of three clinics for third-through-eighth graders and coaches, East Hampton High School, 10 a.m.

Monday, April 2

GIRLS TRACK, Sayville at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL, East Hampton at Sayville and Pierson at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Westhampton and Ross at Southampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, East Hampton at Bayport-Blue Point, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 3

GIRLS LACROSSE, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

SOFTBALL, Miller Place at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, Elwood-John Glenn at East Hampton and Greenport-Shelter Island vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, April 4

BOYS LACROSSE, Kings Park at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, Lindenhurst at East Hampton, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, William Floyd at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, Pierson at Stony Brook, 4:30 p.m.

   Where has all the smoked whiting gone? There was a time when it seemed smoked whiting was everywhere. Bars in Montauk put it out for snacks. Not putting out a smoked whiting appetizer at Christmastime was considered a grave social faux pas. In barter transactions, smoked whiting was stable currency.

    Michael Potts, captain of the Blue Fin IV charter boat, reported that during a productive day of fishing on Sunday — “no dogs, a beautiful day to start, then rough in the afternoon with a southwest wind” — 32 cod were caught along with two dozen sea bass. The sea bass were returned to the sea, as the season closed at the end of December. They shouldn’t even have been there if the winter had not been so mild.

    Potts said his customers, from upstate, reeled up between 80 and 90 ling cod that they intended to put in their smokers. They cut them like you prepare whiting, an angled cut behind the head that leaves you with a gutless, headless body ready for the brine.

    It was the eagerness with which his customers attacked the ling that caused the veteran charterman to wonder at how rare smoked whiting had become.

    A call to the Seafood Shop in Wainscott might have solved the mystery. Seems that regulations have become stricter for smoking houses.

    Ken Milman, director of quality control for Acme Smoked Fish Corporation of Brooklyn, said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration put out new regulations in April of last year. “It’s affected smoking. Lots more documentation, but it’s all to improve food safety. I don’t know why you don’t have it out there. We make it almost every day and send it all over the country.”

    Maybe it’s because the regs have shut down smaller commercial operations. Thankfully, the supply of whiting is fairly steady offshore. Perhaps it’s time to find a friendly draggerman and dust off the old, backyard smoker.

    Word has it that there seems to be a relative lack of enthusiasm among sportfishermen for the march on Washington, D.C., planned for Wednesday. The Long Island Commercial Fishing Association and the Viking Fleet of party boats (both based in Montauk) have sponsored a bus that will depart the Viking Fleet’s parking lot at 5 a.m. that day.

    Two years ago, the first Washington fishing rally drew thousands of fishermen from all over the country to complain about how the Magnuson-Stevens Act (the body of U.S. fishing laws) was being applied. Some positive changes resulted from the protest, but Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, said that the 10-year deadline imposed in 1996 to bring fish populations up to “sustainable” levels set by the National Marine Fisheries Service was unrealistic.

    “The fallout has been the economic strangulation of [fishing] communities without a shred of scientific evidence to support the 10-year timeline,” she said.

    Captain Potts said on Tuesday that the lack of enthusiasm from the sportfishing industry, compared to the 2010 rally, might be due to a slight loosening of restrictions on summer flounder (fluke) regulations, and “porgies have loosed up, too — the interest is about half.”

    “There’s not even a bus out of Freeport yet. We need bodies down there,” Captain Potts said.

   The Killer Bees of Bridgehampton had, according to Carl Johnson’s assistant, Joe Zucker, a pretty good chance to win Saturday’s state Class D Southeast regional playoff game against Livingston Manor.

    The Bees, who wound up losing 69-53, took a 2-point lead into the halftime break, and were confident, “but our lack of experience and failure to get back on defense a few times in the second half turned the tide,” said Zucker.

    Caanan Campbell, who Zucker thinks ought to make all-county, finished “a great career” with 21 points, Jason Hopson, a junior forward, had 12, as did Josh Lamison, one of two eighth graders — the other is the point guard, Tylik Furman — who started this season. “Our two eighth graders played really well,” said Zucker. “Josh had countless rebounds to go with his 12 points.”

    With “four good players coming back — Jason, Josh, Tylik, and, hopefully, Davion Cooper — we should compete again to go upstate next year. I think what hurt us this year was our lack of experience. Eleven of Livingston Manor’s 12 players were seniors.”

    In other recent postseason action, the Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School Whalers, who won Suffolk’s Class C championship — the first such a Pierson boys team has won since 1994, when the Whalers, then led by Tyler Ratcliffe, won the D title — were ousted 63-27 in the Long Island final by East Rockaway. Pierson went into the game without its sparkplug sophomore point guard, Ian Barrett, who was sidelined by an ankle injury.

    A Whaler partisan, when asked for a recounting, said, “We just didn’t have any life.”

    As is the case with Bridgehampton, most of Pierson’s players — all of whom play the year round — will be back next winter.   

   Mark Crandall, who’s hopeful that the Hoops 4 Hope program he’s overseen in Zimbabwe and South Africa for the past 18 years will continue to grow, is nevertheless mindful that, despite the organization’s fine reputation, fund-raising has been a continuous struggle, he said during a conversation at The Star before flying to Africa the other day.

    “We’ve got 2,000 pairs of sneakers at the Neighborhood House,” he said, “but, while everyone wants to give you sneakers, they don’t necessarily want to raise the money so that you can send them across the world. . . . In Zimbabwe we’re in over 100 schools, but we don’t have basketballs.”

    Well-wishing was well and good, he said, but Hoops 4 Hope, which uses basketball as a gateway to its life skills courses in such topics as H.I.V. prevention, gender equality, and leadership, courses aimed at redirecting at-risk youth, needs to become “sustainable. . . . We want to take our model and share it farther and wider, but we can’t undersell it anymore. We need $1 million to become sustainable, and in order to do that we need corporate sponsorships.”

    “We led a $100,000 grant from the German government that reached 1,000 kids and 120 coaches in Cape Town during the World Cup. It was about upscaling these amazing coaches and investing in them. It allowed us to go out from the city into rural areas. It allowed us to show our model and made it clear how much money we should be spending. Angela Merkel came down and checked it out and was pleased. But now that money is gone.”

    Crandall, while he still remains a volunteer C.E.O. after all these years, has hopes for the Internet. “We’ve dived into social media, the word’s definitely getting out, we are getting more exposure, but we’ve got to harness it. It’s amazing we’ve been able to do so much with so little.”

    There had, he said, been some especially good news recently, in the fact that Cape Town had agreed to turn over an indoor-outdoor recreation complex in the center of the city to Hoops 4 Hope’s management. The complex will serve as the organization’s center there.

    “There’s an all-purpose pitch, indoor and outdoor basketball courts . . . a weight room, a stage, offices. . . . The city has the facilities, but can’t afford any programs. We have programs, but, until now, no space. So it’s been a good partnership.”

    The Amagansettter added that “the family and friends of a guy from Brooklyn who visited our pilot program in Mozambique last year with his son, and who died in the fall, are raising money so that we can refurbish the outdoor court and name it after him, Steve’s Memorial Court. A recent party in the city raised $8,000 so we can do this and pay a coach too.”

    “We have a big presence in Cape Town, but we’ve been on austerity the last couple of years. This center, in the heart of where we’ve had our programs over the years, and which has an indoor gymnasium, will provide us a fun and safe place where we can deliver our curriculum.”

    The center would also serve as a home court for Hoops 4 Hope’s all-star club team, some of whose members, he said, have gone on to play for provincial and national teams.

    Hoops 4 Hope had also served, Crandall said, as a stepping stone for its all-star coaches, alumni leaders whom the organization had made “as employable as possible. . . . We are making an impact on these people’s lives.”

    Hoops 4 Hope’s Zimbabwean center, in Harare, has had Internet access for the past two months, he said; the one in Cape Town as of yet did not. “We’ve got an Internet clubhouse ready to go, but we need a corporate sponsor. Then we could tell their story and show their logo and prove our programs are working.”

    Speaking of Harare, “United States consulate people there are going to send one of our girls to the N.C.A.A. women’s finals in Denver, and two of our coaches are going to the men’s N.C.A.A. finals. . . . The N.B.A. has enabled us to benefit from the sale of tickets to the Broadway play celebrating the lives of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. I’m hoping that will help us get our word out in New York. That’s where we need to be. We’re trying to find office space in the city, in an incubator space or with a like-minded organization — a place where we could have an intern. It would have to be basically free. We can’t pay rent.”