Hampton United, the over-30 men’s team that plays in the Suffolk Men’s Soccer League, ascended to first place in the Division I standings Sunday by virtue of a 6-2 win over previously undefeated Sporting America at Hampton Bays High School, H.U.’s home field.

Quique Araya, the goalie, reported Monday that it had been a good game. Hampton United took a 2-1 lead into the halftime break, thanks to goals by Luis Barrera and James Stones.

Sporting America tied it at 2-2 early in the second, but thereafter Hampton United, said Araya, took advantage of the opponent’s eagerness to take the lead — and, later, its efforts to tie the game — by countering its attacks.

A penalty kick by Antonio Gonzalez put the locals up for good, at 3-2, after which, said Araya, “Gehider Garcia went crazy. He finished with a hat trick.”

Jose Almansa, the team’s captain that day in the absence of Glen McKelvey, “ran the show from his center back position,” Araya said.

As a result of the win, Hampton United improved to 4-0-1. Massapequa, a team it is to play in an away game on Nov. 12, is in second, at 4-1-0, followed by Charruas 1950 (3-0-2), Sporting America (3-1-1), Celtic (2-1-2), Manorville S.C. (2-3), Inter United (1-3-1), S.F.C. New Castle (0-2-3), Stony Brook Arsenal (0-4-1), and Smithtown (0-4-1).

“We’ve won Division II, but we’ve never won Division I,” Araya said in answer to a question. “The guys think this could be the year.”

Foster Wins

East Hampton’s Turner Foster, the defending county champion, prevailed on the fifth hole of a playoff to win League VII’s individual title on Monday at the Rock Hill Golf and Country Club in Manorville. East Hampton’s team placed second, with 419 strokes, to Pierson-Bridgehampton, which had 415.

Soccer Loss

The East Hampton High School boys soccer team, which, despite tying the undefeated league champion, Amityville, recently, drew the ninth seed among the county’s Class A schools, lost 3-1 in an outbracket game at eighth-seeded Wyandanch on Monday. East Hampton’s coach, Don McGovern, had been hoping for a higher seed — and thus a home game — but “we had too many one-goal losses,” he said in an email. 

The Bonackers, nevertheless, ended the season as winners, with a 6-5-1 record in League VI play, and a 9-7-1 record over all. Wilmur Guzman scored East Hampton’s goal in the playoff game.

Boys Volleyball

East Hampton High’s boys volleyball coach, Josh Brussell, said before Monday’s match here with Smithtown East that he was happy that his young crew had made the playoffs. The Bonackers are the fourth seed in the Division II bracket whose first-round games are to be played Nov. 4.

Smithtown East won Monday’s first set with relative ease, at 25-16, after which its coach called off the dogs, going to his bench in the second set, which the Bonackers wound up winning in exciting fashion 31-29. In that second set, East Hampton’s Sutton Lynch, Clark Miller, Eamon Spencer, and James Kim found the floor with kills, and Morgan Segelken, the libero, made a great one-handed save to tie the count at 29-29, after which Smithtown East erred twice, handing East Hampton the victory. The visitors won the third and fourth sets 25-14 and 25-18.

Young Ruggers

The Section XI Warriors, a junior varsity rugby 7s team coached by Kevin Bunce, played its way into first place in a series of tournaments being played at Pelham High School upstate this past weekend by winning two games and losing one, to the host school, by a 12-10 score.

“I thought this would be our letdown week, that we’d go 0-3 or 1-2, something like that, but it wasn’t,” the coach said during a conversation Tuesday morning. “We were missing some guys, but the kids I had stepped up. We beat Bishop Loughlin 19-0 to begin with and then followed up with a 17-10 win over Thornton-Donovan before losing on an extra-point kick in the final seconds to Pelham.”

Last year, said Bunce, “we played at the varsity level, but our kids were too young to do that this year, which is why we went with a jayvee. That’s the same thing I hope they do with wrestling here. We’ve got some good young wrestlers, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth graders, but you don’t want to put ninth graders into an untenable situation where they’ll get killed all the time and quit.”

When Maureen Bluedorn, whose love of horses is evidenced in the fact that she bought a horse before she bought a house here, first spoke with Wick Hotchkiss some half-dozen years ago about setting up a not-for-profit foundation to provide local youngsters with scholarships so they could ride at Stony Hill Stables, she wasn’t sure the idea would fly. 

But fly it has, much to Bluedorn’s delight, as she said the other day in a conversation at The Star.

“You know, with these things you never know. You never know whether you’re going to be able to raise the money; you don’t know if you’ll find the right kids and whether you’ll be able to integrate them into a horse community.”

Most of the barns on the East End, said the former international banker, have become “private,” inasmuch as one has to own a horse to ride at them. Stony Hill in Amagansett, by contrast, is, in its office manager Jane Cochran’s words, “a lesson barn,” open to the public. 

All well and good, but until the foundation was founded, in 2012, most children living here year round weren’t availed of the wherewithal to embark, if they wished, upon a serious equestrian career.

“This is a country of opportunity,” Bluedorn said, “but it’s not given to you — you have to seek it out and find it. These are the kind of kids we want, kids who want it, and, I’m happy to say, we’ve been getting them. It’s turned out just as I and Wick had hoped.”

Thus far, the foundation has underwritten 30 scholarships, averaging five or so per year, scholarships that provide the young recipients with a solid four to five months of riding and horse care experience, which can lead, depending on their varying talents and ambitions, to a full-fledged year-round working and riding program.

While all of the recipients have been enthusiastic, about 20 percent, beginning with the foundation’s first honoree, Lara Lowlicht, who recently bought a horse, largely with her banked hours of work at the stable, have really taken the bit in their teeth. 

One such is Kailee Brabant, a 15-year-old East Hampton High School sophomore, one of this year’s six recipients, who came to Stony Hill three years ago, asking if she could work there.

A friend of hers, Renny Murphy — a scholarship winner from Springs, as is Kailee — had told her about Stony Hill, she said before taking a lesson on her leased horse, Gio, a 10-year-old warmblood, Saturday morning. She’d always been interested in horses, though without Stony Hill she never would have ridden, she said.

Asked what it was about horses, Kailee, who has been successfully struggling on her own to overcome an innate shyness, said, “They help with my anxiety. They calm me down.”

It had not only been “like night and day” with Kailee, who plans to pursue equestrian studies in college, said Bluedorn. “The first three scholarship students we had wouldn’t speak. You can understand. You’ve taken them out of their milieus and you’re putting them into a more rarefied existence. At first, they don’t know how to fit in. But then they learn how to, by riding and caring for a horse, by cleaning stalls, working with the other kids, sharing responsibilities, by learning what it’s like to compete. . . . It’s like teaching farmers how to farm.”

The foundation’s philosophy, to wit, that the bonds created with horses and with the Stony Hill family can be personally transforming, has been borne out many times over, she continued. “They become very confident girls and boys.”

“Kailee’s been remarkable,” Coch­ran said as Kailee went to tack up Gio. “I’ve watched her grow personally and grow as a rider. I’ve watched her blossom into an incredible young woman. She was so shy and quiet when she first came here. Working with her and with the other scholarship students has been so gratifying.”

Marisa Bush, Kailee’s trainer, said after the lesson, “She’s been making great progress. Today was the first time she cantered over poles. . . . She has shown — she was in two shows this past summer and liked it. Kids like Lara and Kailee are driven.”

Having provided the scholarship effort with a jump start, Bluedorn said she has now passed on the baton to an energetic and imaginative board — a number of them parents of former scholarship recipients. 

“They went into the community this year and got restaurants to contribute food and businesses to underwrite raffles at our fund-raiser. By doing so, we were able to cover our expenses. And we’re getting donations too from the grandparents and parents of the kids . . . the community is really behind it. The foundation is on a very good footing.”

“This was the best year for candidates,” she added. “We had 18 applications, the most ever. But it wasn’t just the numbers — we gave out six scholarships — it was our most diverse group. . . . One girl said that when she was 2 she asked her mother if she could borrow $2 so she could buy a stable.”

Besides Kailee, this year’s recipients were Olivia Walsh, 14, of Montauk, Nina King, 11, of Montauk, Nadia Binozi, 6, of East Hampton, Aaliyah Brown, 6, of East Hampton, and Johana Morales, 6, of East Hampton.

“These kids were screaming for it, it made it very easy for us to choose,” said Bluedorn. “None of them ever could have afforded to do this. . . . The kids were over the moon, and the parents were so appreciative. They’re sharing a passion; they’re developing beautiful relationships, with horses, and with others. Beautiful people come out of that. It makes my heart feel good to see that it’s continuing.”

Friday, March 15

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Half Hollow Hills West, mandatory nonleague, 4 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, Port Jefferson vs. South Fork team, Southampton High School, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 16

BASEBALL, Hampton Bays at East Hampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

BOYS BASKETBALL, “Killer Bees” documentary, with Orson Cummings, East Hampton Library, 1-3 p.m., free admission.

ICE HOCKEY, Smile Train benefit, all-day bake sale, with hockey game from 7:30-9 p.m., Buckskill Winter Club, 178 Buckskill Road, East Hampton.

Monday, March 18

BASEBALL, Southold at East Hampton, scrimmage, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 19

BOYS TENNIS, Westhampton Beach at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE, Stony Brook at East Hampton, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE, Bellport vs. South Fork team, nonleague, Southampton High School, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 20

GIRLS LACROSSE, Hauppauge at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

BASEBALL, Pierson at East Hampton, scrimmage, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wading River, 4:30 p.m.

In the season just past, and last year as well, East Hampton High’s varsity wrestling team was reduced to a skeleton crew by the end of the campaign, but there is hope, according to Jim Stewart, who, when Anthony Piscitellowas hired away to teach in Brooklyn earlier this winter, retook the reins — about a decade after having given them up.

Stewart, who oversaw perennial league champions from the mid-1980s into the ’90s, found following the varsity season, to his delight, that 14 eighth graders and 22 seventh graders, “each one more enthusiastic than the other,” had come out for junior high wrestling, a turnout that has made East Hampton the biggest team in its league.

The veteran coach agreed that wrestling here was on its way back if one went by the numbers — the aforementioned 36 at the junior high level, and the 30 youngsters in the town’s KID program overseen by Bo Campsey and Brian Mott. 

“Our junior high team is larger than Eastport-South Manor . . . larger than all of them. I’m excited for the future. I’ll stick with it. I’ve already told Joe [Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director] and Adam [Fine, the high school’s principal] that I’m interested in coaching next year. It’s a labor of love for me.” 

An admittedly demanding sport, wrestling is rewarding in many ways. Stewart has been telling his charges, among other things, that “there is no better feeling in any sport than pinning someone. It’s better than a touchdown, better than a goal, better than a hole in one. . . . And when they do win by pin they’ll say, ‘Coach, you were right!’ ” 

“Wrestling’s benefits are many,” he continued. “It will make you a person who can persevere in difficult times — that’s built into the sport — but I tell the kids to focus on what they love about wrestling not on what’s hard about it. And being on a team is good, it’s good to be a part of something bigger than yourself, and it’s good to be a good sportsman.”

When this writer said he rarely recalled seeing a former wrestler out of shape in later life, Stewart said, “My dad, who’s 94,” and is in the national wrestling Hall of Fame, “can still do cross-body rides and cradles. He comes to some of our practices.”

On the varsity this winter, Stewart “ended up with six, the minimum you need for a legal dual meet. Some days we were really struggling to pull it together, but to their credit the six kids — Santi Maya and Caleb Peralta, both freshmen, chief among them — we took to an invitational meet at Stony Brook near the end of the season beat Lexington, a school for the deaf in New York City, and Stony Brook, 35-24.”

Maya placed third at 106 pounds in the league meet, and Peralta, at 125, “just missed placing. . . . Caleb had lost 15-6 to a kid from Hauppauge in a dual meet that didn’t count because we only had four that day, and then lost to him 10-7 in the league tourney. Santi, who had lost to Hauppauge’s Frank Volpe during the league season, beat him 

handily in the leagues to place third. He went 2-2 at the counties, losing close matches to kids who wound up finishing fifth and sixth.”

The junior high team, said Stewart, has been practicing in the high school’s wrestling room, and thus has the school’s trainer, Nick Jarboe, a former Bonac wrestler himself, near at hand, as well as the Kendall Madison fitness center nearby.

Asked why the junior high turnout had been so great, Stewart said John Ryan Jr. of the middle school, the Springs School’s athletic director, Whitney Reidlinger, and Steve Redlus, also of the middle school, who is Stewart’s assistant, have all been recruiting, as has he, in the high school’s hallways.

In the four-way junior high meets, which go unscored, Stewart said he tries in conferring beforehand with opposing coaches to match up wrestlers with similar skills and experience.

While some of his eighth graders, J.P. Amaden, an East Hamptoner, Marcus Krotman, a Pierson student, and Wayne Street, a transfer from William Floyd, in particular, were experienced, others, he said, were not.

“They’re learning a lot,” he said in parting. “They’re eager; they’re having great fun. That’s the key. I hope they all come out for the varsity next year.”

In a regional basketball playoff game played this past weekend, Bridgehampton High’s Killer Bees, despite a very strong performance by J.P. Harding, who finished with 28 points and 19 rebounds (11 of them off the offensive boards), lost 66-60 to Marathon High of Cortland at the Floyd L. Maines Arena in Binghamton Sunday night.

Ron White, Bridgehampton’s coach, was quoted in Newsday as having said, “We were a couple of steps behind on [our man-for-man] defense.” Marathon, he told Newsday’s Kenny DeJohn, “was very disciplined and passed the ball very well.”

Bridgehampton led 13-10 after the first quarter. The game was tied 29-29 at the half, but Marathon outscored the Bees 22-16 in the third, which proved to be the eventual margin of victory.

Max Spooner, White’s assistant, said Monday that “our man-to-man defense lacked the intensity that we wanted. There were way too many easy drives to the bucket. Marathon was a very patient, well-disciplined, and deep group (10-man rotation) that played hard on both ends of the floor.”

Harding, who is among Suffolk’s top scorers, averaging more than 25 points per game this season, made good on 12 of 16 attempts from the field, and was, said Spooner, 4-for-5 from the foul line. Nae’Jon Ward, the junior point guard, finished with 13 points, four assists, and three steals, but went only 3-for-10 from 3-point range. Elijah White, who’s also a junior, had 13 points, including three 3s, and five assists. The team committed 12 turnovers.

That’s it, then, for the Bees, who last won a state championship in 2015, until next year. White, Ward, and William Walker, who could develop into a tough inside player, are to return. “We expect a lot of growth from that group,” said Spooner. “Meanwhile, it was a heck of a season.” 

Monday being relatively balmy, it seemed like a good time to talk to Joe Vas, East Hampton’s athletic director, about the spring season that’s been underway for the past 10 days. 

Vas said the numbers were good and that he expected all the teams — baseball, softball, boys and girls track, boys tennis, and girls and boys lacrosse — to be very competitive. 

East Hampton High’s boys lacrosse players — 24 in all — will continue to commute to Southampton for practices and for most of the South Fork team’s league games, though three are to be played here.

Concerning girls lacrosse, “The big thing,” according to Vas, “is that we’ve got Jessica Sanna, who coached two years ago and who recently got a full-time job in the district, back. There had been way too much turnover in that program — it’s on its way back now.” 

Baseball too, with Vinny Alversa and Henry Meyer coaching the varsity, was turning the corner, said the A.D., who added that “having a new turf field has kind of changed the atmosphere, if you will. They’ve been outside from day one, they worked mostly inside all winter, and they’re playing in the off-season too. Hopefully, all this work will translate into success sooner rather than later.”

As for softball, which also has languished a bit lately, “We’re thrilled that Annemarie [Cangiolosi Brown] has taken over. We wanted her to when Lou [Reale] left, but she wasn’t able to do it then. Kathy Amicucci coached in the interim, and did a fine job, but having Annemarie, who played for Lou, and who is a longtime teacher here and is invested in the community, ought to really bring this program back. John King, a teacher at Springs, and Melanie Anderson will be Anne’s assistants, and Nicole Fierro will coach the jayvee. Mylan Eckardt will be a volunteer.”

Cangiolosi Brown, Anderson, Eckardt, and Fierro — protégées of Reale’s — played in the N.C.A.A. world series at one time or another, Cangiolosi Brown for the State University at Cortland (where she still holds pitching records), Anderson and Eckardt for Bloomsburg University, and Fierro for C.W. Post. 

“These kids are very fortunate to have them all as coaches,” said Vas. “There’s a lot of softball knowledge there. Over 40 have turned out.”

The softball field, he added, had been completely redone — new clay put down on the infield with new sod and a new irrigation system in the leveled outfield. “We added a huge tarp to cover the infield, and there’s a new windscreen in the back. That field has never looked better.”

“We were ready to put in a turf infield on the softball field too,” said Vas, “but the softball community didn’t want it. They felt they wanted to stay with a natural surface. With the bunting and slap-hitting and shorter basepaths, softball is a different game. . . . We ripped everything out and put in a whole new field, which is one of the best, if not the best, in the county.”

“Again,” the A.D. said, turning to track, “we’ve got four good coaches in Ben Turnbull, Mike Buquicchio, Yani Cuesta, and Diane O’Donnell, coaches who put in the time. The coaching Ryan has received,” he said of Ryan Fowkes, who signed a letter of intent Monday morning to attend George Washington University on a partial running scholarship, “from Kevin [Barry], Bill [Herzog], and Ben, has, I think he would agree, benefited him.”

Fowkes, by the way, who broke his own indoor 1,000-meter record this winter, in addition to breaking the 1,600-meter record Erik Engstrom, now at the University of Massachusetts, had set in 2016, will take aim at the school’s outdoor 800 record and a state meet berth this spring.

“He can run the 400 too,” Barry said at the signing. “Ryan’s got great range — he’s one of the best cross-country runners I’ve ever had.”

A prospective history major, Fowkes, who was accompanied to the signing by his parents, Jennifer and Bill, in addition to Barry, Herzog, his coach at the middle school, and his guidance counselor, Lynne Yardley Brown, and the high school’s principal, Adam Fine, sports a 94.5 grade point average.

East Hampton is combined with Pierson and Bridgehampton in girls lacrosse, boys tennis, and boys and girls track. Neither baseball, softball, nor boys and girls lacrosse made the playoffs last year.

Speaking of boys tennis, Kevin McConville, the head pro at the Hampton Racquet Club, thinks it too will do well this spring, what with singles players like Jonny De Groot, Luke Louchheim, and Max Astilean.

The boys, under McConville, the first teaching pro East Hampton’s ever had as a varsity coach, shared the league title with Westhampton Beach last spring, and reached the semifinal round of the county team tournament.

The girls lacrosse team was to have scrimmaged at Patchogue-Medford yesterday, boys tennis is to play a mandatory nonleague match at Half Hollow Hills West tomorrow, and also tomorrow the South Fork boys lacrosse team is to play a nonleague game with Port Jefferson on Southampton’s turf field, at 4:30 p.m.

The Hampton Bays baseball team is to scrimmage at East Hampton on Saturday at 10 a.m., and Southold is to scrimmage here on Monday at 4:30 p.m. The Bonackers are to scrimmage at Hampton Bays Tuesday at 3:45.

Bellport’s boys lacrosse team is to play a nonleague game with the South Fork team at Southampton High School on Tuesday at 4:30, the same day that Westhampton Beach’s boys tennis team is to play a league-opening match at East Hampton and Stony Brook is to play a nonleague girls lacrosse game here, at 4:30 p.m. in each case.

Next Wednesday, Hauppauge is to play a league-opening girls lacrosse game here at 4:30, and the boys tennis team is to play at Shoreham-Wading River, also at 4:30.

New Paltz, the site of Saturday’s state regional Class C girls basketball game, was founded in 1678 by Huguenots, French Protestants fleeing mistreatment in their native land.

Good taste requires that the analogy end there, but unarguably the Pierson Whalers were in fact handled roughly there that day by the Millbrook Blazers, the top-rated Class C team in the state and the classification’s defending state champion. 

The Sag Harborites, led by their mercurial junior point guard, Chastin Giles, and poised slim senior scoring leader, Katie Kneeland, had cruised through the league season undefeated, at 16-0, and had almost upset Mount Sinai recently in the county B-C-D game. 

But Saturday’s lopsided 55-26 outcome was prefigured pretty much from the start as the Whalers, forced largely by Millbrook’s 2-3 zone to shoot from the outside, couldn’t buy a basket.

By the time Kneeland hit a 3-pointer from the left wing with 1 minute and 11 seconds left in the first period, the Whalers had collectively shot 0-for-9 (0-for-6 from 3-point range). Not that Millbrook, which took a 13-3 lead into the second period, had been all that much better.

The defending champs extended their lead in the second frame as the Whalers continued to come up empty, aside from a 3-pointer by Giles at the beginning of the period and a foul shot by her midway through. Meanwhile, Erin Fox, a tall junior Millbrook forward with good inside moves who reportedly has verbally committed to Division-1 Marist, was increasingly having her way, putting up shots over Kneeland and Celia Barranco as the Blazers’ guards, Sam McKenna and Madison Harkenrider, were chipping in with 3s. 

“They’re just too nervous,” one Pierson parent was overheard saying to a fellow Harbor rooter during the halftime break.

Neither Kevin Barron, Pierson’s coach, nor his players were about to give up, however. Down 27-7, they had faced a similar deficit in the Mount Sinai game and had come roaring back in the third quarter.

And, in the opening moments of Saturday’s third period, it looked as if they might do just that. Barranco, fouled as she fought for a rebound, made both free throws, keying a 6-0 spurt that prompted Millbrook, whose lead had been cut to 15 with 4:22 to go in the frame, to call for a timeout.

When play resumed, a couple of foul calls that Barron questioned and three straight fast-break baskets following turnovers, by Fox (two) and Claire Martell, a tall fellow forward, put the game out of reach.

Fox was to lead all scorers with 28 points. Barranco led Pierson with 10; Kneeland had 9.

“Still,” Barron was to say during a telephone conversation the next day, “the girls didn’t give up. . . . It was a tough one, but they kept their heads up.”

In the locker room afterward, he had said to the half-dozen underclassmen that they now had a goal, to get back to this game next year and to win it. When addressing the nine seniors, he said, he choked up, something that he doesn’t often do. They had been exceptional, he said, on the court and off it. Eminently coachable, they had taken to the game and to each other — a rare team. And, over all, the trip upstate, which included an overnight hotel stay in Poughkeepsie and a dinner in New Paltz after the game, had been fun. Millbrook, he thought, would go on to win a second straight state title, “easily.”

Turning to the big picture, Barron said all of the seniors were college-bound. Paige Schaefer, one of the Whaler guards, was going to Lehigh, where she will play field hockey. Katie Kneeland, aiming to major in engineering, was leaning toward the University of Maryland.   

About to take a “sabbatical from coaching” after seven years, so that he can help more in the rearing of his two small children, Barron, who lives in Center Moriches and who will continue to teach biology at the high school, said he’d told his players that the undefeated league season and the playoff ride — not to mention the fact that the team had wound up among the state’s top eight in Class C — had been a great note to go out on.

The Ellen Hermanson Foundation announced last week that more than a quarter of a million dollars in money raised will benefit cancer patients at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. Not only will $285,000 go toward the Ellen Hermanson Breast Centers and Ellen’s Well, a program that provides psychosocial support to breast and gynecological cancer survivors, but it will also be used at the Phillips Family Cancer Center, which is scheduled to open later this year in Southampton. 

The foundation has kept true to a promise made in 1996, when Ellen’s Run, its signature 5K race, started, to keep the money raised on the East End. 

“We see our job as to make sure that the latest technology is always there so that the breast center is competitive with any breast center in the country,” Julie Ratner, the foundation’s president, said by phone on Tuesday. Ms. Ratner, with her family, founded the organization after her sister died in 1995 at the age of 42. 

Since 1997, the foundation has given $4 million in grants to promote mammography, help buy state-of-the-art equipment that helps promote early detection, and offer comprehensive services for breast cancer patients and their families from diagnosis to end-of-life care. Money is raised through several events, including the popular Ellen’s Run. 

No patients are turned away from the breast center for lack of insurance or inability to pay for treatments, and Ellen’s Well services, established in 2000, are free of charge. The foundation has also helped establish the hospital’s breast centers in Hampton Bays and East Hampton.

As part of the grant, the foundation is underwriting the $85,000 cost of a Leica Mammotome Expert Biopsy Suite, which will offer the most advanced technology available in the operating room. It enables surgeons and radiologists to access and examine specimens without leaving the operating room. No longer will specimens collected during biopsies have to be transferred to another location to be analyzed. The foundation is also providing funding for a Hologic Affirm Prone Breast Biopsy System that uses three-dimensional imaging to facilitate the biopsy process. 

Despite improvements in treatment and accessibility to care on the East End, women are still dying from breast cancer, and the need is still great, Ms. Ratner said. Though the numbers are decreasing, more than 40,000 women die from the disease per year in the United States, and about one in eight women will develop invasive breast cancer in their lifetimes. 

“We’re finding, I believe, a trend toward younger women being diagnosed,” she said. “The issues that come along with a diagnosis aren’t the same for everyone — it’s related to age and where everyone is in their life. Each type of diagnosis comes with its own set of challenges.”

Programs and services offered through the Ellen Hermanson Breast Center and Ellen’s Well are mammograms, ultrasounds, and M.R.I.s for uninsured women, an oncological social worker, retreats, nutritional counseling, transportation assistance, reflexology during chemotherapy, massage and acupuncture therapy, yoga, water exercise, and strength training. 

“We cherish our longstanding partnership with the Ellen Hermanson Foundation and are grateful beyond words for this most recent grant,” said Bob Chaloner, the hospital’s chief administrative officer. “Over the years, generous grants from the foundation have made it possible for us to acquire state-of-the art equipment and provide vital and compassionate support services for breast cancer patients and their families. As a result of this collaboration, the Ellen Hermanson Breast Center at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital stands as a tribute to one woman’s courageous battle memorialized by her inspirational sisters.”

This year, the foundation is providing funding for three chemotherapy infusion chairs, which will make treatments more comfortable, to complete its pledge of 10 chairs for the Phillips Family Cancer Center, Ms. Ratner said. Each costs $10,000. 

The foundation began supporting the center after Ms. Ratner attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the County Road 39 building last year.

“It is a gift,” she said of having a state-of-the-art cancer center on the South Fork so patients don’t have to travel to Riverhead, Memorial Sloan Kettering’s outpost in Commack, Stony Brook, or even Manhattan. 

As the center opens, Ms. Ratner said, there will be other needs, and the foundation is open to hearing proposals for grant money.

Faced with challenges in the commercial district, including the need for more environmentally-friendly sewage treatment and increased parking, along with more affordable housing and the improvement of Herrick Park, the East Hampton Village Board decided at a meeting last Thursday to undertake a downtown commercial study. 

Board members have agreed a study is needed, said Becky Molinaro Hansen, the village administrator, and since many issues in the commercial core overlap, hiring consultants to provide professional guidance would aid the process.

As an example of how issues in the commercial core overlap, Barbara Borsack, a village board member, said she had been pondering ways to bring more activity to the area. “We all know that retail is not what it used to be,” she said. But, she said, because of the lack of adequate sewage, that is, a system that can handle further density and reduce the nitrogen that adversely affects ground and surface water, it would not be wise to bring new businesses into the district. “Everybody says, ‘Why can’t we be more like Sag Harbor?’ ” she said. “It’s because we can’t add restaurants because of the water issues.”

Concerns about existing septic systems have also waylaid plans to provide more affordable housing in the village by increasing the number of second-story apartments on Newtown Lane and Main Street. 

Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said the board’s goal was to construct a village sewage treatment facility but that it was an expensive undertaking that would take a long time to complete.

Addressing ongoing parking problems, Ms. Borsack said it was time to replace the ticket-dispensing machines at the entrances of the Reutershan parking lots with those that are more advanced. Outside experts, she said, could also help the board “see what technology is out there.” 

Ms. Hansen said on Tuesday that she, Ms. Borsack, and Arthur Graham, another board member, as well as Billy Hajek, the village planner, and Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer, will meet next week to prepare a legal request for proposals for the commercial study.

Separately, in another nod to technology, the board decided to move forward with increasing Wi-Fi capability and security cameras at village beaches. The board agreed increasing Wi-Fi would be a public convenience for those who want to use their smartphones as well as a safety measure.  

Ms. Hansen, who has been working with the Department of Public Works and the Police Department, said the staff at East End Computers had informed her that it would cost $3,500 to increase Wi-Fi at Main Beach by running a cable through the pavilion. The upgrade, she said, would provide service for 200 to 300 devices, including any in the parking lot as well as in and behind the building and at least 50 feet in front of it. 

As for security cameras, Chief Michael Tracey of the East Hampton Village Police Department said there already are some at Main Beach. “The cameras have been put in in such a way that it protects the building, parking lots, and approaches to the building,” he said. He noted that cameras had proved effective in helping police make arrests for theft and vandalism. 

Chief Tracey said his department had concluded that improving Wi-Fi at Main and Georgica Beaches could be accomplished easily. He suggested focusing on these locations and getting the work done by summer. Two or three security cameras are to be placed at Georgica soon after Wi-Fi becomes available. Two Mile Hollow Beach would be addressed next, he said. There is electricity in an existing structure there, but the addition of a small antenna might be needed. 

Egypt and Wiborg Beaches, which are not lifeguard protected and do not have an available structure for equipment, would be the hardest locations to provide with Wi-Fi, Chief Tracey said. He noted that it might be necessary to affix the device to a nearby light pole.

Mr. Graham had a concern about the amount of bandwidth the village would make available. “It would be terrible if we had someone trying to make an emergency call and couldn’t get through because there was a couple of other people streaming Netflix on the beach,” he said. Chief Tracey said that had not been studied, but that the village would fine-tune the installations as they progressed. 

Rose Brown, a trustee, said residents had expressed safety concerns about the walkway in Herrick Park, which reaches from the Reutershan lot to the long-term parking lot. She suggested placing security cameras there as well as in other parts of the commercial district where they could deter vandalism. 

The mayor concluded the discussion by saying the cameras would provide peace of mind for those in public areas and would not invade anyone’s privacy.

In other business, the board discussed increasing the use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to disseminate information and make it easier for residents to communicate with officials. Ms. Hansen said regulations would have to be put in place to govern who would be allowed to post comments and what postings would be acceptable. 

Mayor Rickenbach was in favor of the proposal, but said, in an obvious reference to President Trump’s use of Twitter, “I do not want this to take on a life of its own. All you have to do is look out on the national horizon to see what certain people in higher office are doing every day. You don’t conduct municipal business through the media.”