5th Straight Win for Women’s Team at Lifeguard Tourney

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.