January 21, 1999
Pierson-Shelter Island’s “cardiac kids” put on another spirited fourth-quarter rally Friday, during which Robyn Bramoff, Tia Graves, and Kari Mitchell drained successive 3-pointers, but, as had been the case against Class D rival Stony Brook recently, the Whalers came up just shy of toppling the undefeated League VIII leader, Eastport, which came away with a 49-46 win.
. . . Down by 12 points with a minute and 49 seconds left to play, P-SI mounted another of its patented charges, cutting Eastport’s lead to 47-41 following a turnover and Graves’s 3-pointer, the second of three Gary Hull’s team converted within slightly more than a minute of play in the final period.
. . . When play resumed following a Whaler timeout, Mitchell, with one second to go, hurled a baseball pass from under Pierson’s basket toward Bramoff, who was standing at the top of the 3-point arc, but the ball sailed over Bramoff’s outstretched hands, and the Ducks thus eked out the win.
Had the Whalers shot well that night — at times repeated offensive rebounds went unconverted — the verdict undoubtedly would have been different.
—
Scott Hewett of Noyac studied to be “a struggling, starving artist” at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, but subsequent designing jobs with Stride Rite and Reebok — since 1990 — have kept him on his toes and the wolf away from the door.
Hewett would like in time to paint more and design less, but in the meanwhile he’s busy keeping Shaquille O’Neal, Sean Kemp, and Allen Iverson, “the next Michael Jordan,” well-shod with a diverse array of sneaker designs sporting ever-new technological features, which, in turn, are marketed to an adoring young public around the world.
. . . “It’s amazing how many designs he can come up with,” his wife, the former Diane Mendelman, said when a visitor asked if there weren’t a limit to the variations on the sneaker theme. “He even gets ideas from the lures he uses to troll for fish.”
January 28, 1999
“We hit bags -- we don’t punch the air,” said Mark Tuthill, a veteran martial arts instructor, in discussing last weekend his popular cardio kickboxing course, which has since its inauguration in September attracted about 50 female students.
In the beginning, the women were punching air at Tuthill’s new Martial Arts Center on lower Three Mile Harbor Road, “but we got the bags in October, and things have been going so much better since. You can punch the air all day, but without bags you’re not learning how to punch effectively.”
During Saturday morning’s workout, a bobbing bag testified to the effectiveness of Ruby Stevens’s jabs and combinations. Afterward, the owner of Mother Nature’s Garden, a health food store on Pantigo Road, offered a testimonial.
“No matter what shape you’re in, it brings you to another level,” said Stevens. “This course is really to strengthen your heart, but it’s also good for women to know how to punch and how to kick. It gives you that confidence, a feeling of security. . . . One in three women are attacked throughout the world every minute.”
—
At the league-championship boys winter track meet at Stony Brook University Sunday, East Hampton’s 4-by-800 relay team of Ryan Jackson, Ben Turnbull, Chris Thomas, and Sean Myhr, in finishing third, behind Hauppauge and Half Hollow Hills West, set a new school record of 9 minutes and 4.9 seconds.
“That not only bettered the record that Jeremy Blutstein and Craig Gaites’s team set last year by two seconds, it was also 22 seconds faster than they’ve run this year,” said Bill Herzog, the team’s coach.
. . . Also last weekend, at the Hispanic Games at the 168th Street Armory in New York City, Taneesha Harris, a Bridgehampton senior who runs with the Bonac girls winter track team, was the runner-up in the 200-meter dash, a feat that takes on added significance given the fact that the meet attracted 4,000 competitors from 160 schools.
Harris’s time in the event was 26.4 seconds, two-tenths of a second behind the winner, said Diane O’Donnell, who coaches the East Hampton team.
