25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports 07.21.11

July 3, 1986

    As expected, Bruce Bickford, 27, of Wellesley, Mass., Track and Field News’s top-ranked 10-kilometer runner in the world last year, won Saturday’s well-attended 10K race on Shelter Island, but not in record time as the race director, Cliff Clark, had expected.

    . . . It was the second time that Bickford had entered and won at Shelter Island. The last time was in 1981. His 28:58.06 that year stood as the course and Long Island record until 1984 when the Track Athletic Congress required Clark to lengthen the course one-10th of one percent beyond the measured distance in order to have it TAC-certified.

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    John Ryan, a veteran certified lifeguard, and a trainer and Civil Service examiner of lifeguards, will launch this week an ocean safety course for 11-to-14-year-olds at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach.

July 10, 1986

    A major shift in East End high school sports schedules, grouping teams according to ability rather than enrollment, as had been the case in the past, will take place this fall.

    Richard Cooney Sr., athletic director of the East Hampton School District, and president of Conference Four, which comprises high schools largely on the East End, said the plan “is the first in Suffolk County, perhaps in the State, though Nassau has something similar. . . . We’ll be the guinea pigs. The rest of Suffolk will be looking on.”

July 31, 1986

    Sedutto’s softball team, captained by Jeff Bernstein, claimed a forfeit when Haagen-Dazs failed to show up for a game between the two East Hampton Village ice cream stores at East Hampton’s Herrick Park Tuesday morning. “They challenged us,” said Bernstein, “but obviously when it came down to it, their courage melted.”

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    Not all is peaches and cream at the newly sanctioned windsurfing location at Napeague Harbor. A rubber raft used in windsurfing instruction by Seasonings was riddled with .22 caliber bullets and was sunk sometime between July 23 and last Thursday morning.

    The sniper put eight holes in the boat, which was moored in the harbor, about 150 feet from shore. Police have not found the culprit, but believe it may be a disgruntled neighbor annoyed with the windsurfing fleet.

    . . . An agreement for the new windsurfing site was reached this summer by the Town Board after regular beachgoers at Little Albert’s Landing objected to the windsurfers last year.

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    Andy Neidnig of Sag Harbor, who at 67 is the South Fork’s top senior runner, won the Athletic Congress’s national 10-kilometer championship in the 65-to-69 age group at Uniondale on July 18 in 41 minutes and 57 seconds.

    It was the first time Neidnig had run on a track in 35 years, and the first time he had competed in a national masters race. He finished third over all in a field that included all male runners 60-and-over, and all women 40-and-over.

    . . . The retired steam fitter, who ran the fastest marathon in his age group in the country in 1985, a 3:24.24, finished second in his division in the national 5K race at Uniondale in 20:31, the fastest time he’s recorded in that distance this year.