Sports

We’re hot and then we’re not,” Erin Abran said with a smile after last Thursday night’s women’s slow-pitch playoff softball game. The Police Benevolent Association, led by its pitcher, T. Schirrippa, and its shortstop, Nicole Fierro, downed Groundworks 9-4 in the third game of a best-of-three semifinal series, advancing the P.B.A. to the final round with East End Land Planning, the defending champion.

The July 23 crossing from Montauk Point to Block Island was the 12th for Paddlers for Humanity, an event that to date has raised more than $2 million to help local children and families in crisis.

Hoops 4 Hope, a nonprofit founded by Mark Crandall of Amagansett to work with young people in Zimbabwe and South Africa, is now also working with youngsters here, using basketball as a means by which to teach them how to be a good teammate.

The 47-year-old Amagansett resident, assisted by a crew of 14, swam a 23.9-mile U-shaped arc in the Atlantic Ocean between Block Island and Montauk last Thursday. Her time of 8 hours, 39 minutes, and 45 seconds, which the Marathon Swimmers Federation is expected to certify, is most notable for the fact that apparently no swimmer has ever before spanned Montauk and Block Island.

Despite the excessive-heat warning from the National Weather Service, our intended quarry was a species that’s more recognizably caught in the bone-chilling winds and cold of winter: the iconic codfish.

Jacky Loving, a German-born, Montauk-based skater, surfer, paddleboarder, hiker, and all-round adventure-seeker, founded Loving Adventures to teach kids life skills through outdoorsy and challenging sports. “I’m just providing tools to get outside."

The Bad News Bubs repeated as the A bracket champion in the Travis Field memorial double-elimination softball tournament in Amagansett last week, while the Bud Heavies were the B bracket champs.

More than 300 male and female junior lifeguards ranging in age from 9 to 15 competed in a lifesaving skills tournament at Amagansett's Atlantic Avenue Beach Saturday and Sunday.

Teenage siblings, Trevor and Rose Hayes of East Moriches, were the male and female winners of the 5K contested in memory of Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter on Saturday in Sag Harbor, a race that's a special one insofar as community spirit goes.

This is her first season running the Hither Hills Racquet Club, on the Napeague stretch, after five years in that role at the tennis concession at Montauk Downs State Park, where she grew up playing the sport.

“The fluke bite has really picked up over the past week or so,” Paul Apostolides said. “Nice fish up to 10 pounds have been taken.”

The Sag Harbor Whalers, with a part-time East Hamptoner, Brett Borcherding, pitching in relief, defeated the Westhampton Aviators 6-5 at Sag Harbor's Mashashimuet Park on Sunday to win the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League's championship series 2-1. It was the first H.C.B.L. championship for a Whaler team since 2008.

The Travis Field memorial double-elimination coed softball tournament, which many say is their favorite event of the summer, is to begin Thursday at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett with 17 teams — seven in the A bracket and 10 in the B bracket — vying for trophies.

Long Beach nosed out East Hampton Town’s men’s A entry by 2 points in last Thursday’s 17-team invitational lifeguard tournament at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach. Smith Point won the women’s competition, with East Hampton Town’s A team the runner-up.

Fishermen can be a rather superstitious lot. Many have unusual habits or a routine that is indelibly ingrained based on past history — sometimes on fact but more likely fiction.

Cristian Compuzano, a stocky striker who plays for F.C. Tuxpan, took over the 7-on-7 men’s soccer league’s Golden Boot lead with a hat trick at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on July 19, treating his team to a 3-1 win over the defending-champion East Hampton Soccer Club.

The International Federation for Equestrian Sports recently approved the Hampton Classic Horse Show’s application for five-star and two-star divisions. “Five-star shows attract the top riders and the top horses. It’s the highest level of show jumping competition except for the championships, such as the Olympics and the World Cup,” said the show’s executive director.

Lobsters grow by molting. It's basically a process in which they struggle out of their old shells while simultaneously absorbing water which expands their body size. Marine scientists estimate that molting occurs about 25 times in the first five to seven years of a lobster's life. Once shedding their old shells, lobsters put on the feed bag in a big way.

Well into the summer season, the East Hampton 7-on-7 men’s soccer and men’s slow-pitch softball leagues’ defending champions, the East Hampton Soccer Club and McMahon’s, find themselves with a lot of ground to make up.

The Hampton Youth Triathlon at Long Beach in Noyac on Saturday had 119 finishers. The Montauk Sprint Triathlon, the next day, had 313.

A run-swim-run event to benefit the Hampton Lifeguard Association’s junior and senior entries in August’s national lifeguard tournament in Hermosa Beach, Calif., is to be held tomorrow at Amagansett’s Atlantic Avenue Beach, and, on Saturday, the first I-Tri youth triathlon in three years is to be contested at Long Beach in Noyac.

The North Shore Nationals became the Little League District 36 champions Sunday as they defeated East Hampton’s 9-and-10-year-old boys team 6-3 in Rocky Point.

At the culmination of the popular Montauk Mercury Grand Slam Fishing Tournament, Capt. Skip Rudolph, a third-generation fisherman who has made his living on the water for decades, will be celebrated as the Montauk Fishing Legend of the Year.

Least terns are properly named, they’re our smallest tern, and thin. They slice through the air, buoyant and bouncy, on clipped wingbeats, patrolling the waters below. They’re very vocal. Their call is high-pitched and squeaky, with a sharp grating quality. Learn it, and you will often hear them before you see them.

Facing a win-or-go-home situation at the Pantigo fields on July 6, East Hampton’s 9-and-10-year-old Little League softball all-stars outlasted their North Shore peers 22-15, setting up a third meeting for the District 36 championship.

If you think traffic here this time of year is a circus, you might think differently after you take a class with Hamptons Trapeze Co. That’s where the real circus action is — in a good way.

It may be five minutes for fighting in the N.H.L., but not so in East Hampton’s 7-on-7 men’s soccer league, whose overseer, Leslie Czeladko, recently expelled five players from league play.

Serena Vegessi Schick, who died last fall, touched many in Montauk who work on the water, having spent years in her youth and early adulthood, as well as the final few months of her life, working the deck of the Bones netting or filleting fish, untying tangles, or just patiently helping youngsters catch the first fish of their lives.

The paddleboard and kayak rental and lesson business has a new home at the Three Mile Marina. "I feel so lucky. This is the perfect place," said Gina Bradley.

Crystal Winter, a former Montauker and 2002 graduate of East Hampton High School, is to play this week for the powerful United States national women’s flag football team in the World Games.