Sports

For five years running, Ed Kranepool was one of the best pinch-hitters in the history of Major League Baseball, the player New York Mets’ managers would turn to when they needed that one key hit in the bottom of the ninth to bail them out. Now it is Mr. Kranepool who is looking for a pinch-hitter.

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Noah Avallone of Montauk was to have been among 16 junior pipe riders from around the world competing Tuesday in the Burton U.S. Open Junior (14-and-under) Jam in Vail, Colo.

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Chris Pfund, a 2009 graduate of East Hampton High School who lettered in football and baseball there, was on his way Monday to Raleigh, N.C., where he will play arena football for the Triangle Torch.

Despite frequent offensive hiccups, Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees ate Livingston Manor’s dreams at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood Monday night, ultimately prevailing 50-48 in a state Class D regional semifinal that seemed in the early going as if it would go the Rockland County champion’s way.

It’s hard to win a game when you make 21 turnovers and shoot 30 percent from the floor, and so it was that Bridgehampton High School’s Killer Bees lost to Greenport in the county playoffs’ C-D game at Suffolk Community College-Selden on Feb. 20.

Howard Wood, known as the Dancing Bear in his University of Tennessee playing days, is to be named as an SEC Legend Wednesday during halftime of his alma mater’s first-round conference tournament game at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis.

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Three athletes have been swimming here through the winter, in air and sea temperatures as cold as 30 degrees. They say the water's fine.

The East Hampton High School boys swimming team finished eighth among the 29 schools that vied in the county meet Saturday at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, one spot lower than the 2014 team led by Thomas Brierley and Trevor Mott, though there were fewer schools at that meet four years ago.

On her return from running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days — yes, you read it correctly — Cara Nelson’s East Hampton Middle School social studies students, who had been in touch with her throughout, expanded upon all the things she might have missed during the World Marathon Challenge tour.

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Hearts generally are wooed on Valentine’s Day, not pierced with daggers, though in the East Hampton High School boys basketball team’s case it was so on Feb. 14 at Elwood-John Glenn, its outbracket opponent in the county’s Class A tournament.

The East Hampton High School boys basketball team had to win Monday’s game at Kings Park to make the playoffs, and it did, 57-44.

Craig Brierley, East Hampton High’s boys swimming coach, will take a dozen of his competitors to the county swim meet at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood Saturday morning, the core of the squad that finished second to top-seeded Hauppauge in the league meet there last Thursday.

“Hauppauge came out on top [in the league meet] by a score of 282-250,” Brierley reported, “but because our boys gave everything they had — they posted 31 lifetime bests — they were able to hold their heads high, knowing they had left nothing in the water.”

It will be rebuilding in capital letters, Joe McKee, East Hampton High’s football coach, agreed during a conversation at The Star Monday, though, buoyed by the likelihood that Bonac once again will field a varsity team, he’ll welcome the challenge.

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Andreas Koutsogiannis, a senior who wrestles at 195 pounds for East Hampton High School, finished the season with a 26-10 record at the Division 1 county championships this past weekend, narrowly missing the match for fifth and sixth place.

Dan White, East Hampton High’s boys basketball coach, was hoping following Jan. 31’s win here over Hauppauge that his charges would do it again the next day at Sayville, thus putting them in a good spot regarding the playoffs.

It is likely that men’s slow-pitch softball will come back to the Terry King ball field in Amagansett following a five-plus-year absence.

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Claude Okin, who oversees a tennis club empire on Long Island and beyond, said during a recent conversation at the Sportime club in Amagansett that when his wife, Hana Sromova, a former longtime pro tennis tour player, and Sue De Lara first suggested he add pickleball — a paddle game confined to a court one-quarter the size of the one used for tennis — as an offering at the nearby Sportime Arena he leases, he was dubious.

“Get into the weight room,” two dozen would-be football players were told by Joe McKee and his fellow coaches during a meeting at East Hampton High School’s cafeteria on Jan. 24.

East Hampton High School’s boys basketball team fell to 5-6 at Harborfields last Thursday, though the Bonackers’ 50-48 win over Islip in a hotly contested game here on Jan. 23 kept the attendees glued to their seats.

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As their coach, Andrea Hernandez, was burning the CDs they’d need for an Islandwide competition the next day, Claire Belhumeur and Camilla Mautiauda, who co-captain East Hampton High’s competitive dance team, took her place when Friday afternoon’s rehearsal began, filming a varsity pom routine by a half-dozen dancers that they followed up with critiques.

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It was like old times in the Bee Hive when, on Jan. 17, Pierson and Bridgehampton duked it out, though what the game — ultimately won by the Whalers 63-61 — may have lacked in finesse was balanced out by the rivals’ all-out efforts.

The Sportime Arena in Amagansett was a hive of activity Saturday morning as about a dozen pickleballers were playing that bang-bang game at the rear of the building, behind a scrim, while more than 30 girls were taking part in lacrosse clinics put on by Elizabeth and Lina Bistrian, cousins who have been East Hampton High School field hockey and lacrosse teammates these past four years.