April 6, 2000
Tom Halsey, David Brown, and Duane Arnister were the top award winners at the Mecox Bay Ice Yacht Club’s awards dinner at the Water Mill Grill on March 26. It was the first dinner the club had held in nine years. The Everett Rattray memorial trophy was presented to Adam Halsey. Jeff Gardner and Ted Squires were cited as the club’s best novice iceboaters.
April 13, 2000
Ralph Naglieri, who coaches East Hampton High School’s junior varsity lacrosse team, was hoping a weekend spent scrimmaging in Nassau County would lift his charges to a win over Smithtown’s second jayvee here Monday. And it almost did.
. . . “They start their kids playing lacrosse in second grade in Manhasset,” Naglieri said. “Their rivalry with Garden City is the oldest lacrosse rivalry there is.”
. . . “I’d rather play teams like Manhasset,” he continued, “which has the oldest program in the state, dating to the ‘30s, and Baldwin, and lose than defeat teams that aren’t as strong. Playing the real good teams is the only way we’re going to get better.”
The essential difference between Nassau’s players and East Hampton’s lay, Naglieri said, in the fact that “their stick-handling is better and they have a better knowledge of the game. They cut and move for the ball. We have to move our feet more — on offense and defense.”
On Saturday, East Hampton was defeated 14-3 by Manhasset’s jayvee, “which hasn’t lost a game in five years.” The day before, the young Bonackers, in whose number are Casey McKee, Kevin Farrell, James Rigby, Steve Turza, Kellen Jackson, Will Shapiro, Louis Russo, Peter Grimes, and Mike Foley, among others, lost 10-3 at Baldwin.
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Robin Streck, the new program director at the East Hampton RECenter, announced this week the formation of a youth swimming club that is expected to be the precursor of an East Hampton High School swimming team.
Exactly when the high school will begin competing in the sport “depends,” she said, “on how these programs go.”
Open to all fifth through eighth graders living within the East Hampton School District, the May 2 to June 20 twice-a-week program, to be taught by Coach Jun-Heng Xu, the former coach of the Chinese women’s national swim team, and Brian Cunningham, an East Hampton Town lifeguard and trainer of junior lifeguards, will be open to the first 30 students who register at the RECenter on Monday.
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Dennis Oehler of East Hampton, a multiple gold medal-winning Paralympic athlete, will be inducted, along with 13 others, into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame on May 4 at Patchogue’s West Lake Inn.
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Doing what it had to, the Montauk Rugby Club scored five tries on the way to defeating its Mystic River rivals 27-24 in Cambridge, Mass., on Saturday, thus earning a bid to Major League Rugby’s Elite Eight tournament to be contested at the end of May.
“This is the biggest win our club has ever had,” said Frank Bistrian, the Sharks’ spokesman and one of its wing forwards. “Last fall we had a losing record in Division II play, and now we’re among the eight best Division I sides in the country.”
An intense international recruiting effort in the off-season, which has yielded top players from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland, has beefed up the local side’s strength and numbers.
. . . As a result of the big win, Montauk finished Major League Rugby pool play with a 2-1-1 record, the sole loss, by a score of 24-17, coming at White Plains on April 1.
“We’re ranked fourth,” Bistrian said, “among Major League Rugby’s 24 teams nationwide now, but with other teams still not finished, we could wind up seeded sixth or seventh in the national tournament. But that doesn’t bother us. We’re as strong as anyone. . . . I don’t think there’s anyone on this team who thinks we can’t win the championship.”
