After the accident in 2010 that deprived him of the use of his legs, two of his upper thoracic vertebrae having been fractured, Dennis Johnson, who loved just about all sports as a youth, said he was “a little bit depressed.”

But, he said, his family and friends, one of whom, Justine Giles, he is now engaged to marry, had helped to get him back on track. “They were there for me every day.”

A leader of the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s popular day camp, and a full-time Y employee since Glenn Vickers became its executive director a few years ago, the 27-year-old said during a conversation there the other day that the good news coming out of the motor vehicle accident was that he was alive. The bad news, of course, was that because of the fractured T2 and T3 vertebrae he had lost the use of his legs.

“Yes, I would call it a blessing in the end,” he said. “It slowed me down. Not that I was a bad person, but the way I was then I suppose I could have been arrested. It was God saying, ‘Slow down, I’ve got a different plan for you now.’ ” Certainly there were adjustments to be made, but now, save for one or two things, he can get about fine, so well in fact that, according to Vickers, “he’s an inspiration to one and all here, young and old, who, when they see him scoot about in that wheelchair say to themselves, ‘I should be trying harder.’ ”

In high school, Johnson, who has a brother and two sisters, did just about everything sportswise — football, basketball, indoor and outdoor track, lacrosse.

A cornerback in football, in track he triple-jumped, long-jumped, high-jumped, ran the 55-meter dash indoors, “a little bit of everything.” Eddie McGintee had encouraged him to go out for lacrosse, he said, and he did for a while, “though sometimes I’d be running along and getting ready to pass or shoot and the ball would come out.”

Before the accident he had worked at the Y in the summer — “I loved working with the kids” — and also for the town. “I’d be up at 4 a.m. cleaning up the beaches and after that, at around 8, I’d go over to the Y. I don’t work for the town now — I’m just here.”

After the accident, in February of 2010, the director at the time encouraged him to continue working with the summer campers. Then Vickers arrived, and asked why he wasn’t there year round. “Glenn’s helped me, he gave me my first shot.”

As for the Y’s day camp, which is based largely at East Hampton High School, Johnson, who works with about eight other counselors, takes pride in the fact that his 4-through-12 group has grown from 7 last year to 27.

“In the mornings, we do conditioning and stretching, and we do drills, things they can do in soccer and basketball with cones. . . . We make sure they know the rules and regulations and we critique them afterwards. Also we’ve been teaching them new games . . . cricket, European handball, bocce. . . .” 

“We teach them to treat each other with respect,” he added. “Sportsmanship is the first thing we talk about. We have them shake hands afterwards and say, ‘Good game.’ Everything I’ve learned I try to pass on to them, even cautioning them to look both ways when they cross the street, and, as I said, to be respectful.”

When it came to asking how he had come to be confined to a wheelchair, “kids are more straightforward than adults,” Johnson said. “They say straight up, ‘Tell us about it.’ And when you tell them, they say, ‘That’s cool, you’re still the same person.’ ”

While adults have been in that regard more reticent, he sensed, he said, that they too looked up to him. It was, he agreed, a good feeling.

Fran McConnel and Rosie Orlando have taught him to swim, using water wings to buoy up his legs. He’d also like to get a racing wheelchair, though he knows they’re expensive. He could compete in swimming too, he acknowledged, “though I’ve got to work on the basics.” 

He could also ride a bike, or a trike, he said, pedaling with his hands. “Going down hills fast would be fun. . . . I do wheelies in my wheelchair for the kids. I’m the point guard when we shoot around outside. . . .” 

In brief, there is nothing he couldn’t do. As opposed to some people, he said, he likes challenges.

And it was a nice feeling to have someone he’d counseled as a camper three years ago or so, who is now of driving age, call out to him at Stop & Shop. “I might not remember their name, but they remember me. . . .” 

“So, I continue on my way. I like it that people look up to me. If I can touch other lives that would be great.”

Asked his name after he had crossed the Firecracker 8K finish line in Southampton Sunday morning, the winner said, “Jeff Ares.”

“Like the god?”

Yes, like the god, though, because of the heat, which he said he hated, he was feeling mortal at that moment, and in need of some water.

A 33-year-old New Yorker, Ares, who was third here last year, dueled with 17-year-old Gustavo Morastitla, a South­ampton High School senior, in the early going of the Lions Club’s 4.96-mile race, but took over for good at around the midway mark, and finished in 27 minutes and 6.31 seconds, the better part of a minute faster than Morastitla, a Gubbins Run­ning Ahead employee whose strong­est race, he said afterward, is the 3,200.

Moreover, Morastitla, who was also the runner-up last year (and seventh the year before that), said he’s aiming to win a county cross-country title in the fall and to win the county 2-mile race next spring.

Asked where he wanted to go to college, he said, “Anywhere but New York.”

“The women’s field was so fast,” said Dennis Fabiszak, the ultra-running executive director of the East Hampton Library — and the race’s 21st-place finisher, in 33:54.75. 

“It must have been like a walk in the park for you,” this writer said.

“A walk around the park,” Rosemary Lange interjected. “Dennis and I have run this course thousands of times. We could run it backward and blindfolded.”

Fabiszak was right: Six of the top 15 were women, led, in 32:11.20, by Danielle Opatovsky, a 24-year-old environmental consultant living in Cambridge, Mass., who ran for Shoreham-Wading River High School and Smith College. She was sixth over all. 

Tara Farrell, 38, a former Firecracker 8K winner who lives in East Quogue, was the runner-up to Opatovsky in 32:34.46, and was ninth. She was followed by 40-year-old Kelly Wickstrom (10th), 20-year-old Hannah Connolly-Sporing (11th), 22-year-old Shanna Heaney (13th), and 57-year-old Barbara Gubbins, who was 15th — thus topping the women’s 55-to-59-year-old division — in 33:30.50, which translated into a 6:45-per-mile pace.

Fabiszak was running in an Umstead 100 T-shirt. He will run that North Carolina race again next April in the hope of qualifying for Western States, “the equivalent in ultra running to the Boston Marathon, and probably harder to get into.”

Besides the women, there were some impressive kids at the Firecracker 8K, among them Max Pazera, 14, of Westhampton, Paige Mattingly, 11, of Southampton, and Pazera’s younger sister, Mia, who ran the 3-mile course. Mattingly’s first love is riding, she said. She’ll compete in children’s hunters at the Hampton Classic later this summer. Max said he might run cross-country at Westhampton Beach High in the fall.

Opatovsky, who grew up in Shoreham, has a connection to Southampton inasmuch as her grandfather Herb Goldsmith, she said, had coached its high school’s football team.

Coincidentally, she was told, Bob Budd, a veteran East Hampton coach, had said in a Star interview last week that Goldsmith had presented the Bonackers, following their 18-13 upset of the heavily favored Mariners in 1967, with the victory cake that was to have been savored by his players. “You guys deserve it,” Budd remembered Goldsmith saying as he delivered it. “It was the best cake I ever ate,” said Budd. “I’ve always remembered that — it was a classy thing that he did.”

Opatovsky, who once was a South­ampton Town lifeguard, swims too, “though, while I run competitively, I don’t swim competitively. Swimming’s more restful for me, more like meditation.”

According to the elitefeats.com website, the youngest 8K competitor that day was Luke Tumino, 9, and the eldest was Paul Travis, 94, who ran at a 9:23 pace.

Amaden-Gay Insurance Company golf teams, with Reed Jones, John Wallace, Chris McDonald, Benjamin Dollinger, and Peter Cooper among its players, recently have won Chubb and AIG charity golf tournaments in East Norwich, N.Y., and Roslyn, resulting in a $1,500 donation to the Wellness Foundation and in a $14,000 donation to the East Hampton Food Pantry.

The team is to play in national championships in Wisconsin (at Whistling Straits) in August and in Newport Beach, Calif. (at the Resort at Pelican Hill), in November. 

“The winning team in the AIG Charity Challenge national championship will earn $48,000 to go to its designated charity,” Jones said in an email, adding that “regardless of the team’s ultimate standing in the [Chubb] finals, the Wellness Foundation will receive another donation of between $2,500 and $50,000.”

The town’s lifeguarding guru, 82-year-old John Ryan Sr., said Monday morning at his customary Amagansett Beach Association post, that all was well with the town’s lifeguarding program, from the ground up.

“The newest thing we’ve got is our Nippers classes at Albert’s and Gin Beach. We had 30 in the pilot program last year. This year, we’ve got around 100.” The open-water program is for 6, 7, and 8-year-olds.

Those classes, which began last week, are taught by Robyn Mott and Katie Osiecki in Montauk and by Haley Ryan and Vanessa Edwardes at Albert’s Landing Beach in Amagansett. They meet twice a week in each location.

Moreover, said the elder Ryan, at last count there were about 350 all told in the town’s junior lifeguard program, for ages 9 and up — “from 60 to 70 at Main Beach with Mike Bottini and Dana Dragone, 150 to 180 here at Indian Wells, and 80 to 100 at Ditch [Plain].” 

“Yes, we’re getting bigger,” he said, “and better too.”

Soon, the town will be sending teams far and wide to competitions on the Island, in New Jersey, and in Florida. “Our women are terrific.”

Craig Brierley, who coaches East Hampton High’s boys and girls swimming teams, oversees those who are to compete at the nationals in Daytona Beach, Fla., in mid-August. He does this Wednesday mornings at Indian Wells. 

Moreover, Bob Pucci and T.J. Calabrese “work with East Hampton Ocean Rescue recruits, new kids, anybody on Monday and Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. at Indian Wells throughout the month of July.” 

The Hamptons Lifeguard Association plans to take about 30 competitors to Daytona, said Ryan, “about 20 town guards and 10 from Southampton and East Hampton Village. . . . Sean Crowley, who’s the head of the Southampton guards” and Ryan’s son John, who oversees the East Hampton guards, are co-captains of that team. “I hear they’re going to have that tournament at Daytona for the next two years.”

Two ocean lifeguard certification tests have been conducted thus far, the first, on June 18, in water that was “in the high 50s,” the second, on June 26, in water that was somewhat warmer. Of the 30 who took the first test, his youngest grandson, 16-year-old Ryan Bahel, was among those who passed. Ryan Sr., by the way, has 23 grandchildren, most of whom have followed him into lifeguarding, as have most of his children. 

Two more ocean tests — primarily for those who want to recertify for three years — are to come at Indian Wells on Aug. 7 and Aug. 14, each beginning at 9 a.m.

Ryan himself is presumably grandfathered inasmuch as he and Kelly McKee were the last “recerts” here to be certified as lifeguards for life. To retain that status he must work the beach at least one day a year.

Asked if he is going to compete at the nationals, he said that if he did he would row with Eddie McDonald, and do beach flags. They don’t have an 80-plus division, so, if I go, I’ll be in the 70-and-ups.”

Next on the full lifeguarding calendar are Saturday’s half-mile, mile, and two-mile swims in Sag Harbor, whose proceeds are to benefit Fighting Chance, a free counseling service in Sag Harbor for cancer patients and their families headed by Duncan Darrow. 

Those swims, which are to begin at 7 a.m., used to be held at Fresh Pond in Amagansett, but Swim Across America, which used to donate a portion of the proceeds to Fighting Chance, “opted out this year,” said Ryan. “Now, all the proceeds will go to Fighting Chance.”

He added, however, that there was a permit-related question as to whether the swims will be held at Long Beach, as originally planned. “If we can’t hold them at Long Beach, we’ll have them at Havens Beach,” he said.

East Hampton’s 9-10-year-old traveling all-star team rode its pitching, hitting, and heads-up baserunning to a District 36 championship, the first in a quarter-century, this week.

The littlest Little Leaguers were the last one of Bonac’s postseason entries standing as of Sunday afternoon, the two girls teams and the two 11-12 boys teams having been ousted — the 11-12 Maroons, coached by Chris Anderson, having been shut out 4-0 Sunday by Riverhead in a playoff semifinal, the same team that had pulled the rug out from under them by way of a walk-off home run in last year’s district 9-10 final.

“It was incredible, Longwood [the team East Hampton played in the final] was 6-0 going in,” said one of the young Bonackers’ coaches, Tim Garneau, Tuesday morning. “They’d been beating teams 33-0 . . . I don’t think our kids know what fear is. Yes, you could say they were quietly confident. The coaches [Henry Meyer, Greg Brown, and Garneau] told our kids to keep it loose and to have fun. Their pitcher, a big kid, struck out our first three batters, but then, in the second inning, Carter [Dickinson] unloaded on him, hitting the fence. It was a bomb, almost a home run. Although he didn’t score, that lead-off double of his, I think, set the tone. I don’t have the book, but we nailed a couple of their runners at the plate, made double plays . . . Tyler Hansen pitched great for us. He pitched most of the game, until we had to take him out because he’d reached his 75-pitch limit, the limit for that age. We brought Carter in then. He got the last two outs and the save. The final score was 5-3. . . . They were surprised.”

Thus the young Bonackers, who were treated to an East Hampton Fire Department parade through the village on their return Monday, were to have begun play in the eight-district Section IV tournament at Gaynor Park in Smithtown-St. James Tuesday evening. The top two sectional teams are to vie in the state tournament next week. 

Meyer, Garneau, and Brown managed the pitch counts well in the fifth — and last — game of pool play with Eastport-South Manor on July 5, and in the semifinal versus Patchogue-Medford Sunday, using four pitchers in that one. 

Hansen, the team’s ace, and Leandro Abreu combined for a 10-0 “mercy rule” shutout of Eastport-South Manor at the Pantigo fields on the 5th — Hansen pitching the first four innings.

Abreu started Sunday’s game, giving way to Hansen with the bases loaded and none out in the top of the third, at which time East Hampton led 6-2. Hansen, who can wheel and deal, got out of the jam with just one run scoring, on a force play at third base. 

Dickinson, who had started behind the plate and had moved to first at the beginning of the third, came on in relief of Hansen with one out and one on in the fourth. He gave up a run, bringing Patchogue-Medford to within 6-4, but the young Bonackers effectively put the game away with six more runs in the bottom half.

Liam Cashin, pinch-hitting for Livs Kuplins, was hit by a pitch to lead off East Hampton’s fourth. Cashin moved to second on a wild pitch with Andrew Brown, the leadoff hitter, up. Brown then lashed a double into the outfield that scored Cashin with East Hampton’s seventh run.

Hudson Meyer popped out to short for the first out, after which the visitors made a pitching change. Hansen went all the way to second — and Brown to third — on a fly ball to left field that was dropped. With Dickinson at the plate, Brown came home on a wild pitch, after which Dickinson doubled in Hansen for 9-4. 

Abreu, the fifth batter in the lineup, reached first base safely on an infield hit, and Victor Diaz, who had struck out his first two times up, came through with a two-run double for 11-4. Diaz advanced to second, and then to third on subsequent wild pitches, and scored when Bruno Sessler, following Justin Prince’s strikeout, singled through the right side for 12-4. 

The bases were loaded when Meyer came up for the second time that inning, but the runners were stranded as he popped out to the pitcher on a 3-1 pitch.

But the damage, as aforesaid, had been done. Dickinson, who had become more effective after lengthening his stride, notched a strikeout after giving up a full-count walk. With Patchogue-Medford’s sixth hitter up, and the count 2-2, Hansen, who was catching at the time, foiled an attempt to steal third, after which Dickinson struck the batter out. Meyer was brought in to relieve Dickinson at that point, and he ended the inning with a strikeout.

East Hampton got one more in the bottom half. Hansen led off with an infield hit, stole second with Dickinson up, and scored on Dickinson’s 6-to-3 groundout.

“With the exception of Abreu, all our pitchers will be available for the final,” Garneau said afterward.

As for the July 5 game, Hansen doubled in a run in the first, Meyer tripled in two in the second, Prince doubled in two in the third, Abreu singled in one in the fourth, and Brown drove in two with an opposite-field double in the fifth. 

Thursday, July 13

LITTLE LEAGUE, Section IV 9-10 tournament, opponent and site yet to be determined as of press time, 5:45 p.m.

Sunday, July 16

TRIATHLON, Montauk Sprint, half-mile swim, 14-mile bike, and 5K trail run to the Montauk Lighthouse, Gin Beach, 6:30 a.m.

Tuesday, July 18

COLLEGIATE BASEBALL, North Fork Ospreys vs. Sag Harbor Whalers, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 5 p.m.

Wednesday, July 19

LIFEGUARDING, Long Island junior lifeguard tournament, Jones Beach, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

RIDING, Sagaponack Horse Show, Topping Riding Club, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

COLLEGIATE BASEBALL, Shelter Island Bucks vs. Sag Harbor Whalers, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 5 p.m.

Thursday, July 20

LIFEGUARDING, Main Beach invitational tournament, 4 p.m.

You can’t beat the Topping Riding Club in Sagaponack, where a popular B-rated horse show is to be held Wednesday, when it comes to its setting.

“I remember a celebrity complaining once that her stall was in the old portion of the stables,” Emily Aspinall, one of its former managers, said during a conversation there the other day with the club’s founder, Tinka Topping, and Mercedes Mann, the club’s lessee and manager. “When I pointed out to her that her horse’s stall had an ocean view, she relented.”

Topping, who oversaw the riding club with her late husband, Bud, for years, said, when questioned, that it had evolved “from a defunct potato farm.”

The inside riding ring, in fact, lies within what once used to be a potato barn, “a beautifully constructed one, according to architects who’ve seen it,” said Mann, who has been at Topping’s, first as a pony rider, at her sister, Alexandra’s, suggestion, and later as a riding instructor and manager, for some 40 years.

There used to be three Sagaponack Horse Shows at Topping’s, now there are two. It’s the only rated show other than the Hampton Classic out here at the moment. “Our shows used to go until 9 p.m.,” Mann said. “Lit up by headlights.”

“When George Morris [a pre-eminent rider and trainer] was asked at one of those shows how he could possibly see the jumpers in the dark,” said Aspinall, “he said, ‘I don’t have to see — I can hear whether they jump well or not.’ ”

“My daughter Kathy’s friend Leslie has never forgotten when George Morris threw a clod of dirt at her at a clinic — he couldn’t abide people not listening,” Topping said.

Actually, the gestation of the riding club was owing to Kathy, she continued, “when someone asked her if she could teach him to ride.”

The rest is local history, and the riding club has played a big part in it, first with its own shows, then with a revived Southampton Horse Show there, and, ultimately, at the suggestion of Christophe de Menil, with the Hampton Classic’s birth as a three-day show in 1976 at Abe Katz’s Dune Alpin Farm in East Hampton.

Tony Hitchcock, who, with his wife, Jean Lindgren, was to oversee the Classic at its Bridgehampton showgrounds for many years, sold lemonade that year, Topping said. “Tony was a teacher at the Hampton Day School, which I helped to found, and we began doing the show here as a fund-raiser for the Day School. I asked Tony to M.C. it. We raised about 10 dollars,” she said with a smile.

The 1976 Classic was the first and only time Mann, who in subsequent years has trained numerous Classic competitors, rode as one herself, in children’s equitation. “I got there at 6, and my class didn’t go off until 4,” she said. “I think I drank my first glass of wine that day.”

She and her sister, she said, have ridden from an early age. She recalls her sister, Alexandra, riding her bike from their house on Highway Behind the Pond in East Hampton Village to Pheasant Run Stables in Springs at 6 a.m., and “feeling very safe.”

Eventually, she said, they persuaded their parents to help underwrite their training, at various stables on the South Fork, including Alvin and Patsy Topping’s Swan Creek Farms.

“Patsy would have us file by,” said Mann, “and after you did, she’d ask the other riders what struck them about your riding. They always said that what struck them about my riding was my long blond hair.”

While she thinks the interest in equestrian sports remains strong, Mann said, “This year has been strange. Usually we get calls about pony camps beginning in February, but the phone hasn’t been ringing off the hook until just recently. . . . All the pony camps out here have been down.”

As to why that was, no one was quite sure. 

“Maybe ticks and the traffic, and the world in general,” said Topping. “They’re going elsewhere.”

“Jackson Hole I hear is the place this year, because of the eclipse,” Mann said.

While there used to be around 300 competitors in their B-rated shows, there probably would be about 200 this year, she said.

“Some people are going to upstate shows. . . .”

“There are ticks there too,” said Aspinall, whose late sister, Anne, after whom Hunter Ring 1 at the Classic is named, became Topping’s first chief riding instructor in the early 1970s, having left a job in New York City and weekend riding at Topping’s to sign on full time.

“First there was Gordon Wright,” said Topping, “who taught George Morris. George Morris taught Anne, and Anne taught everyone else.”

As for the Classic, when asked if she had created “a monster,” Topping demurred. Celebrity gawking and V.I.P. tents aside, it was still the number-one horse show, she said.

Aspinall, who is the Classic’s vice president, said it was indeed the best show in North America, with the possible exception of Spruce Meadows, outside Calgary.

Asked what it was she loved about riding, Mann said, “Number one, I love the wide-open spaces. Years ago, we all used to take our ponies to the beach. There were no houses between us and the beach then. Nine of us would ride to the Sagg Store, dismount, and get coffee. There was no traffic, no manicured lawns, nobody complaining about manure because our neighbors were farmers. You could see the sea from here. You can’t anymore. I miss that.”

Alexandra Mann, whom her sister has taken on as an instructor, said in a separate conversation, “It still has a very good family vibe.”

“It can be 90 degrees and you wouldn’t know it here,” Mercedes Mann said. “The pony campers all would love it if we put bunk beds in the stable.”

Fighting Chance, a free service for cancer patients and their families, was on its own this year, following what was described as an amicable parting with Swim Across America, and despite the fact that the site had to be changed from Long Beach to Havens Beach at the last minute, all went well, the weather being beautiful and the swimming conditions being pretty much perfect.

As was the case last year, Mike Petrzela, a 42-year-old New Yorker who swam the butterfly for Syracuse University, was first out of the water from the 2-mile swim. “I miss David Powers,” he said, “though he’ll be at Montauk” on July 22.

Maggie Purcell, who still has a year to go in high school — as do some of her fellow East Hampton Hurricane swimmers, Madison Jones, Isabela Swanson, and Caroline Oakland, all of whom were there Saturday, as was Cecilia De Havenon, who’s to matriculate at Bowdoin in the fall — was first out in the 1-miler, and a 12-year-old, William Siudzinski, who lives in Brooklyn, was the first in among the half-milers.

“Don’t forget to say that Sag Harbor’s police chief, A.J. McGuire, put this together in the last 24 hours, and that the village board was very cooperative,” said Jim Arnold, an East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad member who oversaw the benefit swims, which, before a permit question surfaced, were to be held at Long Beach in Noyac.

Duncan Darrow, the founder of Fighting Chance, stationed himself at Long Beach with a sign and map redirecting spectators, “bewildered grandparents, for the most part, who had been told they had better go see their grandchildren swim,” to Sag Harbor’s Havens Beach a couple of miles away.

Griffin Taylor, a Boston College sophomore who had “won” (the long-distance swims are not billed as races) the 1-miler at Amagansett’s Fresh Pond last year, was a spectator this time, preferring, he said, to watch his sister, Sophia, swim. He, too, he said, will do the Montauk swims, which are to raise money for the Montauk Playhouse pool. He swims the 200, 500, and 1,000 freestyle races at B.C., though his mother, Mary, said that there were academic requirements to take into account too.

Having finished fourth among the 2-milers, Sophia said in reply to a question that she’s swimming at the University of Hawaii now, where she does the 500 freestyle, the 400 individual medley, and the 200 backstroke.

The above-named women, in addition to Paige Duca, an all-Atlantic Coast Conference runner at B.C., and others, are expected to do the Hampton Lifeguard Association proud in regional and national competitions this summer.

The all-women’s national tournament is to be held at Sandy Hook, N.J., on July 26. Other competitive events coming are the East Hampton Village invitational tourney at East Hampton’s Main Beach next Thursday, the aforementioned ocean swims for the Playhouse on July 22, the county lifeguard tournament at Smith Point on July 31, and the national junior and senior lifeguard tournaments at Daytona Beach, Fla., from Aug. 9 through 12.

As for Fighting Chance, Darrow said he thought Swim Across America, though it had severed ties with Fighting Chance swimming-wise, would continue to donate to his organization. “There were no hard feelings,” he said of the parting. “We were a fish out of water, as it were. Most of Swim Across America’s money goes to cancer research at hospitals such as Memorial Sloan Kettering and M.D. Anderson, and Fighting Chance is not research-oriented. They encouraged us to go local.”

He estimated that Saturday’s swims would net the cancer services effort about $20,000, less than it had netted from the annual Swim Across America events in Amagansett, but a good start, he said.

Moreover, Darrow said, “we’ve got lots of events this summer, one on July 15 at a beautiful house in Dering Harbor [on Shelter Island] for 125 people who are being asked to donate only $75, as was the case with the swimmers today, and a wine bus on Aug. 19 for $125 a head. The Jitney has given us a bus. We’ll go by ferry from Sag Harbor to three vineyards on the North Fork and taste 20 wines. Roman Roth [of the Wolffer Estate Vineyard] will be on the trip and will tell us all about them.”

As for that day’s swimmers, “Many of them, you know, are doing it for someone in their family who has died of cancer or who has cancer, and there are cancer patients themselves who have just gotten through chemotherapy and are wondering how they can rebuild their lives. They’re saying to themselves, ‘I’m going to swim that half-mile if it’s the last thing I do.’ And they come out as if they’ve been baptized! They’ve been through fire and water.”

A Lopped Line

The tag line from last week’s story on the Topping Riding Club in Sagaponack was lopped. Here it is: “It can be 90 degrees and you wouldn’t know it here,” said Mercedes Mann. “The pony campers all would love it if we put bunk beds in the stable.”

More Men’s Soccer

A 7-on-7 men’s soccer tournament is to be held at Fiske Field on Shelter Island the evenings of Monday, July 31, and Monday, Aug. 7. The tournament, named after the late Simon Gavron, raises money for Shelter Island causes. The entries of John Romero, who coached his Maidstone Market team to a 7-on-7 championship at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on July 12, have won the Shelter Island tournament the past several years.

Room for More Divers

There is room for a few more enrollees in Mica Marder’s free-diving courses that are to begin Saturday in Montauk. Marder, who has free-dived throughout the world, said that while interest is growing in the sport, particularly when it comes to spearfishing, aficionados often jump in before they’ve been properly schooled. 

Under the Evolve Free Diving aegis, Marder is offering two-day and four-day courses based at a private pool in Montauk. “That’s where we’ll meet,” he said during a conversation Tuesday morning. Static breath-hold techniques are to be taught there. “People don’t believe you can hold your breath for three minutes, but, with the proper techniques, you can,” he said. “We’ll also be doing line diving, using a line with a weight on the bottom and spotters, about 20 miles offshore in 200 feet of water.”

Basic free diving, he said, is done up to a depth of 60 feet, intermediate free diving up to 132 feet. The website through which one can register is evolvefreediving.com.

Little League Playoff Losses

East Hampton’s 9-10 traveling all-star baseball team coached by Henry Meyer, Tim Garneau, and Greg Brown, after becoming the first 9-10 baseball team from here to win a district championship (the 1991 team that won district and county titles having been a 9-through-12 one) lost both games it played in Section IV’s double-elimination tournament, to Smithtown-St. James and Huntington. The young Bonackers lost 12-5 to Smithtown-St. James and 7-2 to Huntington. 

“The wheels fell off both times following rain delays,” said Garneau. “We were leading 5-2 after four innings when the rain came in the first one, and the score was 2-2 after four when rain began to fall in the second.”

The future looks bright, however, Garneau continued. “Our outlook is very positive. Winning the District 36 tournament was our goal this year, and we did that. Going into the sectionals we were at somewhat of a disadvantage inasmuch as we’d played a number of games in a row, which cut into our pitching. We were just unlucky. Two years from now, when these kids are 11 and 12, we could well win it all.”

Thursday, July 20

LIFEGUARDING, Main Beach invitational tournament, 4 p.m.

Saturday, July 22

SWIMMING, East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad’s Montauk Ocean Swim Challenge, half-mile, mile, and 5K distances, Ditch Plain, 7 a.m.

Sunday, July 23

COLLEGIATE BASEBALL, Riverhead Tomcats vs. Sag Harbor Whalers, Mashashimuet Park, 5 p.m.

Tuesday, July 25

COLLEGIATE BASEBALL, North Fork Ospreys vs. Sag Harbor Whalers, Mashashimuet Park, 5 p.m.

Wednesday, July 26

LIFEGUARDING, national women’s lifeguarding championships, Sandy Hook, N.J.