December 3, 1998
Charles Whitmore, an advocate of team sports who would like to see more land in East Hampton Town set aside for recreation, unveiled an ambitious plan Friday to build a community park on farmland opposite East Hampton High School.
. . . In addition to playing fields, the park would have “in-ground” lavatory and changing facilities, a greenhouse, an arboretum, a children’s science and art studio, a maintenance barn, a fountain garden, a tea garden, a wildflower meadow, a “wet” meadow, a retention pond, and a jogging trail.
. . . The park would include five multi-use fields on which rugby, football, soccer, lacrosse, or field hockey could be played, two baseball-softball diamonds, a “great lawn” with a “performance pavilion,” two croquet lawns, and a lawn-bowling pitch.
. . . The two existing parks, Lions Field in Montauk and Herrick Park in East Hampton Village, “were created decades ago,” Whitmore said, “and, as the East Hampton athletic community knows only too well, are now far too small to bear the recreational demands of 1998 and those of the immediate future. It is clear to us that the only solution is and will be the addition of new parks for active recreation in the town of East Hampton. . . . We envision the proposed ‘landmark park’ to provide for the town’s social, cultural, and recreational needs for the 21st century as Herrick Park did at the dawn of this century.”
December 10, 1998
It looks as if the East Hampton High School wrestling team is ready for the school’s first assault on a league championship in eight years.
Not since 1990, the last time his charges won the League VII championship, has Jim Stewart, whose teams won a string of championships in the ’80s, had such a promising lineup.
Every weight class is covered, and with experienced, though basically young, competitors. Of the 27 or so on the squad, only five — Brian Turza, Chris Zay, John Glennon, Shawn Christman, and Brian Mott — are seniors.
December 24, 1998
A group of about a dozen South African young men — white and black — said during discussions with East Hampton High School social studies classes Monday that the age of apartheid had passed, and that there was opportunity for all now in that country.
“You may be even ahead of us now,” said Rich Wingfield, who, with William Hartwell, brought a number of East End Unity Group students from Southampton High to join in on the discussions. “There is an apartheid of sorts here, though people don’t like to speak about it.”
The young men, all but one of them from Johannesburg, were picked for an all-star team by Bino de Gouveia, a 30-year-old former soccer player who has begun a grassroots promotion of basketball in that city.
“Basketball was an unknown sport in South Africa when I got interested in it four years ago,” said Mr. de Gouveia. “I made the hoops out of wood and put them up on some old tennis courts.”
Indeed, South Africa had changed under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, he said. “Everyone can get the opportunity to try now.”
. . . The South African players, as was evident during a practice on Sunday that Ed Petrie, the veteran East Hampton boys coach, oversaw, were “very athletic,” said Mr. de Gouveia, “but they lack the experience and the fundamentals. A year or two here with this coach and they’d probably be state champs!”
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The East Hampton High School boys basketball team is the real deal. The Bonackers proved it with a 57-49 win over Newsday’s preseason Class B pick, Amityville, here in the second game of an East Hampton Coaches Association doubleheader Saturday night.
And the Bonackers did it despite going 1-for-15 from 3-point range. “But our defense was great,” Billy McKee, Ed Petrie’s assistant, said afterward.
. . . Kyle Russell, who had 13 rebounds, scored 17 points for the Bonackers that night. Willie McFarland, who had the only 3-pointer, had 16; Jesse Shapiro, the point guard, and Chris Messinger each tallied eight; Adam Gledhill chipped in with five, and Keith Gilliam with three.
Russell got help on the boards from Gledhill, who had eight rebounds, and from Messinger and McFarland, with six each. East Hampton had eight steals — three by McFarland, two by Russell, and one each by Shapiro, Gledhill, and Gilliam.