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.

    Bouncing back from a 47-28 season-opening nonleague loss to Mattituck-Greenport here on Dec. 14, East Hampton’s wrestling team won the Doc Fallot team tournament at Hampton Bays High School Saturday — the first time that East Hampton had done so since 1999, according to Steve Tseperkas’s assistant, Louis Russo.

    Whether that is so or not, the tournament win was certainly buoying for a team that, because of its relative inexperience and the tough league it is in, is expected to measure its success in terms of individual performances this winter rather than in wins and losses.

    The good news is that East Hampton, according to its head coach, ought to be able to field a full 15-weight-class lineup, with the possible exception of 99 pounds, after Christmas.

    The tournament at Hampton Bays drew eight teams, including several “B” squads. “We went 4-0 on the day,” Tseperkas reported Monday, beating three B teams and Miller Place, which used to be in our league.”

    Lucas Escobar, who’s expected to wrestle at 106 after Christmas, Sawyer Bushman, who’s usually at 126, Mike Peralta, at 145, James Budd, at 170 and 182, and Jacob Hands, at 195, won all four matches they wrestled, and Matt Smudsinski, at 120, went 3-0.

    But just as important — perhaps even more so, said Tseperkas — were Andrew Dixon and Harrison Kennedy’s efforts in the match with Miller Place. “That match began at 106 and went back up and back around before Andrew [who had made his varsity debut here on Dec. 14] wrestled at 285 and before Harrison, who had never wrestled a varsity match before, finished up at 99. If either of them got pinned, that would have been it for us, but they didn’t. Andrew lost 7-2 and Harrison lost 4-2. Because of that, we won 39-38, and Andrew and Harrison made it happen. It was a big win for us.”

    The team’s most valuable wrestler that day was Bushman, who won twice by pin and once by a major decision at 126, and once by pin at 132.

    Escobar won twice by pin and once by a technical fall at 113 pounds, and once by pin at 120. Peralta, after winning by pin, outpointed three other opponents, including Westhampton Beach’s Devin Hogan, with whom he had split in two earlier meetings this season. Budd, who had suffered a disappointing 6-4 overtime loss in the Mattituck match after having gone up 4-1, rebounded Saturday, winning two matches at 170 and two at 182. Tseperkas said he expects Budd, who won all his tournament matches by pin, to wrestle at 160 after the Christmas break. Hands, who was Cory Pawlukojc’s backup last year, and who flattened his Mattituck opponent, continued to impress Saturday, winning by pin three times wrestling up at 220, and once at 195.

    “It was a complete, total team effort,” said Tseperkas, who added that Dallas Foglia’s name should be added to the list of those who refused to be pinned, in his case in a match at 145 with a heavily-favored Miller Place wrestler.

    After the loss to Mattituck, Tseperkas, who had to forfeit at four weights on the 14th — “because two of our guys didn’t make weight and because in the other two cases we didn’t want to send out guys we didn’t think were ready” — made sure his charges knew that East Hampton would have won that match had it not had to yield 24 points by forfeit.

    “I spent 15 minutes talking to them about that, that it was very important for every single kid to make weight. I drilled it into their brains, and they’ve bought into it. We only wrestled 11 weight classes against Mattituck. We won 6 of those 11, and Mattituck won 5. Yet Mattituck won.”

    By the time Friday’s practice session ended, “everybody,” said the coach, “made weight. That way, we were able to field a full lineup at the tournament.”

    Next up for the Bonackers is a two-day holiday tournament Tuesday and Wednesday at Half Hollow Hills East. 

Thursday, December 8

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

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at East Hampton, nonleague, 6:30 p.m.

Friday, December 9

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Pierson-Bridgehampton at Hampton Bays tournament, and Ross at McGann-Mercy tournament, 7 p.m.

Saturday, December 10

WRESTLING, Frank (Sprig) Gardner tournament, East Hampton High School, from 9 a.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, East Rockaway at Bridgehampton, nonleague, 1:30 p.m.

Monday, December 12

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

BOYS BASKETBALL, Ross at Greenport, 6:45 p.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Port Jefferson at Pierson, 6:15 p.m.

Tuesday, December 13

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

BOYS BASKETBALL, Center Moriches at Bridgehampton, nonleague, 6 p.m.; Pierson at Sayville, nonleague, 6, and East Hampton at Eastport-South Manor, nonleague, 6:15.

Wednesday, December 14

WRESTLING, Mattituck-Greenport at East Hampton, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

    At well-attended holiday dinners at the Beachhouse restaurant on Friday and Monday, the Montauk Rugby Club, the Old Montauk Athletic Club, East Hampton’s Ocean Rescue Squad, and Spokespeople, an organization that advocates on behalf of cyclists here, recognized a number of athletes for their contributions in the past year.

    The Old Montauk Athletic Club’s awardees were Sharon McCobb, an ever-improving runner, cyclist, and swimmer who for several years now has helped oversee the triathletic training of 20 or so youngsters in the multidiscipline sport, and Diane Weinberger and Amanda Moszkowski, the very popular Hamptons Marathon and Half-Marathon directors.

    McCobb was the club’s athlete of the year. Weinberger and Moszkowski, who raised $60,000 for the event’s various beneficiaries this fall, received the club’s community service award.

    The East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad’s member of the year was Steven McMahon. Others cited for their efforts were James Arnold, who oversees the Swim Across America event, which raised more than $120,000 this year; John Ryan Sr., the guru of East Hampton lifeguarding and subject of a film documentary, some of which was shown at the dinner; Robin Streck; Rob Lambert; T.J. Calabrese; Bob Pucci; Scott Bradley, and Eddie Reid.

    Rich Kalbacher, who spoke for the rescue squad, also thanked East Hampton’s supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, and East Hampton Village’s mayor, Paul Rickenbach, for their support, and hailed Kevin Harrington for having raised $50,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project through a recently completed 4,000-mile Montauk-to-San Diego bicycle ride, and Elias Van Sickle, an East Hampton High School student who, with Julian Verglas, raided more than $3,000 for the rescue squad through a 20-mile Montauk-to-Block Island kiteboard crossing in at-times 12-foot waves. Lambert and John Ryan Jr., ocean rescue squad members, went along with the kiteboarders on Jet Skis.

    Sinead FitzGibbon, speaking for Spokespeople, cited McCobb for having shown that female athletes can, through focused training, become stronger as they age, and Theresa Roden, who two years ago founded the I-Tri program for Springs School girls — numbering about two dozen now — who had not theretofore thought of themselves as athletes.

    “She’s a rock star — she really is,” FitzGibbon said of Roden, whose I-Tri motto is “Transformation Through Triathlon.”

    She has changed the lives of these young women forever. . . . It goes beyond boosting their self-esteem. Their bodies and minds have been transformed [through triathlon training and through the program’s camaraderie] and as a result their futures will be transformed — educationally, physically, socially, and financially.”

    About 16 of the I-Tri girls attended the OMAC dinner Monday night, all wearing red dresses. “That’s America,” FitzGibbon, a native of Northern Ireland, said as she looked over at the animated teens, who were at the two tables next to hers — “beautiful and strong.”

    Gordon Trotter was cited twice at Friday’s Montauk Rugby Club dinner, also held at the Beachhouse — as the club’s player of the year (he led the Met Union’s Division II sides in scoring) and as clubman of the year, attesting to all the organizational and promotional work the New Zealand-born fly half has done.

    Connor Miller, one of a number of younger players who gave the club, which went undefeated in Met Union play, a big boost this fall, was named as the club’s rookie of the year.

    “Jarrel Walker [a first-year wing forward] was a close second for rookie of the year — he improved so much over the course of the year,” Montauk’s coach, Rich Brierley, said during a conversation Tuesday morning. “And I can think of a couple of other guys who could have been player of the year, Ricardo Salmeron, who really stepped up, and John Glennon, our hooker. But Gordon was certainly deserving when it came to both awards.”

    This fall marked the first undefeated Met Union season for Montauk since 2006, a year the side went to the Final Four. Montauk is to play in the Eastern section of the national Sweet 16 tournament in Manassas, Va., over the May 12-13 weekend.

    Given Middlesex and the Village Lions’ first-round losses last year, “we’ll have a pretty low seeding, but the good news is that Mike Bunce [who, because of a controversial red-carding following a scuffle, did not play in the recent Northeast regional final, a game Montauk lost 53-0 to Middlesex, a Boston area side] will be with us. If they went by the book he would have been banned from three games, but U.S.A. Rugby’s disciplinary committee, in reviewing our appeal, said that by missing the regional final he’d served his time.”

    Brierley emphasized in his remarks “the commitment” the side’s younger players, Walker, Mark Sciosica, Zach Brenneman, Brian Anderson, Miller, Bunce, Matt Brierley, and Erik Brierley — the latter four second-generation competitors — had brought to the club.

    “Because they’ve excelled in other sports, they all know what’s involved — they understand the importance of showing up for practices and in working hard. Their spirit was infectious.”

    Brierley did not forget the often-unheralded forwards that evening, mentioning Ryan Borowsky and James Lock, each of whom had moved from other positions up to the front row, in particular. “The front row [which also included Glennon, at hooker],” said Brierley, “is our offensive line, our engine room. We go as they go.”

    Outrigger canoeing is a big sport in Hawaii that brings, according to Jeremy Grosvenor, whose waterborne repertory is extremely varied, “all different ages, sizes, and shapes together to ride waves — it’s more of a community sport than surfing, where you have egos come into play.”

    The widely traveled Bridgehamptoner, who owns an outrigger canoe, which he has made available to the curious in the summertime at Montauk’s Ditch Plain, competed recently in an outrigger surfing contest — his first — on Kauai. During a conversation about it the other day, he said, “There are four of you in a 25-foot boat with an outrigger on one side, for balance, so you don’t flip. You paddle in unison, switching sides every 10 or 12 strokes. The person who makes the calls — the one who’s second from the front — says, ‘Ahut . . . hoe! Get ready . . . switch. . . .’ ”

    “I came to like outrigger canoeing ever since I worked with some anthropologists as a young man in Micronesia. The indigenous people in the Pacific have used them to move goods back and forth and to visit each other. Now that the sport has developed, the boats are of fiberglass, not hollowed-out koa trees, but it’s a sport with utilitarian, communal roots, and that’s why I like it I guess. . . . It’s really a neat way for everybody to come together to surf, to have fun.”

    Grosvenor said that “outrigger canoes can catch a wave way before a surfboard can. The boat turns as a surfer would as it approaches the beach, though, of course, while it’s more powerful, it’s not as maneuverable as a surfboard. And, as you’re gliding on a slow, feathering wave, you can do tricks. Someone might hold up a light woman with their hands, two people might stand up and stand on their heads. . . . It’s a very long ride, on waves that break farther out — you don’t come crashing up onto the beach.”

    The Canoe Surfing Challenge in Kalapaki — this was the sixth one — had, he said, become “pretty big. A friend of mine, Chris Kauwe, an amazing canoe surfer, put it on and asked me to come. When I got there he told me he was putting me in the event. There were 24 teams. They ran 15-minute heats with four boats each from an hour after sunrise until 5 p.m. . . . There were beginners on up to very, very accomplished water people. We made it to the semifinals . . . I paddled with three people from Kauai; they were nice to let me team up with them. I was very humble!”

    Born in Manhattan, Grosvenor has had a love affair with the water ever since his parents took him sailing to Rhode Island as a 7-year-old. “It was in 1977 — was that Hurricane Belle? — and I remember we were in Point Judith and how everything changed so quickly, from tranquil to very, very windy. That fascinated me. I remember as we were having dinner in a restaurant — my father and mother had secured the boat — seeing a toad hop away at a rapid pace. I think he knew something was up. . . . We got through it; the boat did, too. But that very dynamic weather — the sudden changes in the elements, in the pressure, the humidity, the temperature — left a lasting impression.”

    As a result, “this was a very easy place to come to,” he said, “with the rough ocean and the calm bay so close.”

    He had been in open water outrigger canoe races, as well, he said: “the big 32-mile race from Molokai to Oahu, which takes four and a half hours. It’s like a marathon, steady but fast. You’re reading the ocean all the time so that you know when to go faster, when to go slower. It’s very much about the poetry of the ocean. If the wave is steep you paddle faster, if it’s flatter you paddle slower. It’s really a fantastic way of being on the ocean.”

    It all led him to think he might like to hold a canoe surfing competition here, perhaps a small event this summer, and to follow that up with an outrigger canoe race to Block Island.

    The Maidstone Market’s 7-on-7 men’s soccer team lost the first two games it played in this fall’s season, one to Tuxpan and one to Hamptons Arsenal, each by 1-0 scores, but when it came down to crunch time, the Market — unarguably the Wednesday evening league’s best team — ate those other teams’ dreams.

    The semifinal matchup last week with Hamptons Arsenal went down to penalty kicks, however, and John Romero, Maidstone’s sponsor and coach, winced during a conversation at his place of business Monday morning as he recalled it. “They could have won it,” he said. Arsenal tied the score at 2-2 with a few seconds left in regulation, but Maidstone, following two scoreless overtime periods, prevailed 4-2 in penalty kicks.

    Thus Maidstone met Tuxpan, Antonio Chavez’s entry, in the final at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Nov. 30, though this time it was no contest as the Market cruised to a 3-0 victory.

    Tuxpan had reached the final by besting Bateman Painting, the second seed, 5-4 in the other semifinal as Alberto Larios led the way with two goals. Juan Vasquez, Nerry Sanchez, and Reynaldo Yanes each had one. 

    It was the eighth time that the Market had won a 7-on-7 championship here, said Romero, whose team, in augumented form, has made a name for itself in the region, and who, himself, has done much to develop East Hampton’s young players.

    One of his protégés, Mario Olaya, who recently capped a record-breaking career at East Hampton High School, leading Bonac to its first-ever county boys soccer championship, was among the celebrants following Maidstone Market’s Nov. 30 win at the park.

    Olaya, Jefferson Ramirez, Ernesto Valverde, Brandon West, Cesar Correa, Nick West, Angel Garces, Nick Tulp, and Romero’s own sons Matthew and John have been among the local juniors who, in combination with their peers from Albertson, have represented Long Island in tournaments in Peru and in Romero’s native Colombia in the past several years.

    “Down there,” he said with a laugh, “they call us ‘the Gringos.’ ” He added that Long Island’s juniors had acquitted themselves well in those South American tourneys and in ones played at Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

    “That’s the only way kids from here will get better,” he added, “by playing in tournaments up the Island and beyond. I’m not saying they’ll become pros, but they will get better, and — the most important thing — they’ll be able to get scholarships to colleges.”

    Participation in organized sports, moreover, was “probably the only way to keep teenaged boys out of trouble,” said Romero, whose dream is to have “a club here for our youth one day if I can find the space.”

    Back to the fall final, the champions’ big three, Diego Marles, Luis Correa, and Gehider Garcia, put the Market on the scoreboard in the opening minutes as Garcia, who was unmarked at the right side of Tuxpan’s goal, headed in a pass from Correa, who had, in turn, received the ball from Marles. 

    About midway through the 30-minute period, a 20-yard through pass from Marles to Correa put Maidstone up 2-0, and that was the score at the half, though Tuxpan, before the first half was over, narrowly missed twice — when Vasquez unleashed a wicked shot on goal that the Market’s keeper, Alex Meza, saved, and when Eduardo Larios rocketed a low free kick from 20 yards out that zipped inches wide of the right post. The shot was so hard that to some on the sidelines it appeared as if the ball might have whisked through a hole in the netting, but indeed further inspection showed there was none.

    Maidstone defended the dark side goal — the one positioned nearer Pleasant Lane and the far parking lot — in the second half, but its defense, anchored by Marles, Gerber Garcia, and Darlin Veliz, among others, was so strong that Tuxpan’s forwards never came close.

    Correa clinched the championship in the early going, kicking the ball into an empty cage following a blocked Tuxpan free kick that rebounded far up the field.

    After the trophies had been handed out — Correa received one as the winner of the league’s Golden Boot award given to its high-scorer — and photos taken, Romero said that would be it for his team until a mid-February indoor tournament in Calverton given the fact that some key players — namely Marles, Gehider Garcia, Correa, and Gerber Garcia — would soon go to Colombia for a spell.

    Most of the Market’s squad, said Romero, were from Colombia, with the exceptions of Antonio Padilla, who is from Mexico, Leonardo Garcia, who is from Brazil, Mark Hogg, who is from Jamaica, and Veliz, who is from Guatemala.

    The 7-on-7 championship was the second one the team had won this fall. “We beat Center Moriches 5-3 to win the Riverhead league. We had lost a couple of games, and Center Moriches had been undefeated — and had given up only three goals all season — until we played them in the final.”

    Maidstone Market, moreover, finished third in a semiprofessional league in Brentwood, “the toughest league we’ve played in, a league that had a lot of pros in it. . . . At first, they only scheduled four games for us. They wanted to see how we’d do. If we hadn’t done well in those first four games, they would have thrown us out, but we won 10 straight! We finished 13-4-2. We were a little tired in the playoffs, running back and forth between the leagues, but by that time, in Brentwood, they knew us.”

    Fittingly, Romero received Brentwood’s coach of the year award.

    Jeff Thompson, who coaches the East Hampton High School boys swimming team, was pleasantly surprised when on the first day of practice he saw that 30 hopefuls, twice last year’s number, were facing him.

    The word had gotten around.

    Five have since cut themselves, in effect, but the rest have stayed, and promise to be, in the aggregate, Thompson said during last Thursday’s practice at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, the best team he’s had.

    East Hampton’s varsity program is in only its third year, but the pipeline has from day one been as good as any other high school sport given the popularity of East Hampton Town’s junior lifeguard program overseen by John Ryan Sr. and Jr., and the Hurricanes youth swim team coached by Tom Cohill, the Y’s aquatics director.

    “About two-thirds of the kids are from East Hampton, about a third are from Pierson, all of them good, and we’ve got three from Bridgehampton,” Thompson said, a remark that prompted this writer to observe that, of the sports in which East Hampton is combined with other schools, boys swimming appears to be the biggest draw.

    Of the some 10 new team members, “half of them have experience and the other half, while they don’t have the experience, do have the work ethic — it’s an amazing group.”

    Thompson has lost to graduation several stalwarts in Matt Kalbacher, Tim Gualtieri, and Adrian Krasniqi, all of whom competed in last year’s county meet, but Trevor Mott and Thomas Brierley, who competed in the counties last year as freshmen, are among the returnees, as is Dan Hartner, a Pierson senior who would have been in the county meet had he not been ill at the time.

    Brierley, Krasniqi, Kalbacher, and Mott placed eighth in the county’s 200-yard freestyle relay last winter, and Kalbacher, Brierley, Mott, and Gualtieri were 13th in the 400 freestyle relay.

    “Those were the first top-10 finishes we’ve had at the sectionals,” Thompson said at the time.

    “This year, the sky’s the limit,” said the coach, who is again assisted by Craig Brierley, Thomas’s father. Thompson said he was very grateful for Brierley’s help. “It’s like having two head coaches,” he said. “One wouldn’t be able to do it — it’s too big a group.”

    Besides Mott, Brierley, and Hartner, then, the returnees include Jeremy Pepper and Peter Skerys, both Pierson seniors, and Adam Heller, a Pierson junior, as well as Christian Figueroa, a Bridgehampton junior, Baxter Parcher and Mike Knab, both Pierson sophomores, and Andrew Winthrop, an East Hampton junior.

    Among the many new ones are Ryan Lewis, an East Hampton senior, and Sergio Betancur, an East Hampton junior, who, while it’s their first season of varsity swimming, are town lifeguards; Paul Dorego, a Pierson senior; Robert Anderson III, Zach Bogetti, Thomas Dayton, Christopher Kalbacher, Shane McCann, Tyler Menold, Rob Rewinski, and Claudio Figueroa, who are all freshmen; Anthony McGorisk and Kyle Sturmann, who are sophomores, and two eighth graders, Nick Pucci and Thomas Pardicio, both of East Hampton.

    The team practices from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Y on weekdays, and from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m. there on Saturdays.

    “We’ve got a ton of talent,” said Thompson. “We’ll come out stronger than ever — we’ll have a completely full lineup with people to spare. We’ll run three teams in the relays whereas we only ran two before. We have a lot of guys who will be really competitive, who can do all the strokes.”

    Thompson didn’t schedule any scrimmages because of the need to get so many practices in before things get under way. His goal, he said, is to take “all the relays and six individuals to the county meet. Last year, I took two relays and three individuals.”

    “All but two of our meets will be at home” — good news inasmuch as in away meets against teams with divers, East Hampton couldn’t contest those points.

    The first is to be here with Huntington on Friday, Dec. 16. The Bonackers are to swim at Lindenhurst, a nonleague opponent, on Jan. 5. Home meets with Harborfields (Jan. 10), North Babylon (Jan. 12), and Deer Park (Jan. 18) are to follow. East Hampton is to swim at Hauppauge on Jan. 20, and Smithtown East, a nonleague opponent, is to swim here in the last meet of the regular season on Feb. 1.

    Asked how many football fields the squad had swum to date, Thompson checked with his iPhone and said, “Four hundred and fifty football fields so far. . . . We’re getting there.”

    Last year, though it didn’t win much, the East Hampton High School boys basketball team made things interesting, and Bill McKee, Bonac’s coach, now in his second year at the helm since Ed Petrie’s retirement, hopes the 2011-12 team will make things interesting again this winter.

    Though McKee, who again will be assisted by Bobby Vacca, could do without the tragic third acts, which haunted the Bonackers in 2010-11.

    He’s got guards, that’s for sure, in Thomas King and Cameron Yusko, both returning starters, and in McKee’s son, Danny, a relentless competitor who’s up from the junior varsity. Besides King, a junior, and Yusko, a senior, the other returnees are Patrick McGuirk, a senior who is the tallest player on the squad at 6 feet 2 inches, Alex Munoz, a senior who saw some playing time last year coming off the bench, and Juan Cuevas, a junior who was sidelined for the greater part of the 2010-11 season with a broken collarbone.

    Besides McKee, who’s a sophomore, others up from the jayvee are Thomas Nelson, a sophomore, Michael Taveras, a senior, and four juniors — Rolando Garces, Donya Davis, Andre Cherrington, and Joey Sandoval. “They’re all of about the same ability,” said the elder McKee, who, because of the team’s depth, hopes to run players in and out this season and to score in transition, rather than out of a half-court offense.

     “Hopefully we’ll handle the ball well and thus get good shots — we’ll play an up-tempo game,” said the coach, who added, “We’re still in League V, the same schools as last year. I’d say Amityville and Bayport are the favorites. They’ve both got a lot of returnees, and I know Amityville had a very good jayvee.”

    As for East Hampton, “the kids have been working hard and they’re improving.”

    The Bonackers are to scrimmage Southold here at 5:30 p.m. today. The team’s to scrimmage at Center Moriches Saturday morning, and Ross is to scrimmage here on Monday at 5:30. “Our first home game will be on Dec. 9 with Pierson, at 6:15,” McKee said.

    During Friday morning’s practice session, McKee’s taller charges were put through some drills by Hayden Ward, a 6-foot-6-inch former Bonac star who is playing now for the State University at Oswego.

    “We were 24-4 last year,” Ward, a junior, said during a brief conversation, “and we went to the N.C.A.A. [Division III] tournament for the first time in our history. We’ve got most everyone back and hope to do even better this time. We lost to Wells College in the second round of the N.C.A.A.s last year.”

    Oswego, which was 3-1 going into Thanksgiving vacation, was ranked 18th in the nation at the moment, he said.

    The amiable Montauker, who’s majoring in business administration and minoring in coaching, averaged 10 points and 8 rebounds per game last season, and is averaging 12 and 10 thus far in this campaign. It’s the second year that he’s been a starter.

    Asked about the transition he had to make from high school to college ball, the quiet-spoken redhead smiled and said, “College basketball is definitely more intense — it’s a much quicker game. You don’t realize how much quicker it is until you’re there. It’s quicker, more physical. Everybody’s bigger. I played down low in high school, but our centers are between 6-9 and 7-0, so I’m more of a perimeter player now.”

    When this writer said he hoped there were some businesses to administrate when he graduated from college, Ward said, “Let’s hope so . . . I’d like to be a basketball coach, too.”