Sports

The first and most important thing to know about the purple sandpiper is that it’s not purple. It’s not even close. For the beginner, the best way to see this bird — the only sandpiper we tend to see here in winter months — is to know where it hangs out, because it absolutely doesn’t stand out.

Sunday’s weather was perfect for hockey, a fine day for Peconic Hockey Foundation-sponsored Wildcat youth travel teams to debut on the Buckskill Winter Club’s ice in East Hampton.

In the Southampton-Pierson boys basketball game played at the Sag Harbor school’s gym last Thursday, the Mariners’ full-court press was suffocating, causing 30 or so turnovers during the 32 minutes of play.

When it took the court on Jan. 24, the East Hampton High School boys basketball team hadn't played a game in about a month because of Covid. For its star guard, Luke Reese, who injured his knee against Kings Park on Dec. 9, the layoff had even been longer.

The East Hampton School District’s athletic director reported this week that his petition to Section XI that eight of East Hampton High’s teams play closer to home has been approved.

Nick Escalante, a wellness teacher at the Ross School, is headed to Buenos Aires to vie for a spot in a semipro soccer league. His brother, Charles, is busy building up the basketball program at Ross.

The futsal (indoor soccer) season at the Sportime Arena in Amagansett is nearing the playoff stage, and it has been a lively season indeed.

“Finally, some hockey weather!” Danny Roman said with a smile following Saturday morning’s 12-and-under hockey practice at the Buckskill Winter Club.

Dylan Cashin, Melina Sarlo, Riley Miles, and Ryleigh O’Donnell set a distance medley relay record at the Zeitler Relays Saturday, and Juan Roque and J.P. Amaden showed grit in wrestling at 118 and 132 pounds.

The screech owl is about the size of a brick, with big eyes, and ear tufts, but this adorable little owl is an efficient killer. Its howl represents pure death to a variety of critters. Nothing is safe, even other screech owls. It even takes bats on the wing.

Why isn’t the long-tailed duck more celebrated? It’s crazy looking, gregarious, easily seen, cackles like a stuttering kazoo, hilariously belly-flops when it lands, and hangs out in bad little duck posses. It’s even controversial.

Evan Masi, an East Hampton High School senior who recently became a News 12 Long Island scholar-athlete of the month, has been through trying times in his high school career.

East Hampton High School’s boys and girls basketball teams were paused because of the pandemic this past week, while the boys swimming and wrestling teams remained active.

Judging from the scores of skaters there Saturday afternoon, the Buckskill Winter Club is the place to be this season, and “the ice this year is the best ever.”

Richard J. Cooney Sr., the East Hampton School District’s athletic director from 1974 until his retirement in 1995, is to be a New York State Athletic Administrators Association “wall of honor” inductee at Saratoga in March.

High school sports made a stuttery recovery in the past year of Covid. The good news was that there were at the high school level two fall seasons in 2021, in which 11 mostly-playoff-caliber East Hampton High teams contended.

The first two and a half quarters of the Holiday Classic boys basketball game that East Hampton High played at Southampton on Dec. 28 “were the best we’ve played all year,” East Hampton’s coach, Dan White, said following the 69-60 loss to the Mariners.

I’ve lived here for 20 years under the Great American Robin Flyway and I had no idea, but recently started noticing them gathering en masse, as many as 5,400 of them, like black stars shooting against a white sky. Where were they headed?

The first day of the new year was drizzly and drab, and, to some, depressing, though you wouldn’t have known it had you been at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach or at the Beach Lane road end in Wainscott for the New Year’s Day plunges that afternoon.

All four of the East Hampton Soccer Club’s youth travel teams, one of which is an under-12 girls team coached by Luis Barrera, recently won the Long Island Junior Soccer League divisions in which they played, all of them going undefeated.

During the 101st Audubon Montauk Christmas Bird Count, 125 species were spotted, the rarest a western kingbird found by Mike McBrien just off Fernwood Drive. The birds are great, but so are the people, some of whom have returned to take part in the count for 50-plus years.

Asked this week if the New Year’s Day plunges were on, Colin Mather, who began the annual ritual in Wainscott in 1999, and John Ryan Jr., the Hampton Lifeguards’ chief, who followed suit soon after first in Amagansett and later in East Hampton, said they were indeed.

The swimmers’ win evened their league record at 2-2, while the basketball team’s was its second in a row since Luke Reese, its star junior shooting guard, suffered a knee injury during a Dec. 9 game.

The East Hampton High School boys swimming team knew that West Islip would be hard to beat in a meet that was held at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter on Dec. 15, , according to its coach, Craig Brierley, and indeed the visitors, whose depth proved to be a deciding factor, were.

Dan White, the coach of East Hampton High’s boys basketball team, was in high spirits Sunday morning in reporting the team’s nonleague win the day before at East Islip. For the first time, the Bonackers were playing well in the absence of Luke Reese, their stellar junior guard, who has been knocked out of the season with a knee injury.

The wrestling match that was held here Friday between East Hampton and Eastport-South Manor High Schools began early, as the Sharks had no junior varsity competitors, and ended early, as seven of the 11 matches wrestled ended in first-period pins, owing in large part to cross-wrist tilts.

Chase Lieder, Chloe Coleman, and Tucker Coleman, Montauk surfers who attend East Hampton High School, are faring well in national surf competitions, fueling professional ambitions.

If you are lucky enough to encounter one of these visitors from the north, the number-one rule is to simply keep your distance.

The East Hampton High School boys basketball team may have lost its league opener with Kings Park last Thursday, but an even worse loss was that of Luke Reese, the stellar junior guard.

The East Hampton High School boys swimming team evened its League 11 record at 1-1 by winning at Deer Park last week, while the winter track teams got around a Section XI insurance snarl by hitting the track outdoors at Southampton.