There were precious few bright spots during this fall’s football season, though the East Hampton High School Dance Company’s version of the can-can at the homecoming game certainly was one of them.

    Overseen by three coaches, Lea Bryant, Anita Finder, and Tracee Van Brunt, the high school company numbers about 30 and the middle school company, where Van Brunt and Andrea Hernandez are the instructors, more than 40.

    The dance gamut was pretty much covered by the three coaches, Van Brunt said during a conversation this week. “I’ve done a little bit of everything, Lea has a strong ballroom background, and Anita was a ballet dancer.”

    Van Brunt said she had danced competitively when growing up in Sayville, and presided over a dance company when she was a student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She wished, she said, that Sayville High had offered such a program when she was there. “Not that many high schools have dance clubs,” she said. “At East Hampton the kids don’t have to pay for studio dance lessons, which is a good thing.”

    The club was founded in 2002 by Haleigh Beyer, who asked for and received the then athletic director Chris Tracey’s okay. Forty-seven turned out that first year, testimony to the fact that the need was there.

    Mary Marrangoni, who was the club’s first coach, said at the time that “a lot of girls who otherwise wouldn’t be involved in a team had been looking for this.”

    But aside from the winter, during which the final touches are put to an ambitious end-of-March hour-and-a-half long recital, the company’s coaches are amenable to their charges playing on the school’s various teams as well.

    A recent attendee at one of the club’s practices, during which arduous Pilates exercises were mixed in with variegated dance forms, can attest that these girls are indeed athletes, an assessment with which Van Brunt, who teaches dance at the Dancehampton Studio on Lumber Lane here, and who is soon to oversee a dance company in New York City, heartily agreed.

    Among those who were at the aforementioned practice, Kelly Boles said she played field hockey, Dana Chittavong said she played soccer, volleyball, and ran track, Addie Herrlin said she rode horses, Jessica Alvarracin said she played soccer, and Aoife Forde said she was a runner. Kate Havlicek, Leidy Narvaez, and Laini Wright described themselves as full-time dancers.

    “This year, for the first time ever, we’re going to take the ones who’ve been with us the longest to a regional competition in May,” Van Brunt continued, adding that although the club is not now formally part of the school’s athletic program, “the athletic director [Joe Vas] is working to get us under its wing.”

    Before a recent merengue and barn dance performance during the school’s health fair, Wright, a senior in her third year with the club, who plans to do volunteer work in India next year, said she liked the coaches’ latitude when it came to the various dance genres — last April’s recital included ballet, jazz, swing, lyrical, pop, modern, African, Latin American, and hip-hop pieces — and their “passion.”

    Under Bryant, Finder, and Van Brunt’s tutelage, “I’m improving — absolutely,” Wright said, adding that “the older girls help the younger ones.”

    Havlicek, who has studied for a decade and who, with Rebecca King, choreographed two pieces performed in last spring’s recital, said that in addition to the thrice-a-week workouts at the high school, she took private classes two afternoons a week at Dancehampton and was eyeing performing arts schools. “We have girls who’ve never danced before and some who look as if they’ve danced their whole lives . . . everyone’s improved so much.”

    “We’ve been taking trips too,” said Van Brunt. “We went to see the Alvin Ailey troupe in the city last year and we went to the Broadway Dance Center studio where the kids took some classes with professionals. This winter, we’re going to bring the middle school group to the Broadway Dance Center.”

    The coming recital — “we’re having it at the end of March because we don’t want it to cut into spring sports” — would, she said, “give the spectators a taste of everything, but, on the other hand, we don’t want them running out the door!”

    The bet here is that they’ll stay and that they’ll be glad they did.

Thursday, January 19

BOWLING, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Mount Sinai, 4:30 p.m., and Southold at Pierson, 6:15.

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton at Zeitler relays, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 5 p.m.

Friday, January 20

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

BOYS BASKETBALL, Mount Sinai at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m., Smithtown Christian at Ross, 6:15, Pierson at Southold, 6:15, and Bridgehampton at Stony Brook, 7:30.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Ross at Smithtown Christian, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, January 21

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Mattituck invitational, 9 a.m.

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton girls at Art Mitchell meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 9 a.m.

Sunday, January 22

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton boys at coaches meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 10 a.m.

LITTLE LEAGUE, free clinics for registered Little League players, first and second graders, 2-3 p.m., third and fourth graders, 3-4, and fifth and sixth graders, 4-5, Sportime Arena, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Monday, January 23

BOWLING, Rocky Point vs. East Hampton, East Hampton Bowl, 3:30 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Ross at Southold, 6:15 p.m.

Tuesday, January 24

BOYS BASKETBALL, Southold at Ross, 6:15 p.m.

Wednesday, January 25

WRESTLING, Huntington at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

Tim Garneau, the East Hampton Little League organization’s president, has announced that boys and girls 7 through 12 can register this month online through eteamz.com/ehll or at free hourlong clinics that are being held for registered East Hampton Little League players at the Sportime arena in Amagansett on Sunday and Jan. 29.

    The registration fee is $80 for the first child and $50 each for siblings. The deadline is Jan. 31. A $10 late fee will be charged after that, said Garneau, who added that “children will be wait-listed for rosters if they register late. . . . A copy of birth certificate and utility bill as proof of residency are required.”

    On the days of the Sportime clinics, first and second-grade boys and girls will receive instruction from 2 to 3, followed by third and fourth graders from 3 to 4, and by fifth and sixth graders from 4 to 5.

    There will be a cleat-and-glove swap at the Jan. 29 clinics.

   While having been wrestled to the mat by its tough league opponents thus far this season, East Hampton High’s wrestling team can nevertheless point to some outstanding individual performances by Lucas Escobar, Sawyer Bushman, Mike Peralta, James Budd, and Jacob Hands, among others.

cAt an invitational dual meet contested by four schools at Comsewogue High Saturday, Escobar went 4-0 at 106 pounds, Budd went 3-1 at 170, and Bushman, at 126, Peralta, at 145, and Hand, at 220, each went 2-2. Moreover, Morgan Rojas, at 160, Kevin Heine, at 182, and Andrew Dixon, at 285, each had one win. As for Dixon, “it was the first win of his life!” said Steve Tseperkas, East Hampton’s coach.

    As a result of his sweep, Escobar was named the team’s most valuable wrestler for the day. He began with a 10-5 decision of Comsewogue’s Ryan Pisano, after which he shut out Brentwood’s Wilmer Cruz 14-0 and pinned counterparts from Northport and Island Trees.

    Earlier in the week, on Jan. 11, Escobar lost 6-4 here to his Kings Park opponent, Andrew Roden, a takedown near the end of the match proving to be the difference. There was no shame in losing to Roden, however — he is ranked second in the county.

    Kings Park, a strong team, won the match 72-3. Bonac’s sole winner was Budd, who decisioned Sean Bennett 5-1 at 170.

    The visitors’ 220-pounder, Steven Lee, who had won at that weight in the recent Half Hollow Hills East tournament, held on for a 6-5 win over Hands despite having been hobbled by an ankle injury sustained early on. A third-period escape spelled the difference.

    At 126, Bushman lost 7-1 to Tom Venier, who placed second in the league meet last year. It was 2-1 in Venier’s favor after the first period, and 5-1 after the second. Venier was awarded 2 more points for a reversal in the third. Last year’s third-place league finisher, Dominic Montemurro, pinned Colton Kalbacher midway through their match at 132. Peralta was kept out of the lineup that day because of a wrist injury.

    “Kings Park is stacked, so is Islip

. . .” Tseperkas said before Monday morning’s practice. “Kings Park, Islip, and Eastport-South Manor, which are all in our league, are among the county’s top 10. Eastport, the team we’re wrestling Friday [tomorrow], is fourth among the county’s tournament teams and the county’s 10th-ranked dual meet team. Islip beat Kings Park 37-30 the other day.”

    Getting back to Saturday’s tournament, Tseperkas said that while East Hampton had lost 48-21 to Northport, “we won six of the 12 matches we wrestled. We forfeited at three weights. Island Trees beat us 60-24, but we won five of the 12 matches we wrestled with Island Trees, and again forfeited three. . . . We were overmatched by Brentwood. It’s the sixth-ranked team in the county, and though Comsewogue, which is in our league, beat us 57-27, we were happy that we were able to put up 27 points against them. Over all, I was happy with the way we wrestled.”

    Harborfields was to have wrestled here yesterday. Tseperkas predicted some good match-ups. The team will be at Eastport-South Manor tomorrow, and on Saturday it will vie in a tournament at Mattituck High School. The county’s top-ranked dual meet and tournament team, Connetquot, will be there, said Tseperkas, in addition to Rocky Point, North Babylon, Miller Place, Southampton, Riverhead, Hampton Bays, Calhoun, East Hampton, “and a team from the city.”

    “We’ve got two weeks of matches left, and then the leagues, at Bellport,” said the coach, who demurred when asked how he thought his top grapplers would fare.

    “We got killed on the boards,” Bill McKee, who coaches East Hampton High School’s boys basketball team, said during Biddy hoop practice at the John M. Marshall Elementary School Saturday morning.

    McKee was referring to the previous night’s lopsided 70-49 loss at Amityville.

    Howard Wood, who coaches East Hampton’s girls team, said the same thing Monday morning after a two-hour practice session during which he emphasized the importance of “boxing out.”

    While the boys had pretty much been blown out, the girls were in Friday’s game here with their Amityville counterparts all the way, until a Hail Mary heaved by the visitors’ point guard at the buzzer swished through the nets for a 44-43 win.

    “Amityville was a much bigger team — the girls played their hearts out,” McKee, who saw the game, said during Saturday’s conversation. “They were behind for a lot of the game, but kept it close. I think they hit their last six foul shots to go up 43-41. . . . I felt so bad for them.”

    For his part, Wood said, “With 30 seconds left, Amityville’s girls were begging for a timeout. After it, we inbounded with seven seconds left, and they didn’t contest it. Kaelyn [Ward, the team’s star junior point guard] came off a screen to get the ball, but it was an errant pass. They intercepted and came down looking to get the ball into Price down low, but they couldn’t. The girl just heaved it from around the C. As I tracked it, I could tell it would go in. . . . It was like they’d won the championship.”

    “It was an unfortunate incident, but the most positive thing I took away from that game is that we didn’t lose our focus, even when we were down. We fought and fought and fought to the end. ”

    A few fewer turnovers and some more made foul shots and his charges could well have come out on top, said Bonac’s coach. “But our biggest problem is that under the basket we’re not down and dirty enough. We don’t box out, we don’t push back. We don’t get the over-the-back calls because we’re in too close to the basket, we’re not working hard enough.”

    “It’s not about height — Dennis Rodman is smaller than I am — it’s about desire. Rebounding is wanting to do it. The guy who put the best defensive move on me was one of my teammates [at the University of Tennessee], Ralph Parton. He was 5-6, 5-7. I was crashing the boards from the outside, and — I still remember this — he locked me up. I was a foot taller than he was, and yet in boxing me out he stopped me cold. It kinda hurt.”

    That was the way he wanted his charges to play, said the coach, who sees that kind of play when he watches men’s and women’s college games on television. “You got to score, but really the game is about the boards, the boards, the boards. Calipari said that it boils down to ‘doing what’s right when it’s hard to do what’s right.’ ”

    Wood added that “our perimeter players have been doing all right, it’s our inside girls who have to improve. Kaelyn, as I’ve said before, can’t do it all. She can’t be expected to shoot, rebound, and bring the ball up. She needs help. . . . I don’t have the book with me, but I think she got 17 points in that Amityville game.”

    “We’re 1-4 at the moment,” he said in parting, “and we’ve got to finish at 6-6 to make the playoffs. We’ve had a couple of bad games, but we’ll see.”Of course you’ve got to score points, East Hampton’s coach, Howard Wood, has said, but rebounding is key.

   Another year has passed. The Christmas bird counts are in the bag. It’s time to sit back and enjoy the cold weather.

   One of the last-of-the-year counts was on the last day of the year. It was the Orient Count, which includes most of the North Fork, Plum Island, Shelter Island, and a small part of the northern South Fork — Morton Wildlife Refuge in Noyac to Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton. There were about 10 of us covering the South Fork portion. It was a warm day with on-and-off sunshine, intermittent showers, and barely a wisp of a wind. Unlike on the Orient count day last year, there was not a speck of snow and none of the waters were frozen. In other words, if not a harbinger of the coming siege of global warming and rising sea levels, it was a perfect day for seeing birds and listening to their calls.

    I was blessed with being able to accompany two keen-eyed, keen-eared birders — John Gluth, who works in advertising in the city, and Vicki Bustamante, who lives in Montauk. Both of them had already participated in at least two other Long Island Christmas bird counts. Vicki took her birdsong player hoping that we would get some of the rarer ones to respond to the digital calls of their species. And one did.

    It was a ruby-crowned kinglet that John thought he had seen in the brush along the shore of Cedar Point County Park. Vicki played the ruby-crown song and call and the bird responded, coming out in the open so John could verify it. My ears are bad on high notes; I couldn’t hear the kinglet’s response, or the songs and call uttered by the soprano and alto utterers, but I could hear the songs from Vicki’s device if the device was held close to my ears.

    My eyes aren’t so hot either. Suffice to say, my role was mostly limited to four-wheeling the two around and writing down on a clipboard the birds seen and heard. We started around 7 a.m. at Cedar Point, finished at Barcelona at 4 p.m. In that time, we drove some 32 miles of roads and a couple of miles of beaches, including the Cedar Point spit.

    Was it a sign of global warming, or was it just an unusually spring-like day at the end of December? Two of the most common land birds observed were robins and bluebirds, of which we counted about 75 and 20. Shouldn’t most of them have been in the Deep South by now? Except for the yellow-rumped warbler, or myrtle warbler, which feeds on cedar berries and other winter fruit, the New World warblers, which are primarily insectivorous, should be in the tropics or subtropics at this time.

    How is it then, that Terry Sullivan and Al Daniels came up with an unmistakable black-and-white warbler in their territory, the Village of North Haven? If the sighting is accepted by the Audubon authorities, and it definitely should be, then it will go down in the annals of the 50-plus Orient counts as a “count bird,” one that has never appeared in any of the past counts.

    Another bird that should have flown (or glided?) south by now showed up at Orient Point. Mary Laura Lamont, the count coordinator, and her husband, Eric, were coming back from surveying Plum Island, where they observed, among other biota, a house wren and an aster in bloom, when they looked up and saw a turkey vulture sailing by. Steve Biasetti observed another rare bird, a sedge wren (one of two marsh wren species) at Orient Point.

    On our side of the Peconic Estuary we saw lots of different sparrows, including tree, field, song, and white-throated sparrows, juncos, and a large number of goldfinches flitting about. Off Northwest Road, the Peach Farm, which is depicted on an 1838 U.S. Coast Survey map as the only farm in that thickly forested Northwest area, is now a very low-density subdivision, with pastures and an old-time look. True to form, it turned up flocks of birds including eastern bluebirds, robins, and many more.

    The waters were so calm that one could almost see the rafts of ducks sitting just off the shore of the North Fork from our South Fork vantage points. But there weren’t that many ducks to be seen. There were almost as many horned grebes as other waterfowl species. A few common loons gave their eerie calls, and the long-tailed ducks, or old-squaw, were very noisy. At other times it was so quiet that that the monotonic tremolos produced by the rapidly beating wings of the goldeneye ducks, or “whistlers,” scooting low over the water could be heard from more than a mile away.

    With his powerful scope, John picked out a single razorback, one of the auks, far out on Gardiner’s Bay. A red-necked grebe showed up in North Fork waters along with a couple of harlequin ducks. Vicki Bustamante e-mailed me that another auk, a dovekie, was seen resting on the rocks 25 feet off Montauk Point on Monday.

    One of the last birds to show up over Larkin’s Pond just before John had to leave, as he was going on a fourth count the following morning in Nassau County, was the fish crow. It flew over the pond from southwest to northeast repeating over and over that distinctive nasal caw which sounds like a crow with a head cold. This southern species has made an impressive beachhead around Sag Harbor and other parts of the East End. John says about 300 were tallied in the Captree count that covers part of Fire Island and the mainland area to the north.

    Mary Laura has not yet received all of the results but she said from the looks of things that the final count will number well over 115 species. That’s a good number for Long Island; however, California and Central American Christmas counts generally run over 200 species. After 50 years of climate change, we may be pushing such a large quantity here.

Thursday, January 5

BOYS SWIMMING, East Hampton at Lindenhurst, nonleague, 4 p.m.

BOWLING, East Hampton at Southold, 4 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Bayport-Blue Point, and Pierson at Smithtown Christian, 4:30 p.m.

WINTER TRACK, East Hampton at crossover meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 5 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m.

Friday, January 6

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Ross at Shelter Island, 4 p.m., and Smithtown Christian at Pierson, 6:15.

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Islip, 6:30 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Ross at Shelter Island, 5:45 p.m., and Bridgehampton at Greenport, 6:45.

Sunday, January 8

WINTER TRACK,  East Hampton boys at freshman-sophomore meet, 9 a.m., and East Hampton girls at Jim Howard meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 2:30 p.m.

Monday, January 9

BOYS BASKETBALL, Ross at Pierson, 6:15 p.m.

Tuesday, January 10

BOWLING, Eastport-South Manor vs. East Hampton, East Hampton Bowl, 3:30 p.m.

BOYS SWIMMING, Harborfields vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Southold at Bridgehampton, 6 p.m., and Shoreham-Wading River at East Hampton, 6:15.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Pierson at Ross, 6:15 p.m.

Wednesday, January 11

BOWLING, East Hampton at tournament, Sayville Bowl, 2 p.m.

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

Thursday, January 12

BOYS SWIMMING, North Babylon vs. East Hampton-Pierson-Bridgehampton, Y.M.C.A East Hampton RECenter, 4:30 p.m.

BOWLING, East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 3:30 p.m.

Friday, January 13

TENNIS, East Hampton Indoor-Outdoor Club party, Palm restaurant, 6 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Amityville at East Hampton, 6:15 p.m., and Ross at Stony Brook, 7.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Bridgehampton at Shelter Island, 5:45 p.m., Stony Brook at Ross, 6:15, and Pierson at Greenport, 6:45.

Saturday, January 14

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

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Comsewogue dual tournament, 9 a.m.

Tuesday, January 17

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

BOYS BASKETBALL, Ross at Bridgehampton, 6 p.m., Westhampton Beach at East Hampton, 6:15, and Stony Brook at Pierson, 6:15.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Pierson at Stony Brook, 4:30 p.m., East Hampton at Westhampton Beach, 5:45, and Port Jefferson at Ross, 6:15.

Wednesday, January 18

WRESTLING, Harborfields at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS SWIMMING, Deer Park vs. East Hampton, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 4:30 p.m.

    Tomorrow, Tom Cohill, the aquatics director of the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, is to take 16 members of the Y’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, to a meet at the University of Maryland that is expected to attract Y teams from Massachusetts to South Carolina.

    Because it is an Olympic year, with Olympic trial hopefuls among the older teenagers, the Winterfest invitational, as it is known, will be, said Cohill, and one of his assistants, Craig Brierley, “a fast meet.”

    So, while the Hurricanes will be one of the smaller groups there, Cohill isn’t expecting a high team placement, “but I’m expecting that our individual performers will be as good as anybody’s, across the board. I wouldn’t be taking them down there if I didn’t think so. They all have fast qualifying times.”

    Ten of the 16 — Alex Astilean, Georgie Bogetti, Thomas Brierley, Teague Costello, Carly Drew, Skye Marigold, Maddie Minetree, Mikayla Mott, Amanda Calabrese, and Lilah Minetree — have been training intensely since November, swimming at the Y before (from 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. two days a week) and after school, as well as training three hours a week under the watchful eye of Alex Astilean Sr. at his Speedfit studio on Newtown Lane.

    Astilean believes his system of short, intense bursts of training, on treadmills (running on the balls of the feet) and with Thera-Bands and medicine balls, prove more effective as far as physical well-being goes than longer workouts in gyms and running on paved roads. A speed/time chart with a ladder of color-coded equivalences for which he’s seeking a patent enables trainees to attain higher levels of fitness incrementally.

    A trainee used to jogging along at a 10-minute-per-mile pace, for example, would readily see, using Astilean’s chart, that he or she would be able to run at a more demanding 7:30 pace by cutting the treadmill time from four to two minutes.

    Cohill and a number of his charges with whom this writer spoke after a meeting with the parents Monday evening at the Y agreed that mixing Astilean’s explosive hourlong training sessions in with the early morning and afternoon swim workouts had proved to be effective.

    “They love it,” Cohill said of his charges’ reaction to the Speedfit workouts. “We work on building a strong endurance base and on improving technique here, and the explosive bursts they go through at Speedfit make them not only stronger, but quicker and more agile. . . . I think it’s great to have so many 12-to-18-year-olds from East Hampton doing this kind of work. I’m really proud of them.”

    The Hurricane lineup comprises Maddie Minetree and Mott, who are 17 years old; Marigold, who’s 16; Thomas Brierley and Costello, each 15; Calabrese, 14; Astilean and Drew, each 13; Bogetti, Christian Brierley, Cecilia de Havenon, and Marikate Ryan, each 12; Noelle Capone, 11; Chasen Dubs and Ryan Duryea, 10, and Julia Brierley, 9.

What strikes one in reviewing 2011’s sporting news here is that a large number of athletes, including East Hampton High’s best-ever golf team, the I-Tri girls of Springs, who until they’d begun triathlon training had not thought of themselves as athletes, much less triathletes, Laurel Wassner, who in June became the first woman ever to win the Montauk Triathlon, Luis Mancilla, a 19-year-old criminal justice student who fought in a Golden Gloves final in April, Kristyn Dunleavy, an East Hampton Town lifeguard who, with her Amherst teammates, won that school’s first national championship in women’s basketball, and Albert Woods, who became, at 82, an all-American, the result of multiple wins in the national long course swimming championships, exceeded their expectations:

    • “It shows what people can do when they put their minds to it,” Dunleavy said when asked about Amherst’s first-ever Division III win.

    • “He had the respect of his players — he got the most out of every one of them,” said Tom Bubka, a longtime assistant of Ed Petrie’s, at the ceremony last January in which East Hampton High School’s basketball court was named for the state’s winningest public high school coach, who had retired a couple of months before at the age of 78.

    • “I’ve never won a triathlon outright — not even a road race . . . I wasn’t expecting it. . . . I didn’t know I had it in me!” said the 35-year-old Laurel Wassner after becoming the first woman ever to win a triathlon here.

    • “Theresa Roden has changed the lives of these young women forever,” said Sinead FitzGibbon at the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s recent awards dinner. “It goes beyond boosting self-esteem — their bodies and minds have been transformed, their futures have been transformed.”

    • A sprinter in his youth, Woods said that when he reacquainted himself with the sport at the age of 70 he “didn’t have the wind for the 200 freestyle. But I wanted to do more events, so I decided to try the breaststroke. I had no idea I’d wind up being so good at it.”

    • “It was really like going into the lion’s den,” said the golf team’s coach, Claude Beudert, following its comeback win over perennial-champion Farmingdale at the Bethpage course. “That ride home with the Long Island trophy was so great. Everyone was euphoric. The feel of the trophy was mystical. . . .”

    The sporting gamut of the past 12 months was a broad one, with stories on adventure racing, rowing, sailing, equestrian show jumping, sports car racing, personal training, Pan-American karate and regional men’s physique competitions, synchro swimming, long-distance cycling, outrigger canoeing, and professional snowboarding appearing alongside accounts of East Hampton’s scholastic teams and adult entries in rugby, men’s soccer, and men’s and women’s slow-pitch softball.

    A national qualifier synchronized swimming meet was held at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, a “first,” as was the boys soccer team’s county championship, Zach Grossman’s county individual championship in golf, the freshman Dana Cebulski’s participation in the state’s girls cross-country meet, and an appearance by the girls soccer team in the county playoffs.

    Though not for the first time — she first went as an eighth grader — Marina Preiss, now a sophomore, swam in the 50 and 100 freestyle races at the state meet, recording personal records in both.

    In another high school-related matter, thanks largely to volunteer work in 2010 by Patrick Bistrian III, Whitmore’s Landscaping, and Lillie Irrigation, the baseball field, theretofore known for its short porch in left and left-center field, was regraded, resodded, and realigned, becoming as a result perhaps the best ball field in Suffolk County. Bonac’s “field of dreams” was dedicated in May, and it is said the team could realize its dreams of going all the way in the playoffs this coming spring.

    Moreover, the year marked the first time since 2006 that the Montauk Rugby Club, buoyed by the arrival of young tyros who had excelled in other sports, football, lacrosse, wrestling, and baseball among them, had made the Sweet 16 round of the national Division II tournament, which is to be contested in Virginia this spring; it was the first time in 12 years that a Schenck Fuels team had won a town men’s slow-pitch softball league championship, unleashing a torrent of home runs in the final games with Stephen Hand’s Equipment followed by a torrent of sprayed champagne, and it was the first time that John Howard, a former Hawaii Ironman winner and nationally known endurance athlete, had been at the Mighty Man Triathlon in Sag Harbor since it debuted under Ray Charron and Ambrose Salmini’s direction in 1980.

    Had the 64-year-old Californian not gone off course in the bicycle leg, costing him an estimated minute and a half, he would have had the fastest bike split of the day.

    It was the first year, as well, in which the Katy’s Courage 5K, in memory of Jim and Brigid Collins Stewart’s late 12-year-old daughter, was held, and the turnout of 1,600 participants, who contributed toward a scholarship fund in Katy Stewart’s name, blew the doors off the number (around 200) normally expected at a first-year road race here.

    Whether it came to communal, team, or individual efforts, the 51-year-old karate champion Joe Vetrano’s words seemed to echo through the sporting year just past: “You’re always trying to do better. It’s a lifelong process. There’s always room for improvement, no matter what we do.”