Sept. 9, 1999
Still mindful of a Chelsea Cricket Club trouncing last year, the Southampton Cricket Club scored 97 runs by halftime, and held on to lick the competition, holding the English visitors to 94, during a match Saturday afternoon to benefit Southampton Hospital — the fifth, and last, of its kind.
Clive Cooke, a Manhattan businessman and part-time East End resident, originated the fund-raiser four years ago. The English native will return to London in the coming months, taking the game with him, he said.
Cricket resembles the game of baseball in as many ways as it doesn’t.
While the team with the most runs at the end of the game wins, the field of play is round rather than diamond-shaped, with 11, rather than nine, players positioned around it. The batsman can hit anywhere, even behind him.
David “Lofty” Lofthouse, a Southampton C.C. player, revealed his team’s game plan at the half. “We have to get the opposition as drunk as possible,” he said.
. . . Spectators and players remained on the field after the game, drinking, eating, and doing the limbo for hours.
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With 362 students having signed up for East Hampton High School’s fall sports offerings, Chris Tracey, the school district’s athletic director, can’t complain.
In fact, he said during a conversation Monday morning, “we’re very excited. This turnout has to be a record.”
Moreover, only field hockey among the 11 fall sports had made any cuts, said Tracey, who added that those dropped from one sport could always cross over to another. “The bottom line is that anyone who wants to be an athlete at East Hampton High School can be,” said the A.D.
. . . Where everyone will practice and play is somewhat of a problem. “We don’t have enough fields,” said Tracey, who is among those who think the Schwenk family land across Long Lane would fulfill the growing high school’s playing field needs.
“It’s become a severe problem,” he continued. “We’ll probably have to alternate our soccer teams between here and Herrick Park when it comes to practicing. . . . People have to realize that fitness is not a fad. The lack of playing fields in town is a big issue. There’s got to be a plan.”
Sept. 23, 1999
Barry Cox, the Ross School’s athletic director, said this week that the private school at Goodfriend Park in East Hampton has fielded first-year varsity teams in boys soccer, field hockey, and girls cross-country this fall to go with a second-year boys golf squad, club teams in swimming and Wushu, a traditional Chinese martial art, a second-year junior varsity girls tennis team, and a junior high field hockey team.
Sept. 30, 1999
For a couple of hours last Wednesday — Big Wednesday — years of paddling, of judging the variables of waves and current, and of surfing, paid off for a handful of diehards who met the biggest that Hurricane Gert had to offer in Montauk’s eastern coves.
Even those who stayed onshore said it was time for humility in the face of great beauty and power.
Only the spots on Montauk’s east end, like Alamo, Turtle Cove, and other points local surfers would prefer remain unnamed, are able to hold bigger waves like those produced last week by Gert and earlier by Hurricane Floyd.
On Wednesday, veterans of these breaks agreed that the coves’ ability to hold their shape was pressed to the limit by the 12-to-15-foot swells.
. . . Christian Iooss, Stevie White, Chris Harmon, and Chuck Weimar were among the few in the lineup on Wednesday morning in Turtle Cove, the break within a stone’s throw of the Montauk Lighthouse. Eric Olsen, Scott Bradley, and Craig Lieder Jr. were also out. Spectators agreed that Iooss shared the dominance award with Harmon, although the biggest wave of the day was ridden in by John DeSousa.
. . . Wednesday’s size left the waves to the experienced, but that didn’t mean it was easy. Boards were broken in half. Surfers got bruised. They experienced the weightless rise, crushing fall, and lengthy hold-down of bad wipeouts. Leaving the water at Turtle Cove with its beach of cobblestones and giant shorebreak was especially challenging.
. . . Wednesday proved again the old saying about big waves — that they are not measured in feet, but in “increments of fear.” But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun. — Russell Drumm
