25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports 09.20.12

September 10, 1987

    John Kenney of New York and Shelter Island, who nine days before had won a 5K here, continued the string by leading some 200 runners across the line in Monday’s Great Bonac 10K race in Springs.

    Kenney, a 31-year-old IBM systems engineer, covered the 6.2-mile course in 31 minutes and 41 seconds. Kevin Barry, also of Shelter Island, who won this race last year and in 1985, was third in 33:04.

    While the winner made a wrong turn between miles four and five, following the lead patrol car, which had erred, thus gaining some yardage, the runner-up, Paul Capolino of Port Jefferson, did not press the issue.

    Later, Kenney, who finished almost a minute ahead of Capolino, said he was pretty confident he would have won in any event.

    . . . To keep the leader on course hereafter, the race director, Howard Lebwith, said that beginning next year directional placards will be put at every turn. Kenney’s sub-32 appears to be the best time in recent years, if not for the entire 10-year history of the race.

September 17, 1987

    Martina Navratilova became a triple-crown winner at the U.S. Open Monday — the first such since Margaret Court did it in 1970 — at Paul Annacone’s expense. Navratilova and her partner, Emilio Sanchez of Spain, barely edged the East Hampton-reared professional and his partner, Betsy Nagelsen, 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 to win the mixed doubles title. The third-set tiebreaker went to 14-12.

    Navratilova also won the singles championship, defeating Steffi Graf, and the women’s doubles, with Pam Shriver, over Kathy Jordan and Elizabeth Smylie.

    . . . It was the first tournament that Nagelsen and Annacone have played together, and the first U.S. Open final for Annacone.

    While the Mighty Hamptons triathletes were competing in “tinman” distances Saturday, Tom Ruhle, 29, of Montauk, a Democratic candidate for town councilman, was swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112, and running 26.2 in the Bud Light Endurance Triathlon at Cape Cod.

    “The bike was the roughest, and I’m a good biker,” said Ruhle. “The wind was in our face on the return leg, from Provincetown to Hyannis. I was ready to throw my bike in the weeds after 90 miles.”

    Gene Colleary narrowly defeated George Eichhorn recently in a 36-hole final to win the men’s golf championship at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett.

    Sailboarders at Napeague Harbor are girding their loins in the wake of a Long Island State Parks and Recreation Commission edict banning sailboard launching at the accustomed Lazy Point road-end.

    . . . The sailboarders say that Napeague Harbor is a perfect spot to pursue their sport and that the road-end beach is the perfect spot for launching the boards. A few ill-founded complaints by Lazy Point residents accustomed to gazing across unpeopled waters had brought on the controversy, they maintain.

September 24, 1987

    Word has it that the East Hampton High School football team, which has acquitted itself well scrimmaging recently with William Floyd, Centereach, Newfield, Port Jefferson, and Westhampton Beach, in descending order of school size, has the edge in League Seven’s title race.

    “I hope it’s not the kiss of death,” said East Hampton’s coach, Ted Meyer.

    . . . Bob Burns, The Long Island Traveler-Watchman’s sportswriter, who covers East End high school sports, said in last Thursday’s column that “talking with the coaches one gathers the group as a whole figures it will be East Hampton and Southampton battling it out for the crown.”

    East Hampton and Southampton boys and girls between the ages of 4 1/2 and 12 are being sought to join a Southampton-based ice hockey club, the Southampton Sharks, whose head coach is Gerry Hart, one of the original New York Islanders.

    . . . “If they can stand up and want to play, we’ll do the rest,” said Hart, a Canadian who played defense for the Islanders in the early 1970s.