July 2, 1992

A five-mile road race dubbed “the Sir Thomas Crapper Memorial Runs,” in honor of the reputed father of the flush toilet, “the Edison of the loo,” will be held in Springs Saturday morning.

July 9, 1992

Because its 1991 entry in the Little League District 36 tournament won the county championship, East Hampton has received a first-round bye in the double-elimination tourney.

. . . Since it won the county championship, East Hampton has been divided into Town and Village leagues, each with separate charters. Because of the split, Alex Walter does not envision another county championship team from here in the near future, though he welcomes the expansion, which has provided more youngsters with an opportunity to play baseball. “Splitting the leagues has been very successful,” he said. 

In related news, a number of those who played on last year’s county-championship team are now playing for the East Hampton Senior (Babe Ruth) League team, which is coached by Henry Meyer and Bill McGintee.

“It’s more fun this year,” Henry Uihlein said before the start of the East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch softball league’s all-star game at Herrick Park Tuesday night.

“Why?” he was asked.

Uihlein thought a moment, and then turned to his team’s pitcher, Kathy Enck. “Why, Kathy?”

“The emphasis is not on winning anymore,” Enck replied. “We play hard, but if we lose, we lose. . . . Actually, when we have our whole team here we never lose.”

“That’s right,” said Uihlein, whose competitive fire is by no means extinguished.

July 16, 1992

The Gold Cup powerboat races, last seen in Montauk in 1931, “when,” according to the Montauk Yacht Club’s manager, Guy LaMotta, “Carl Fisher and his buddies from Port Washington raced around the lake at 54 miles per hour, which was pretty good then,” returned last weekend.

. . . “Better than sex . . . almost as good as sex . . . you’re carrying the mail . . .” were among the responses offered when drivers, throttlemen, and navigators were asked to describe the feeling of careening over choppy offshore waters at an average of 90 miles per hour, which is generally regarded as the equivalent of doing 180 or 200 on land.

. . . The Gold Cup laurels went to James Laznovsky’s “Extractor,” with Laznovsky, Frank Monte, and Bob Guzzo aboard. Averaging 92 miles per hour, the 32-foot Superboat was the overall winner and topped the D division as well.

Asked how it felt to race, Monte replied, with a smile, “It scares the crap out of you.”

It finally happened: Fred’s Big Guns, the hitherto-pre-eminent team in the East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league, boasting a 21-game winning streak that began in Southampton last winter, suffered its first defeat Monday night, at the hands of Tipperary Inn.

Ken Weldon, Tipperary’s 50-something pitcher, had much to do with pinning the 10-5 first-ever loss on the young Guns as he pitched — as well as can be done in slow-pitch — to spots.

The Guns’ heavy artillery blasted only one home run, by Jeff (Fudge) Miller in leading off the bottom of the sixth inning, a drive that just eluded the grab of the Inn’s left fielder, David Von Frank, as it bounced off the crossbar into the parking lot. 

. . . As a result of the loss, the Guns’ record dropped to 11-1, and the Inn’s improved to 11-2. 

July 23, 1992

An eight-year veteran of the Spanish professional basketball leagues, Howard Wood was to have left from East Hampton Sunday for a very brief stay in Spain in order to become a Spanish citizen, a maneuver that ought to lengthen his playing career and earn him more money.

. . . The jovial 33-year-old is one of Spain’s better-known players. He recently signed a two-year contract with Liria, a Valencia team in the highest division, with a one-year renewal option.

. . . Most Americans playing in the Spanish leagues do not go native, though Wood has. He speaks the language so fluently that at times he has done voice-overs for telecasts of sporting events from the United States, including the Super Bowl.

. . . His closest call, he said, had not come on the basketball court, but in the square of a small village. He and one of his teammates had been invited there to run before some young bulls, 700 to 800-pounders. Having “ducked into a lady’s house” on the first pass, they emerged to find themselves alone in the square with the herd, which had circled about and was now bearing down on them.

“Larry jumped and grabbed onto something. That left me all alone. Every doorway was filled with people.” As best he could, Wood tried to melt into a wall as the beasts thundered by inches from him, guessing, rightly, that when they ran in a group they would look neither to the left or right. 

“When a bull is alone — that’s when you’ve got to watch out,” Wood said. He added, with a smile, “I haven’t told the coach about this. I guess he won’t read The Star.”

. . . Wood readily acknowledges that his 21-year-old brother, Kenny, is “much more of an all-around player than I am . . . I’m a low-post player with a 15-foot jump shot.” 

It wasn’t easy playing in the paint in Spain, he continued. “If you’re the only American, they converge on you. You have to become a good passer. Well,” he confessed, flashing one of his knowing smiles, “I still shoot . . . I don’t pass that much!”

Kevin Bunce, who has been bringing along young rugby players in the past few years, having taken over the under-19 reins from Rich Brierley, can point with some pride now to the fact that three of his protégés — Brandon Johnson, Axel Alanis, and Josh King — have won scholarships to play the increasingly popular sport in college.

Johnson already has a season under his belt at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md., where it is said he played well enough to be ranked in the country’s top 50. Alanis and King are to matriculate at American International College, in Springfield, Mass., this fall.

Alanis said during a recent conversation at The Star that he had been made aware of the sport in his junior year at East Hampton High School, the year East Hampton didn’t have the numbers to field a football team. “Coach Bunce first saw us in the spring, when Josh and I were with the track team. Then we reconnected in the fall when we were playing football and he was working the chains.”

King heard from Alanis that a fledgling under-19 side was practicing at East Hampton’s Herrick Park. “I showed up one day, in the early spring, and got injured,” said King, with a slight smile. “I got a concussion.”

“I don’t remember,” he said when asked how it had happened. 

“I do,” said Alanis. “He was going to tackle someone in warm-ups, and he ducked his head, which he shouldn’t have done. We did that in football, but it wasn’t the normal way to do it in rugby. . . . We were all beginners, all new to the game. . . .”

In answer to another question, King said that because of the concussion his parents “thought I was crazy to play rugby,” forbade him to play, and urged him to stick with football. 

Of the two, rugby, primarily because spearing is eschewed when tackling (indeed rugby’s safer tackling techniques are being taught to football players now), and because it is a more fluid game, the ball being live most of the time, has been shown to be the less injurious sport — facts that were to prove persuasive when Coach Bunce talked with King’s parents. 

“There’s a constant flow in rugby — in football it’s like 30 seconds,” said Alanis, who is a 210-pound hooker, the player responsible for playing the ball back with his feet to his teammates in rugby’s scrums. “It’s a combination of football and wrestling, even basketball when it comes to the routes you run.”

Both King and Alanis wrestled in high school — King, who weighs 260, wrestled up at 285, and Alanis competed at 195. In rugby, King is a prop forward, one of two props who hold the hooker up between them as he contends for the ball once it’s been introduced into the scrum.

When told East Hampton’s wrestling team had fallen on hard times of late, Alanis said he was sure it would come back. “Things go in cycles,” he said.

Both — as has Johnson, who is one of Mount Saint Mary’s center backs — have played, at Coach Bunce’s instance, in regional tournaments and in developmental camps where they have been seen by college coaches.

“Axel and Brandon and me went to the Olympic training camp in Saratoga Springs over a year ago — Kevin took us up there,” King said, adding that there had been “good feedback.”

“The coach at Mount Saint Mary’s wanted Brandon,” said Alanis. “He saw our under-19 team, the Big House Colts, play St. Francis, I think it was, in the city. . . . Brandon’s a very powerful runner. He’s a prop in 7s,” the faster, pared-down version of 15-on-a-side rugby that is now an Olympic sport.

Rob Guiry, American International’s rugby coach, said in an email, “We’re very excited to bring Axel and Josh up to AIC in the fall. Axel is a great communicator and a strong leader on the field. He’ll fit in great with this team. Josh is raw, with great size and strength — a three-sport athlete in high school. I’m looking forward to getting my coaching claws into him and developing him as a rugby player.”

As for AIC’s rugby history, Guiry said, “We’ve had back-to-back undefeated seasons in 15s, and back-to-back East Coast Rugby Conference championships, beating teams like Boston College, Fairfield, UConn, and UMass — quite an accomplishment for a school with just over 1,300 undergrads. In 7s, we’ve gone to national championship tournaments the last three years, finishing second in 2016, and making it to our first college rugby championship this year, a game that was televised on NBC.”

When asked about 7s, Alanis said he liked it, “but there’s a lot more running — you’re covering the same amount of space with just seven guys. Nobody can let up. If somebody breaks through a hole, it’s off to the races.”

King said Guiry had seen him play in a 7s tournament on Randalls Island this past fall. 

Asked if he would have gone to college otherwise, King smiled and said he probably would have, but not, presumably, with the same enthusiasm. Alanis, who went to Suffolk Community College last fall, agreed. “I would have gone to college,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have played rugby.”

“At AIC they’ve got players from all over the world, from Italy, Portugal, England, Ireland . . . they’ve got a damn good rugby team,” said Alanis. “It’s top-level rugby, the highest you can get.”

“Knock on wood,” King said, in reply to a question, “I haven’t been injured lately.” He added that his brother, Nick Wyche, a freshman at the high school, a former football player whom he had persuaded to come out for rugby, “broke his kneecap and tore ligaments around his knee playing football. He decided to stick with rugby.”

“The worst I’ve had,” said Alanis, “is a bloody nose.”

In parting, they said that they hoped Coach Bunce would come to see them play. 

The Maidstone Market repeated as the champion of the Wednesday evening 7-on-7 men’s soccer league at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on July 12 by coming back to defeat Bateman Painting 2-1.

Bateman, which had been the runner-up to the Market in the fall as well, by a score of 2-0, had fewer players (Rafa Santos, who had been red-carded the week before, was particularly missed) but gave Maidstone — the perennial champion before East Hampton F.C.-Bill Miller entered the league some years ago — all it could handle in the first half. 

Bateman kicked off and immediately went on the attack, and though it was parried, John Lizano, a very strong player whom the Market’s defenders had a hard time containing, drew attention to himself, repeatedly streaking, as he did, down the left sideline. 

Cristian Rios, Bateman’s goalie, was also prominent, especially in the first half, when he made several beautiful, flat-out saves.

The Painters got on the scoreboard first, thanks to a 10-yarder by Juan Zuluaga, who beat Ivan Mesa, the Market’s goalie, to the far post. 

The icebreaker was scored just about halfway through the first 30-minute period. Xavi Piedramartel almost tied it four minutes later when his hard shot caressed Bateman’s crossbar as it sailed by. 

Mesa came close to creating a problem for himself when, in the 25th minute, he came far out of the cage (Mesa often is a forward when he’s not goaltending) and had the ball taken from him. The subsequent shot, aimed at a momentarily empty net, went wide. 

Just before the halftime break, Bateman was presented with a free penalty kick after Julian Barahona took Lizano down about 20 yards out, but that shot too went wide. 

Besides the offensive spark provided by Lizano, and Rios’s agile goalkeeping, Bateman had its defenders, Gonzalo Presedo, Carlos Bolvito, and Romulo Tubatan (who periodically bolstered attacks), to thank for the fact that the Market was held scoreless in the first frame. Maidstone, because of a yellow-carding, was a man up in the first half’s waning moments, and also in the opening moments of the second.

The defending champs began to come on in the second period, however. A rocketed shot by Barahona was somehow saved by a diving Rios in the 40th minute.

In the 45th, with Maidstone again a man up, thanks to Presedo’s yellow-carding after taking Ernesto Valverde, one of the Market’s forwards, down, Barahona unleashed another hard shot that Rios stopped. From that point on, Maidstone was pretty much continually on the attack, tiring Bateman’s besieged defenders.

Zuluaga and Bolvito blocked shots in those anxious moments, but eventually, in the 50th minute, Maidstone tied it 1-1 on a diving header by Barahona of a chipped pass from Jefferson Ramirez, who had been to the left of the goal. Rios could do nothing on that one. Barely a minute had passed when Maidstone scored again, the ball going from Barahona to Valverde to Ramirez, who banged home what proved to be the game-winner.

Tubatan, with a defender on him, drove in on Mesa in the final minute. Mesa came out, and Tubatan let it go, though the ball wound up pressed between Mesa’s legs.

Rios came up with one more big save in the final seconds, on a free kick taken by Piedramartel. 

“I think we were a little tired,” Tubatan said as the Maidstone players were celebrating. 

“We had it right there — it could have gone either way,” Lizano added. “We had so many opportunities. They were just making time at the end, you know, because they were ahead.”

The Market barely made it to the final, its semifinal game with Bill Miller on July 5 having gone down to a penalty kick shootout that finally ended in the ninth round when John Romero Jr. put a shot by Carlos Lucero, who had subbed for Bill Miller’s regular goalie, Quique Araya, that night. Before Romero stepped to the line, Mesa stopped a waist-high shot aimed his way by Bill Miller’s Gehider Garcia.

Bateman, whose opponent was F.C.-Tuxpan, had an easier time of it in the playoffs’ semifinal round, defeating Tuxpan 5-2, with goals by Lizano (two),  Santos, Tubatan, and Zuluaga. 

Wilber Flores, who was to wind up as the league’s “goleador,” its high-scorer, had one goal, and Orlando Bautista had one for the losing team.

A 26-year-old San Fransciscan, Matt Watson, won Sunday’s Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon in 1 hour, 4 minutes, and 22 seconds. 

Tom Eickelberg, a six-time winner of this event, which comprises a half-mile swim, a 14-mile bike leg, and a 5K trail run, was absent. Watson said he was looking forward to going up against him, but as it was Watson, who grew up in Fairfield, Conn., was unchallenged, exiting the water in 10:36 and extending his lead with a 32:50 bike and a 19:45 run.

Kira Garry, a part-time Montauker and Yale graduate who recently finished graduate work at the University of Michigan, was the women’s winner (and eighth over all), in 1:13:06 — a feat all the more notable for the fact that a year and a half ago she had suffered two pelvic fractures, a sacral fracture, and a broken collarbone in an auto accident in Michigan, her mother, Louisa, said.

Kira was one of three family members in the triathlon, which EventPower has overseen for the past 22 years. Her 58-year-old father, Bill, who was 19th, overtook his eldest daughter on the bike, though she, whose 18:25 appeared to be the fastest 5K of the day, overtook him on the run. No surprise there, for Kira ran cross-country and track in all four of her years at Yale.

Kira’s younger sister, Katrina, who is a Yale senior, placed 37th, in 1:21:18. Neither of the Garrys are lifeguards this year, though the town’s women’s team, coached by Paige Duca and Lucy Kohlhoff, is nevertheless expected to be strong.

Duca and Kohlhoff competed Sunday, with the former finishing 33rd, in 1:20:37, and with the latter finishing 88th, in 1:28:30.

Two guys in their 50s, Adrian MacKay and David Powers, of East Hampton, were in the top five — MacKay, the runner-up, in 1:06:39, and Powers, who is coming back from a hand injury, in 1:12:07.

Last year’s women’s winner, Betsy Eickelberg, was the runner-up to Garry (and 28th over all) in 1:20:14. Her brother’s splits last year were 11:08, 32:33, and 18:41. By contrast Watson’s were 10:36, as aforesaid, 32:50, and 19:45. Last year, by the way, marked the first time that a brother and sister had topped this triathlon.

Mike Petrzela, 42, who “won” the Fighting Chance two-mile swim in Sag Harbor the week before, placed sixth on Sunday, nine seconds behind Powers, who is 50. “I tried to chase David down in the run — I’m getting closer and closer,” Petrzela said.

Powers and Petrzela, as well as a number of others among Sunday’s 263 finishers, said they intend to do the Montauk Playhouse distance swims in Montauk this Saturday. 

“It’s my favorite swim,” said Petrzela. “You go along the cliffs, it’s an incredible view.” Powers and Petrzela came in together at the Ditch Plain finish line last year. Petrzela breathes, he said, to the left, Powers to the right, so they were able to keep tabs on each other as they powered through the waves.

Speaking of distance swimming, Spencer Schneider, a member of the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad, said he intends to swim from Montauk Point to Block Island at the beginning of September, with Dennis Loebs, in “a lobster boat,” with Sinead FitzGibbon, in an ocean scull, and perhaps also with Dan Farnham, his “navigator,” in his entourage.

As far as he knew, said Schneider, no one had ever swum this particular crossing before. “It’s 14 miles in the ocean as the crow flies,” he said, “though because of the arc I’ll have to swim at the start, to take advantage of the tides, it will probably be more like 18.”

Craig Brierley, who was 34th in 1:20:37, and who trains East Hampton’s 40-strong junior lifeguard competition team, said, when asked, that last Thursday’s I-Tri Youth Triathlon at Long Beach in Noyac had to be postponed because of a severe storm that brought lightning with it. “It began to rain at 5:15, we put the start off until 6, but it was still stormy then, so we had to call it off.”

He did not know, he said, when the youth triathlon would be held. “They were thinking of doing it this Thursday, but that’s the day of the Main Beach invitational lifeguard tournament.”

Besides the above-mentioned, other locals seen in Sunday’s crowd gathered on the lighthouse bluff were Thomas Brierley (13th, in 1:15:20), Mike Bahel (14th, in 1:15:24), John Broich (16th, in 1:15:41), Evan Drutman (17th, in 1:16:20), Sophia Swanson (75th, in 1:27:26), Brian Monahan (112th, in 1:32:52), Andrew Foglia (128th, in 1:34:40), Walter Cook (134th, in 1:34:56), Isabella Tarbet (144th, in 1:36:09), Isabella Swanson (190th, in 1:44:54), Mike Vasti (205th, in 1:48:09), and Fran McConnell (258th, in 2:15:35).

Bahel, who topped the men’s 50-54-year-old group, and who, along with Kevin Barry, Cook, Monahan, Broich, and Doug Milano, is to do the Lake Placid Ironman this weekend, said, with a smile, “I’m turning 51 next week and I don’t want to be in the bleachers with a cane when my 2-year-old son is playing sports at the high school.” Bahel has three other children as well, whose ages are 4, 16, and 19. It will be the third Ironman at Lake Placid for Bahel, who last did it in 2009. Broich, who lives in Sag Harbor, said he had done Lake Placid “a bunch of times.”

Drutman, who crossed the finish line with his 3-year-old daughter, Natalie, and with his yellow Lab, Glory, said, “The conditions were wonderful today. My wife [Adriana] said I might have finished higher this year, but that may have been because there were fewer in the elite wave. Kira and I were very much neck and neck on the run. Everybody was saying, ‘Go, Kira!’ A guy in a parked car called out to me, ‘Lose!’ ”

Schneider said he was very excited about his planned swim to Block Island. “I guess I gotta do it now!” he said.

July 30, 1992

“This is the real Artists-Writers game, it’s more sincere,” said Christopher Blake, a 32-year-old Boston architect, who had come to Maidstone Park Saturday for the annual Maidstoners-Max’s Kansas City softball game and feast.

Billy Hofmann, who with Dan Christensen founded the Maidstoners when Wolfie’s Tavern was The Birches, and who was a charter member of the 1950s and ’60s Greenwich Village softball team that, to hear him tell it, vanquished all comers, was inclined to agree.

The now-defunct Max’s, one of several clubs owned by Mickey Ruskin, played its games on a field at New York University that has since fallen victim to the atomic age, said Hofmann.

“A building with no windows, N.Y.U.’s nuke lab, is on the spot now — if there were secretaries inside, they’d demand windows.”

. . . “The original team, which began playing for the Cedar Tavern [the Abstract Expressionists’ watering hole] had guys like LeRoi Jones, John Chamberlain, Joe Oppenheimer, Fielding Dawson,” said Larry Hillenberg, who sported a Max’s Kansas City T-shirt that advertised steak, lobsters, and chickpeas.

. . . The Maidstoners routed Max’s team 10-1. “We might have done better,” Christensen said, “if Mike [Buchicchio, the relief pitcher] had arrived earlier. He was five minutes and 10 runs late.”

“It took me an hour and 20 minutes to get here from Hampton Bays,” Buchicchio sighed.

. . . Solidarity is what the Maidstoners say they are about. When their acting coach Pete Durst’s young son, Peter Jr., was injured recently in a bicycle accident, Durst’s mates rallied around, buying the youth a new bike and helmet. In addition, Pancho Mendez and Arturo Calderon dedicated a Wednesday evening men’s soccer league playoff game to him, retiring a jersey in his honor, and plan to present Peter with World Cup tickets at a Hispanic tournament in Montauk later this summer.

. . . Hillenberg, who roped a couple of hits, said, “I was listening to the radio once and Tony Oliva, I think it was — at least he was Hispanic and a former batting champion — said that once you’re set you shouldn’t move, and that when the ball comes you should throw the barrel of your bat at it. It works!”

Thursday, July 27

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs begin, (4) Schenck Fuels vs. (1) Bono Plumbing, 6:45 p.m., and (3) P.B.A. vs. Groundworks (2), 8, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Friday, July 28

TENNIS, U.S.T.A.-sanctioned tourneys for boys and girls, Ross School, 9 a.m.

Sunday, July 30

RUNNING, Jordan’s 5K walk/run, Pierson High School, Sag Harbor, 8:30 a.m., check-in from 7.

Monday, July 31

LIFEGUARDING, Suffolk County lifeguard tournament, Smith Point Beach, 9 a.m.

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 Simon Gavron tournament, pool play, Fiske Field, Shelter Island, 4 p.m.

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs begin, Hank Zebrowski field, Edgemere Road, Montauk, 7 and 8:15 p.m.

Tuesday, August 1

YOUTH BASKETBALL, Long Island Elite/A.A.U. camp, East Hampton Middle School, through next Thursday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.

WOMEN’S SLOW-PITCH, second games of first-round best-of-three series, Groundworks vs. P.B.A., 6:45 p.m., and Bono Plumbing vs. Schenck Fuels, 8, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett.

Wednesday, August 2

MEN’S SLOW-PITCH, playoffs, Hank Zebrowski field, Edgemere Road, Montauk, 7 and 8:15 p.m.

Thursday, August 3

BENEFIT SOFTBALL, Travis Field memorial tournament, Terry King ball field, Abraham’s Path, Amagansett, 5 p.m., through Sunday, Aug. 6.

Jordan’s Run

A 5K run/walk in memory of the late Marine Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter is to be held in Sag Harbor on Sunday. Based at Pierson High School, the run/walk is to start at 8:30 a.m. There will be check-in from 7. Participants can register online through ItsYourRace.com. The day-of-race registration fee will be $40 — $35 in advance.

Hoops Camp

The Long Island Elite/A.A.U. basketball camp for 6 through 18-year-olds is to be held at the East Hampton Middle School’s gym Tuesday through next Thursday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day. The cost is $235 per camper, $265 if lunch is included. Don Reese ([email protected]) and Jennifer Fowkes ([email protected]) are handling registration.

Run for Rotary

The East Hampton Rotary Club’s 10K and 5K races based at Fresh Pond in Amagansett are to be held on Saturday, Aug. 5, at 9 a.m. Lara Siska (631-324-9429), Karen Collins (631-324-0197), and Pat Gilchrest (patgilchrest@ optonline.net) are handling registration.

Ross Tourneys

The Ross School Tennis Center is playing host to five U.S.T.A.-sanctioned tournaments for boys and girls this summer. The first is to begin tomorrow. Players can register online through tennislink.usta.com. More information can be had by emailing [email protected] or by calling 631-907-5162.

Things went swimmingly this past week inasmuch as a lifeguard tournament was held last Thursday at East Hampton’s Main Beach, a youth triathlon to benefit the I-Tri program was held that same evening at Noyac’s Long Beach, and a masters swim meet was contested Saturday at a house on Georgica Close Road here.

The lifeguard tournament was of interest primarily because the East Hampton Town women’s A team won vis-a-vis its peers, while the town men’s A team placed second, behind the perennial champion, Smith Point.

Smith Point brought a strong women’s team too. It and East Hampton’s A team were tied at 35-35 going into the final competition, beach flags, but with Amanda Calabrese and Sophie Kohlhoff placing one-two in that event, East Hampton wound up a 42-40 winner.

It was the fifth straight time East Hampton’s women have won this tournament. They were to have competed in the national all-female guards tournament yesterday at Sandy Hook, N.J.

Calabrese was named as the M.V.P., given her wins in beach flags and as a member of East Hampton’s winning paddleboard and 4-by-100 relay teams.

“It was the best women’s competition ever,” said John Ryan Sr., who, at 82, is the second-oldest certified lifeguard on Long Island.

Besides Calabrese and Kohlhoff, the winning women’s team comprised Sophia Taylor, Julia Brierley, Dana Cebulski, Katia Dombrowski, Bella Swanson, Amanda Nasti, Marikate Ryan, and Paige Duca, its captain.

Taylor was fourth in the opening event, the distance swim; Duca and Cebulski finished one-two in the distance run; the rescue board relay team won; the sprint relay team, anchored by Kohlhoff, won, and, as aforesaid, Calabrese won the pivotal beach flags race, a musical chairs event in which contestants, after rising from a prone position and wheeling around, rush 25 yards over the sand to grab at an ever-decreasing number of stakes.

Southampton’s women finished third, East Hampton’s B team (Nina Piacentine, Estelle Sweeney, Abby Nanci-Ross, Lucy Kohlhoff, Kelsey Vela, Olivia Brabant, Sophia Swanson, Alex Ebel, and Jenna Budd) finished fourth, Fire Island was fifth, and East Hampton Village was sixth.

In the men’s competition, Smith Point, with 53.5 points, won, followed by the East Hampton A team, with 48, Southampton Town, with 39.5, Westhampton Beach, with 38, East Hampton’s B team, with 28.5, East Hampton Village, with 23, the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad Legends, with 15, and Southampton Village, with 8. Griffin Taylor, who swims at Boston College, won the distance swim and Ryan Fowkes was the runner-up in the distance run for the town’s A team. Lucas Pryor was the runner-up in beach flags.

The women’s A team was either first or second in all the events save one, the landline rescue, in which it finished third.

Pretty much at the same time the lifeguard tournament was going on, I-Tri’s youth triathlon (300-yard swim, 7.5-mile bike, and 1.5-mile run) was underway at Long Beach in Noyac. A storm with lightning had caused it to be postponed a week. Theresa Roden, I-Tri’s founder, said there were plenty of East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad members on hand to assure the competitors’ safety.

Tyler Pawlowski, 14, won it, in 35 minutes and 19.60 seconds, Kal Lewis, a 15-year-old Shelter Islander known for his long-distance running prowess, was second, in 41:47.87, and Bella Tarbet, 14, of East Hampton, a good runner and swimmer, was third, in 43:35.49. There were 114 finishers.

Bill and Dominique Kahn’s house and its three-lane 25-yard pool was the site of the masters swim meet, all of whose events, namely 50-yard and 100-yard freestyle races, a 100-yard individual medley, and 200 freestyle and 200 medley relays, were closely contested.

Tim Treadwell, a member of the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad who oversees an open water group at Albert’s Landing in Amagansett, and whose mother, Jean, died of pancreatic cancer recently, was the race director of the fund-raiser, which reportedly yielded more than $3,500 for the Lustgarten Foundation’s work in finding a cure for pancreatic cancer.

Among the masters swimmers participating were Lori King, an intrepid open water swimmer who did the 200 breaststroke in college, Evan Drutman, a top age-group triathlete, Spencer Schneider, an Ocean Rescue Squad member who’s to swim the 14-mile Montauk-to-Block Island crossing in early September, Toby Dow, Marci Honerkamp, Michael Wootton, Nicky Bindler, Maria Greenlaw, Tom Cohill, the Hurricanes’ youth swim team coach and a masters coach, Norma Bushman, the Y.M.C.A.’s aquatics director, Eli Adler, a 31-year-old triathlete (and the youngest masters swimmer there), and Eli’s father, Ron, who recently won eight age-group gold medals in the Maccabiah Games. He medaled in 8 of the 11 events in which he competed. “One more and I would have outdone Michael Phelps,” he said.

Treadwell said, in answer to a question, that, over all, there were 40 to 50 masters swimmers here seriously pursuing the sport the year round.

Tickets to the Stephen Talkhouse nightspot in Amagansett, a gift certificate to the World Pie restaurant in Bridgehampton, and Olympic Gold goggles went to winners.

“All the swimmers were winners — just for suiting up and competing,” Treadwell said. The Kahns said, according to Joe Viviani, the event’s publicist, that they will play host to the fund-raiser again next year.

In Jeff Mayer’s version of “Field of Dreams” it wasn’t “if you build it, they will come,” but rather they came and so he built it — the “it” in this case being a BMX pump track at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton.

Rewind three years. Mayer, a former BMX pro, D.J., and designer, was spending his first summer at the Hayground Camp with his wife, Angela De Vincenzo, a learning specialist, and their son, Luca. The couple were running their Blocks, Trucks + Art programs from the trailer of an 18-wheeler they call Big Mama.

The truck and the Mayer-De Vincenzo team were an instant hit.

The bikes weren’t initially a part of the picture, but when campers saw little Luca, then 5, so ably navigating the campus on a two-wheeler, they wanted in.

Mayer started teaching kids to ride. Some had barely been on a bike before. “It wasn’t like I was trying to teach BMX because that’s what I did,” Mayer said, recalling that first summer in Bridgehampton. As creative director of Blocks, Trucks + Art, he saw his wife as the main force behind their arts educational programming. But the BMX component of the program “really started taking off, too. Parents said, ‘You’ve changed my kids’ world; they have more confidence than they ever had,’ ’’ Mayer said.

Parents wanted more, kids couldn’t get enough of it, and the Hayground Camp director, Jon Snow, wanted to grow the bike program. So in June, Mayer worked with Jim Dellavalle of Dellavalle Designs in Stroudsburg, Pa., to build a BMX pump track on the Hayground campus, turning 264 tons of soil into a course of rolling mounds and banked turns that more experienced bikers can eventually circle without pedaling.

The track helps build bikers’ balance and strengthen gross motor skills. It’s called a pump track because riders use a pumping motion and work with the contours of the track to maintain speed and generate momentum, getting an upper and lower-body workout as they navigate their way through the course. As far as Mayer knows, it is the only track of its kind on the South Fork.

From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. he teaches BMX to campers of all ages, and on Monday through Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings, he and his wife oversee BMX sessions for kids not enrolled in the camp. Sure there are opportunities to take jumps and do tricks, but “I’m not trying to teach kids to get into the X Games; there are other camps that are more geared to that,” Mayer said. “I teach them the basics. It’s an introduction and it ties in because it makes sense with our program: Kids are using their whole body and they’re learning through play. There’s nothing more fun than riding a bike as a kid.”

The whole Blocks, Trucks + Art concept revolves around learning through collaborative play, whether that be with blocks, paint, vinyl record albums, or a dirt track.

“Everything about our program is old-school,” Mayer said. “There’s nothing techy on our truck.”

At the camp, part of the BMX elective is called Dig to Ride. “Kids have to help maintain the track in order to ride,” Mayer explained. “Kids help water it, mulch it. They’re earning their right to ride it. . . . You have to help to be a part of it.”

Once they’re introduced to the track, most kids don’t need to be asked to help. They seem innately drawn to it and empowered by the sense of purpose it gives them.

At an evening session last week, when a rider wiped out and roughed up a turn, three more were quick to start packing down the area with their hands. Circling the track seemed to calm them down and focus them.

Evenings begin with free riding, and then Mayer calls a “team meeting” to check in with the cyclists and review the basics. The structure is loose, but it’s hardly a free-for-all. Kids all ride in the same direction, learning how much lead-time to give each rider based on his or her skill level and familiarity with the track. Mayer keeps his eyes on the whole track, letting the kids enjoy their rides in their own way but also stepping in to work individually with the ones who need extra work.

He has music spinning on a turntable in the open trailer to set a tone for the riders. De Vincenzo, while not the biking expert he is, is on hand to help the kids or reinforce what her husband is trying to teach them. “Angela has 20 years of teaching experience with kids, so she knows how to do that part of it; she jumps in where I’m still learning.”

De Vincenzo works at the Packer Collegiate Institute, an independent prekindergarten-through-12th-grade school in Brooklyn Heights. Along with Blocks, Trucks + Art, she also tutors and does educational consulting. “Angela is brilliant at pretty much everything she does,” her husband said. “I don’t think there’s anything she’s not good at.”

He loves working with kids, but has done it for only three summers. “She’s teaching me about working with children,” Mayer said. “It’s the hardest and best thing I ever did. . . . Those moments when you connect with children, there’s nothing like seeing a kid really stoked.”

Mayer grew up on 30 acres in rural New Jersey, where his family had a Christmas tree farm and his nearest friend lived 10 miles away. He was introduced to BMX when he was 9 by a friend who was racing.

It was a new sport in the late ’70s and less known on the East Coast than the West, but “Once you caught wind of it, you would subscribe to BMX Action or Freestyle magazine and you literally waited every month for that new copy and who was on the cover and what tricks were they doing. . . . You’d study the magazine and try to do it and then try to come up with your own version of it.”

“It used to be you grabbed a shovel and some friends and you just went and built some jumps,” he said. That’s what he did on his parents’ property.

At 10 he started racing, but what he really liked were the jumps, “and I didn’t care if I came in last. . . . That’s where freestyle came in for me. I started riding 10-foot halfpipes.”

“I was getting into the sport right when it was hitting the East Coast, so I was definitely part of the pioneer end of this. We were making tricks up as we went.”

After competing through half of his teenage years, he found sponsorship. “When you’re sponsored you tour in a van and do shows. Bike shops would hire a team to come do the show and hundreds of kids would come watch. It was amazing.”

He rode professionally until the early ’90s, when he broke his knee and was out of work for six months. As he slowly transitioned away from the pro biking world, he took up D.J.ing and design, eventually heading up the branding department for a major game company.

Now he describes himself as a full-time father and part-time designer.

It was their son’s love of trucks that led Mayer and De Vincenzo to Big Mama, a 1981 Kenworth semi, and the 70-foot trailer that is summertime home base for their family and their work. Mayer also credits Luca with getting him back into biking in a way he never imagined “in a million years.”

“The irony is I kept my pro BMX life and magazines and photos and everything out of his base of knowledge. I wanted him to find what he wanted to do and his own way in life. . . . I would still kick around on a bike; I had this 30-foot-wide, 10-foot-tall halfpipe in my parents’ backyard, but I wasn’t competing anymore.”

He rode as a professional “because I love BMX,” and now he is introducing a new crop of kids to the sport with an emphasis not on competition but on the joy of riding.

Evening BMX sessions are offered on Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 8 p.m. The cost is $800 for a four-week session. Saturday open sessions run from 8 to 10 a.m. and cost $75 per day. All programs are for riders on two-wheelers. Sign-up is in person or online at blockstrucksandart.com.

The couple hope to take the program back to Brooklyn in the fall and are launching a Kickstarter campaign to make that possible “in the city and anywhere else they need it.” And P.S., Mayer and Dellavalle Designs can build you a track of your own.

Greg Stautner, who times the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad’s Ocean Challenge distance swims, said at the event Saturday that the numbers this year were so great that he had to reallocate the chips of no-shows.

There were 136 competitors in all, divided among 5K, one-mile, and half-mile swims that ended at Montauk’s Ditch Plain Beach.

“That kid was fast,” the 5K’s runner-up, Mike Petrzela, who’s 42, said of the winner, Jonathan Boffa, a 24-year-old native of Italy who lives in New York City now.

It was “a first” in a number of ways for Boffa, a native of Verona and a former sprinter (the 100 freestyle) on Italy’s national team who is a graphic designer now for the Deutsch agency. “It was my first open water swim, my first 5K, and it’s the first time I’ve been out here,” said Boffa, who was a house guest of the fifth-place finisher, Matt O’Grady.

Swimming, he agreed — Boffa swims three times a week at Chelsea Piers — helps to assure a good mind-body balance. “The water was flat, it was gorgeous,” he said of the 5K swim.

“At about the halfway mark, he’d left everyone in his wake,” Dan Gualtieri, one of the Ocean Rescue Squad members working the event, said.

The winner’s time was 1 hour, 4 minutes, and 26 seconds. Petrzela was the runner-up, as aforesaid, in 1:11:56. “The first two were Europeans,” Petrzela, a native of the Czech Republic, and a former Syracuse University swimmer, said. It was, he added, perhaps the first time in recent years that he’d bested his friendly rival and former New York Athletic Club teammate, David Powers, who was seventh, in 1:16:50. The two broke the tape, as it were, together at Ditch Plain last year.

There were 15 in the 5K, including the former perennial winner, Rod McClave, who finished fourth, and Lori King, the women’s winner (and eighth over all), who has the Catalina Channel and the Eight Bridges race in the Hudson River among her super-long-distance credits.

King, who is to vie in the 30K Kalamata-to-Koroni open water race in Greece on Sept. 9, said of the Ocean Challenge, “These guys [the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad] have it down. It’s the best-run open water swim I know of. You never feel alone, as you do in some of them. You know that if you can’t see a buoy, there will be someone right there beside you.”

As for the Kalamata-Koroni race, which offers prize money, King said, “It’s about 18 miles. There are crazy winds. . . . I’ve wanted to do it for about seven years, but they usually do it over the Labor Day weekend, when school starts. The top finishers do it between 7 and a half to 10 and a half hours. There’s a cut-off, which I think I can make. I’m just looking to finish.”

Women — Casey Bice (23:03), Sophia Taylor (23:44), Margaret Tato (23:55), and Angelika Cruz (24:48) — swept the top four places in the one-miler, which drew 66 competitors. William Garry, whose daughter, Kira, had won the Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon the week before, was fifth, in 25:15.

There were 45 in the half-mile, whose top three finishers were Thinley Edwards, in 9:42, Cian Bice, in 12:27, and Chase Lieder, in 13:00.

Susan Henkin, who is the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation’s executive director, said the goal of a pool there, now that East Hampton Town has agreed to match the $3 million that had initially been raised, was being neared. “We’re going in for site plan approval this week,” she said, “though there’s still more to be done. We’re hoping to raise the remaining $2 million soon. We’re hoping, if all goes well, to start construction within a year and to open sometime in 2019.”

“And let’s hear it for the women,” she said in parting. “The first four out of the one-mile race were women. They rule!”