Sports

Chris Miller at Westlake Marina in Montauk confirmed that the fishing has been good on several fronts. “The bass fishing is holding up,” he said. “Sea bass too have been cooperating, but many are focused on blackfish, which has been very good since the season opened two weeks ago.”

McMahon’s won its third straight East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league championship at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett on Oct. 25, besting Sand & Sea Construction 17-10, thus winning the best-of-five final series three games to one.

The best team did not win in a Class A semifinal soccer playoff game contested here with Half Hollow Hills West Monday. East Hampton's 1-0 loss left Don McGovern, his players, and a crowd that had filled the bleachers stunned.

Caeleigh Schuster, arguably the best field hockey goalie East Hampton High has had since the mid-1990s, came under fire right away in Saturday’s county Class B final between the Bonackers and Rocky Point. It was a battle that the Bonackers were eventually to lose 4-3 in overtime, but their gritty play throughout the fray could not be faulted.

Two of East Hampton High’s playoff teams, field hockey and boys soccer, advanced in the county playoffs this week, the field hockey team by way of a 2-1 win at Harborfields on Wednesday and the boys soccer team as the result of a 2-1 quarterfinal-round win here Thursday over a tough East Islip squad.

The 1-5 Bonackers aren't quite there yet, as a 42-7 loss to undefeated Half Hollow Hills West on Saturday showed.

"The blackfish bite has been very solid," said Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. "Lots of small fish, but many are still catching their limits." Surfcasters along the ocean beaches are finding action too.

The most exciting cross-country meets Kevin Barry has seen in his 35 years of coaching took place within a few minutes of each other at East Hampton High School on Oct. 18.

Bird populations have declined steeply over the last 50 years, but the North American Bird Conservation Initiative's "State of the Birds 2022" report, published in early October, balanced the gloom with some success stories and offered strategies for future action which would "bring birds back."

Eight of East Hampton High's 11 fall teams, seven of which finished with winning records in league competition, made the postseason, and two of those teams, boys soccer and girls cross-country, were league champions.

Thanks largely to the superb goaltending of Caeleigh Schuster, who has come up big for her teammates all season long, the East Hampton High School field hockey team defeated East Islip in a first-round playoff game here Monday. The hard-fought contest wasn’t decided until the second round of shootouts that followed a 1-1 tie in regulation and two scoreless 7-on-7 overtime periods.

While the fishing for striped bass has been strong in Montauk, it was out of my reach, so I decided to take advantage of the sunny and windless conditions on Saturday morning for the opening of blackfish season in waters outside Long Island Sound.