Exceeding their coach’s and their own expectations, just about everyone on East Hampton High School’s boys swimming team set the bar high insofar as personal performances went in the league opening meet here with Huntington Friday.

    Jeff Thompson, the head coach, was over the moon following the impressive 92-75 win, and spent a good amount of time in the post-meet huddle at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s pool contrasting the “ifs” (the swimmers’ time estimates going into the contest) with what they had, in fact, done. Almost to a man, their meet times were quicker than they’d expected — in some cases far quicker — the adrenaline rush presumably having kicked their efforts up a notch or two.

    Craig Brierley, who is Thompson’s assistant, and whose son Thomas is one of the team’s versatile stars, said afterward that all three relays (the 200 medley, the 200 freestyle, and the 400 freestyle) had turned in county meet-qualifying times, as had Trevor Mott in the 200 and 500 free, Thomas Brierley in the 100 free and 100 backstroke, and Dan Hartner in the 50 free.

    Thompson said his charges — there are two dozen on the team this season, almost twice as many as last year — had surprised him with “their times and their discipline, the way they came out. I was expecting a lot of mistakes, this being their first competition, but they came out as a seasoned team.”

    The biggest surprise, he said, had been “the young guys — they did way above what I had expected.”

    The squad comprises five seniors, four juniors, six sophomores, eight freshmen, and two eighth graders. Fourteen are from East Hampton, eight are from Pierson, and two are from Bridgehampton.

    Huntington, he said, had “a couple of really good swimmers,” but East Hampton’s newfound depth won the day. “For the first time,” said Thompson, who’s in his third year, “we filled all the lanes in every event. We’ve never been able to do that before.”

    As a reward for their heroics, the swimmers were to have devoted half of their 5:30 to 7:30 a.m. practice the next day to water polo.

    East Hampton’s winners Friday were Mott in the 200-yard freestyle, in 1:56.27, and in the 500 free, in 5:12.06; the 200 free relay of Hartner, Brierley, Peter Skerys, and Mott, in 1:41.02, and the 400 free relay of Mott, Adam Heller, Skerys, and Brierley, in 3:45.56.

    East Hampton’s depth showed in the seconds and thirds it picked up. Among the runners-up that day were Hartner, Christopher Kalbacher, Heller, and Paul Dorego in the 200 medley relay; Thomas Pardicio in the 200 individual medley; Andrew Winthrop in the 200 free; Hartner in the 50 free; Kalbacher in the 100 butterfly; Brierley in the 100 free and 100 back; Winthrop in the 500 free, and Rob Rewinski, Dorego, Kalbacher, and Winthrop in the 200 free relay.

    Third-place finishers included Rob Anderson, Baxter Parcher, Sergio Betancur, and Rewinski in the 200 medley relay; Heller in the 200 individual medley; Skerys in the 50 free; Rewinski in the 100 free; Hartner in the 100 back, and Winthrop, Jeremy Pepper, Anderson, and Pardicio in the 400 freestyle relay.

    Last season, said Thompson, East Hampton invariably did better in the first half of meets than in the second half. This season, the team, because of its depth, should be strong all the way through.

    “We’re well on track to take six individuals and all three relays to the sectional meet,” the coach told his swimmers. He added, “I’ve coached championship teams in the past, and it felt like a championship team today, though we’re not there yet.”

    Two “hell weeks” of practice were looming, however, so that the team would be firing on all cylinders at Lindenhurst on Jan. 5.

    Lindenhurst has divers, which means East Hampton, which doesn’t compete in the event, will have to forfeit a number of points, but the good news, said Thompson, was that while diving was going on his charges would be able to take a breather.

    Even with the uncontested diving, he said he thought the Bonackers could win the Lindenhurst meet.

    Further on the subject of exceeding expectations, Thompson said that “they’ve been pushing themselves in practice — they’ve been doing quality yards. Today was a byproduct of what they’ve been doing in practice.”

    He glanced down at his iPhone, and then said, in parting, with a smile, “We’ve swum 853 football fields so far.”

    A seasoned triathlete, mountain-biker, marathoner, and long-distance swimmer, Emi Berger, a vivacious 34-year-old veterinarian, said during a recent conversation at The Star that she didn’t think one could train for the 4,000-mile bicycle trip that she and Kevin Harrington had recently made across the United States.

    “We’ve each been doing these endurance races for years . . . he’s done Ironman, I’ve done a half-Ironman and four marathons. . . . We had this idea of biking across the country to raise money for causes we supported about a year ago. Kevin wanted to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project; I wanted to raise money for Mentor Connect, a nonprofit organization that helps people overcome eating disorders. But it wasn’t until this past summer that Kevin — he runs a plumbing and heating business in Southampton and had never taken a vacation like this in 30 years — said he was definitely going to do it. I said I’d do it, too, but I’d have to quit my job [as a veterinary hospital associate in Westchester County]. I was living in the city and my lease was up. It seemed like the ideal time.”

    Her parents, Phyllis and Bernard, a semiretired dermatologist and an avid triathlete himself, who live in East Hampton, were “very worried” when the news was vouchsafed, “but not surprised. I’m a type A person; I’m always worried about working and having a job and getting money. It was a big step for me to stop working, but I figured I’d never have this opportunity again. My mother was more worried about what might happen along the way, but I’ve always traveled a lot — I went to college in Chicago, to vet school in London. . . .”

    “It was a bit like going into the unknown,” she acknowledged in reply to a question. “I didn’t want to injure myself. I’ve had two orthopedic surgeries, on my right knee and right hip, because of running. I didn’t want to get hurt again. That was one of the most important things, apart from finishing and raising money.”

    “We began at Montauk — we dipped our back wheels in the Atlantic at Montauk Point on Sept. 23. Our goal was to dip our front wheels in the Pacific in San Diego. . . . The trip took 54 days — we rode for 53 of them, rain or shine, taking one day off, in Austin, Tex. The night before each day’s ride we’d plan our route — the Adventure Cycling organization puts out bike-specific maps for the U.S. We looked at those, and took those routes, for the most part, on country roads. We weren’t on the freeways. We angled down to what they call the southern tier [Jacksonville-San Diego] route through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and then Texas. There’s a saying in Texas, something like, ‘Happiness is seeing El Paso in the rearview mirror.’ It took us 14 days to get through Texas. The roads were horrible, really bumpy, but Austin was fun.”

    “Then we went into New Mexico, Arizona, and California. We got to San Diego on Nov. 15. We were in Arizona on Veterans Day. We rode 111.1 miles that day.”

    They had averaged 75 miles a day, said Berger, who “was sore in places I didn’t know I could be sore in.”

    “We did a lot of long-distance rides in the last week and a half — we were so excited to get there.”

    She’d not been to Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona, or New Mexico before, she said in answer to a question. “There were mountain passes in the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains that were spectacular, but the most spectacular was the one we rode through between New Mexico and Arizona. When we started our descent, it was almost like riding down a canyon. It was beautiful; the rocks were very stark, reddish brown. It was all hairpin turns. . . .”

    As for the weather, “We probably had rain every other day — there was a lot of rain the first 10 days. It was 96 degrees in Austin, but after that it was unseasonably cold — freezing. It was 38 when we woke up in New Mexico and Arizona. Then it would warm up to 50 or 60. But Jim Arnold, a friend of ours who drove with us in Kevin’s RV the whole way, was great. He had brought clothing and he bought us clothing. He can cook too! I’ve never eaten so much in my life! But you needed to. . . . I weighed 125 when I began, and when I finished, though I probably put on a few pounds of muscle in my legs.”

    And the people? “For the most part, they were great. Most of them gave us a lot of room, but not everyone wished us well. Some told us to get off the road. I had a drink thrown at me — it was like they got points if they hit me, I guess. But you learn that the most important thing is not to react. I wanted to scream and defend myself, but if I did I might have fallen. It wasn’t worth it.”

    She had “only one flat tire the whole way. Kevin had three. That was it, by and large. We slept in the RV, and we’d be up and out every morning at 7. People would see the ‘Wounded Warrior’ sign on the side of the RV and they’d approach us as we were riding along. A man and a woman pulled up and opened up their wallets as we were cycling. Kevin collected over $1,000 for Wounded Warrior just on the ride.” He collected $50,000 in all. She raised $11,000 for Mentor Connect.

    “Veterans would come up and would give us $20. One gave us everything he had, which was $3. It was very nice to see that. It restores your faith in humanity.”

    While the Wounded Warrior Project was now well known, Mentor Connect’s work was not, said Berger, who, through her ride, was trying to familiarize people with the fact that “up to 4 percent of Americans — mostly women — have an eating disorder of some kind. It’s the number-one psychiatric illness, yet most health insurance companies don’t cover it, which is where Mentor Connect comes in.”

    “There’s a stigma attached as to how women should look,” she continued. “We’ve all gone through a period of time when we were concerned about how we looked. Eating disorders are very prevalent among teens. People can manipulate food just as they use alcohol or drugs. I want people to be healthy. You say you remember when Wounded Warrior was just starting out, when Chris Carney made that ride across the country. Raising awareness is everything.”

    Asked what would be next for her, Berger, who for the past two years has volunteered at the Iditarod in Alaska — “talk about an athlete, those sled dogs are the most impressive athletes I’ve ever worked with!” — said, with a laugh, “I don’t know what’s going to be my next athletic thing. I don’t even know where I’m going to be for the next year. I do miss being with the animals. I have to get a job and find a place to live. I want to do a marathon in the next year . . . maybe the Marine Corps one in D.C. . . .”

    And her parents? Were their worries finally allayed?

    “They went from being anxious and a little pessimistic to being overjoyed and so proud,” Berger said with a bright smile. “They did a 180. . . . Not many do this, you know, and by starting where we did we added 1,000 miles to what most do. Usually, people ride from San Diego to Jacksonville, taking advantage of the tailwind. We rode against the wind — that was indisputable.”

    “Every few days I’d say to myself, as a motivator, someday I can tell my children or my grandchildren that when I was 34 I biked across America, and I only had one flat.”

Sunday, January 1

POLAR BEAR PLUNGES, Gurney’s Inn, Montauk, 11 a.m.; Main Beach, East Hampton, 1 p.m., registration 10:30-12:30, and Beach Lane, Wainscott, 2:30 p.m.

Tuesday, January 3

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Pierson-Bridgehampton at Shelter Island, 5:45 p.m., and Stony Brook at East Hampton, nonleague, 6:15.

BOYS BASKETBALL, Shelter Island at Pierson, 6:15 p.m.

Wednesday, January 4

BOYS BASKETBALL, Smithtown Christian at Bridgehampton, 6 p.m.

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

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

Thursday, January 5

BOYS SWIMMING, East Hampton at Lindenhurst, 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.

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

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

On New Year’s Day, there will be three polar bear plunges, beginning with one at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk at 11 a.m., followed by one at East Hampton’s Main Beach at 1, and at Beach Lane, Wainscott, at 2:30, giving the most intrepid of Sunday’s plungers a fighting chance to do all three.

    The turnout for the one at Main Beach promises to be even bigger than ever, given the fact that East Hampton High School’s freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes are vying to determine which class will bring out the most participants. A trophy awaits the winner. The $25 donations are to go to the East Hampton Food Pantry.

    East Hampton’s Ocean Rescue Squad and the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, are putting the Main Beach event on. The East Hampton Lions Club provides the food, including chili, clam chowder, coffee, hot chocolate, and Dreesen’s doughnuts.

    “It’s a great way to get baptized into the New Year,” said John Ryan Jr., who added that while there is a costume contest, “no one should enter the water with a costume on.”

    Victor Rodriguez, an East Hampton High School sophomore, has designed the winning “Freezin’ for a Reason” logo, which is to be affixed to T-shirts and hats that will be for sale at the Pavilion, where registration is to be held from 10:30 to 12:30.

    “Don’t be late,” Ryan advised. “The parking spaces fill up quickly.”

    Colin Mather, who owns the Seafood Shop on Montauk Highway in Wainscott, and who apparently was the first plunger here, customarily sets off on a 1.6-mile run from the shop to the Beach Lane road end at 2 p.m. on New Year’s Day. Fellow runner-plungers will be welcomed. The beneficiary of Mather’s plunge is Phoenix House.    J.G.

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.”

By Jack Graves

    A balmy day drew a record crowd to the New Year’s Day plunge at East Hampton’s Main Beach, as many as 800, John Ryan Jr., one of the event’s overseers, said.

    Colin Mather, the founder of New Year’s Day plunges here, in 1999, said that in Wainscott, following his annual 1.6-mile run from his Seafood Shop to the Beach Lane road end there at 2 p.m., he found “several hundred people on the beach . . . 75 went in.”

    While the air temperature was said to have been in the high 50s, the temperature of the water was a frosty 47. Yet most of the Main Beach attendees, perhaps as many as 400, plunged, said Ryan, who went in twice, the second time with fellow members of the Ocean Rescue Squad.

    “It was just as bad the second time as it was the first,” he said, in reply to a question.

    As to how much money was raised for the East Hampton food pantries, “we don’t know yet,” he said during a conversation Monday morning. “Last year, with 500 to 600 there, we raised $21,000, so this year’s figure should be higher.”

    A tally was still being taken, he added, to determine which of East Hampton High School’s classes had won the trophy that is to be given to the class with the largest turnout.

    The Toga Family won the costume contest, Ryan said, with Supergrandma (Doreen Tibbets) second and the Polynesians (Mark Tompkins and his sons, Carson, 8, and Milo, 5) third.

    Marikate Ryan and Carly Drew were the Sparkle Girls, Heather Metcalf was described as “an angry bird,” Vicki Lippman and Corrine Wizelius were a penguin and a polar bear, “and,” said Ryan, “there was this one guy who wore a ‘Phantom of the Opera’ mask with a lobster on his head.” Lora Nelson, who was said to have planned to wear a turban and a fur coat, showed up instead “with a wreathy tiara,” as did Judy Haselton and Francesca Freeman. Laura Otto was “a purple squid.” John Ryan Sr. wore, as is his custom, a plunger on his head.

    The official starter this year, East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., also plunged, as did East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who was one of the judges of the costume contest. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson was there — “he always is at any event in which the Ocean Rescue Squad is involved,” said Ryan — but apparently demurred when it came to what Ryan has likened to an annual baptismal rite.

    Ryan added that, “contrary to what some people think, we don’t require that people jump in if they make a donation to the food pantries.”

    As for the number of those who did plunge, he said, “There wasn’t any space between the starting line and the Pavilion — it was all filled with people.”

    Many of the madcap participants, including the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, and the East Hampton High School’s boys swim team, were young, though there were some wizened participants also, among them an unidentified Santa Claus, sporting red suspenders.

    Undoubtedly, if there were a prize given out to the best-represented family, it would have gone to the Ryans, who sported three generations.

    Back to the Wainscott plunge, Mather said, in answer to a question, that “the Brazilians were there — well, I say Brazilians, but I don’t know for sure if they are. . . . At any rate, the Escola De Samba Boom drummers were great.”

    Afterward, the gathering, which raised money for Phoenix House, whose centers, one of which is in Wainscott, provide drug and alcohol abuse treatment, repaired to the Seafood Shop, where there was the Seafood Shop’s clam chowder, hot chocolate provided by Once Upon a Bagel, a Blue Duck cake, and Breadzilla’s Christmas cookies. space between the starting line and the Pavilion — it was all filled with people.”

    Many of the madcap participants, including the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, and the East Hampton High School’s boys swim team, were young, though there were some wizened participants also, among them an unidentified Santa Claus, sporting red suspenders.

    Undoubtedly, if there were a prize given out to the best-represented family, it would have gone to the Ryans, who sported three generations.

    Back to the Wainscott plunge, Mather said, in answer to a question, that “the Brazilians were there — well, I say Brazilians, but I don’t know for sure if they are. . . . At any rate, the Escola De Samba Boom drummers were great.”

    Afterward, the gathering, which raised money for Phoenix House, whose centers, one of which is in Wainscott, provide drug and alcohol abuse treatment, repaired to the Seafood Shop, where there was the Seafood Shop’s clam chowder, hot chocolate provided by Once Upon a Bagel, a Blue Duck cake, and Breadzilla’s Christmas cookies.

    Charlie Whitmore, the founder of the Montauk Rugby Club, had played football at East Hampton High School, but had never played rugby, he said during a conversation the other day, until, at the age of 20 or 21 he saw a flier at the Edwards sporting goods store in Riverhead, put there by the Pleiades Rugby Football Club seeking a few good men.

    Or bad ones, as the case might be. Whitmore seems to remember the flier as having said criminal backgrounds would not be viewed prejudicially.

    “It was in the spring of 1973, I think. They practiced in Riverhead, at the high school. I went to a practice and before I knew it I was in a game!”

    “At what position . . .? I forget. I didn’t know the positions. I was young and eager. The first game I played in was with Drew University. I think we played their C side! And we won! I scored a try. I got tackled in their end zone and, in falling, the ball touched the ground [the ball must be touched down in the try zone in order for a try, rugby’s equivalent of a touchdown, to be validated].”

    “I was hooked from then on. It’s such a great sport . . . Everyone gets to run with the ball and to tackle — it’s great fun. Rugby’s a contact sport, not a collision sport. And the camaraderie among the players, no matter whose side they’re on, is great. In football, you wouldn’t socialize with the other team after a game. Football’s not like that. Nor does football have the international tradition that rugby has. We’ve had many players from here, Chris Carney, Frank Bistrian, Robbie Balnis, and Mike Bunce among them, who’ve played on the West Coast and for clubs all over the world. . . .”

    Conversely, a number of experienced foreign-born players, from such countries as South Africa, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, and Australia, a number of whom later became American citizens, have in recent years helped young ruggers here learn the game’s fine points. Though, in the beginning, after the Pleiades club’s quick fade following the spring of ’73, there was just Charlie Whitmore.

    “I was desperate to keep playing — I was so passionate about the sport. I tried to get friends of mine out here interested, and I also went out to the bars at the Montauk docks and got a lot of fishermen to play. That’s how we came to be called the Montauk Rugby Club.”

    Asked to name some of those early players, Whitmore said, “Well, there was Tommy Keller, Scotty Spratford, who had been a pro football player for a couple of years, Greg Walsh, Jerry Knowlan, Chucky Morton. . . . Almost none of them had ever played. . . . We’d be giving instructions right up to game time! Most of these guys had been football players, so they were used to blocking. But you can’t do that in rugby. That was probably the biggest problem in them making the transition.”

    Though the club joined the Met Rugby Union early on, most of its games, said Whitmore, were “ ‘friendlies.’ We had the guys from Montauk, and some players from up west on the Island started coming out. We’d go to games with 12 or 13 guys, say, and borrow a couple of players from the other side. Mostly we lost in those early years — there were no expectations. Just being able to play was great, whether it was at the Montauk School, Southampton College, Herrick Park, which soon became our home field, or at Randalls Island in the city.”

    “There were those Division 1 teams in the city — Old Blue, the New York Athletic Club, the New York Rugby Club, the Manhattan Rugby Club — but I’m not even sure there were leagues then. . . . Anyway, we struggled through the ’70s. It wasn’t until the ’80s that we began to get strong, with that first group of young guys — John Kalbacher, Bob Kelsey, and Michael Bromley. . . . It was somewhat like it is now with experienced players, guys like Dan Voorhees, Dan Vasti, and myself, coaching the younger ones. That team in ’80 or ’81 went 14-1-1.”

    At the club’s recent holiday dinner, Whitmore, whose last game was in “the early ’90s, at the age of 38,” said — and he meant it as a compliment — that when he came to the games at Herrick this fall he didn’t recognize any of the players.

    “Things have always gone in cycles . . . up and down, up and down. Now, we’re on the upswing [as evidenced by Montauk’s undefeated run this fall in Met Union Division II play]. Four or five of these guys — Connor Miller, Matt and Erik Brierley, Mike Bunce — are second generation. It’s great to see these young guys. Who wants to see the same old faces? It’s great to see people coming out to see the games again. For the next two or three years it should be a lot fun.”

    “We were perennnial Northeast champions in the ’90s, and we’ve had some great 7’s [rugby’s quicker, pared-down version] teams, too.”

    When this writer said he thought this season had been the fourth in which the side had gone undefeated in Met Union play, Whitmore said, “At the least.”

    It had been his dream, he said, to “come out to Herrick Park and see those wonderful goal posts and a wonderful match.”

    “Though I never thought,” he added, with a laugh, “that I’d be this old!”

Cutting Room Floor

    There was a snippet missing from the end of last week’s story on the Montauk Rugby Club and Old Montauk Athletic Club’s holiday dinners. In speaking of the rugby side’s front row, Rich Brierley, Montauk’s coach, said, “The front row is our offensive line, our engine room. We go as they go.”

Thursday, December 22

BOYS BASKETBALL, Greenport at East Hampton, nonleague, 6:15 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at Bellport, nonleague, 6 p.m.

Friday, December 23

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at Mattituck, nonleague, 6:15 p.m.

Tuesday, December 27

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Half Hollow Hills East tournament, 9 a.m.

Wednesday, December 28

WRESTLING, East Hampton at Half Hollow Hills East tournament, 11 a.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, East Hampton at tournament, 11 a.m.

Thursday, December 29

BOYS BASKETBALL, Southampton at East Hampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

     Chris Reich, who coaches East Hampton High’s boys winter track team, assisted by Luis Morales, said this week that “we have a roster of 18, which is not as many as I’d like, but they’re doing well — Deilyn Guzman, Trevor Shea, William Ellis, Adam Cebulski, Joe Olszewski, A.J. Bennett, and Henry Whitney in particular.”

    Cebulski has run the indoor mile in 5 minutes and 7 seconds. “Hopefully,” said Reich, “he’ll go under 5 in the meet after Christmas break.”

    Bennett, he said, had “huge potential as a shot-putter. . . . He would have won the event in our last meet, with a throw of more than 40 feet, but he fouled.”

    Guzman has run the 300-meter dash in 38.98 seconds; Shea, a first-year senior, has done a 41.35 in that event; Ellis, a freshman, is doing well in the high jump and 55-meter hurdles, and the 4-by-200 relay team of Guzman, Shea, Whitney, and Ellis “would have been third in our last meet if their handoffs weren’t so awful. . . . As it was, they placed fifth in 1:48.”

    The team’s senior distance runner, Mike Hamilton, “is probably out for the season with a severe ankle injury, but we’ve managed to put together a 4-by-800 relay team consisting of two freshmen, a sophomore, and a junior.”

    The East Hampton High School bowling team by virtue of its 23-10 win over Rocky Point at the Port Jefferson lanes Monday jumped from fourth to second place in league competition.

    “We were flat in the first game — we never bowl well at Port Jeff — but we buckled down and adjusted and came back to win the second and third games,” said Bonac’s coach, Pat Hand. “Besides those games, we got the team high game, and total wood too.”

    In other recent action, the bowlers, who are led by two seniors, Andrew Payne and Ricky Nardo, defeated Southold 29.5-3.5, defeated Southampton 28-5, lost 17-16 to Eastport-South Manor, which was in first place going into Tuesday’s matches, and lost 25.5-7.5 to Westhampton Beach.

    In the match with Southampton, which was contested on lanes in Riverhead, Payne was on his way to a 300 when, in the 10th frame, his ball left the 4, 7, and 10 pins standing. “It’s a makeable split,” said Hand, “but hard to make. Andrew got the 4 and the 7, but left the 10.” As a consequence, he finished with a 265.

    Payne, who was averaging 194 going into Monday’s match, and who also has bowled a 232, said he felt the ball slip out of his hand in the last frame.

    “Nobody has bowled a 300 for us since Ryan Rhodes and Erick Bock the better part of a decade ago,” the coach said. “Not even Mikey [Graham, an all-state bowler with the highest average in Suffolk County when in high school here]. Though he did bowl a 300 in practice.”

    Concerning her lineup, Hand said she has Payne as the anchor, at number-five, Nardo as her number-four, and Chris Duran, a junior, in the number-one slot. “Then,” she said, “I fill in.”

    Among those on the squad she can choose from, and often does, are six girls, the most the team’s ever had. Gaby Green, a junior, who’s averaging 170, and Victoria Nardo, Ricky’s sister, also a junior, who’s averaging 140, often start. Green has bowled a 204 game. Brianna Semb, a junior, bowled a 186 in Monday’s match.

    East Hampton was to have played host to Mount Sinai Tuesday at East Hampton Bowl. Eastport-South Manor and Westhampton Beach were to have vied on Tuesday also.