Sports

   Having enjoyed a fine fall sportswise, with the boys soccer and boys and girls volleyball teams playing for county championships — and with soccer winning it all, for the second year in a row — Joe Vas, the East Hampton school district’s athletic director, expects a rather cheery, if cold, winter.

    Numberswise, boys swimming, now coached by Craig Brierley — Jeff Thompson stepped down last spring after becoming a father — stands out, inasmuch as there are at the moment 33 on the roster — 4 seniors, 12 juniors, 9 sophomores, 5 freshmen, and 3 eighth graders.

   The Lt. Joseph J. Theinert 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament will be played at 1 p.m. on Saturday at the Shelter Island School to benefit the Lt. Joseph J. Theinert Memorial Fund, which supports programs for military families and veterans in need.

    Lieutenant Theinert, who grew up in Sag Harbor and on Shelter Island, once played the sport at the Shelter Island School, wearing the number 15 jersey, which was retired last year. He was killed in action in Afghanistan on June 4, 2010.

Thursday, November 22

RUNNING,  3 and 6-mile Turkey Trots around Fort Pond, The Circle, Montauk, 10 and 10:10 a.m., registration, 8-9:30.

Saturday, November 24

RUNNING, Old Whalers 5K, benefit Old Whalers Community House Fund, West Water Street, Sag Harbor, 8:30 a.m., registration from 7.

BOYS BASKETBALL, scrimmages, Pierson at Mattituck and Bridgehampton at Center Moriches, 10 a.m.

GIRLS BASKETBALL, Pierson-Bridgehampton at Miller Place, scrimmage, 11 a.m.

Monday, November 26

   When this writer recalled that John Conner ran the Fifth Avenue Mile in 4 minutes and 40 seconds at the age of 50, he was corrected by the interviewee: “Four-forty point one.”

    That’s by way of saying that runners remember their times, and Conner, who’s bearing down on his 78th birthday come February, and who has professed the desire to live to 200, has many exceedingly good times — including three world records and nine national championships — to remember.

   This past weekend marked the third time that East Hampton High’s Marina Preiss, a junior, has competed in the New York State championship girls swimming meet.

    Preiss, who first swam at the state level as an eighth grader, and who went up last year as well, did herself proud, placing fifth in the 50-yard freestyle in a personal best time of 24.42 seconds, and ninth in the 100 free — usually her stronger race — in 52.90.

   It’s wait until next year for the East Hampton High School boys soccer team, which, while playing tenaciously, lost 2-0 to Jericho in the Long Island championship game at Dowling College on Nov. 14.

    Jericho was the pretty much the same type of team as Eastport-South Manor, East Hampton’s semifinal opponent — tall, fast, and well-organized. And, it should be added, very strong in the defensive end.

    “Every time we had the ball down there,” said Don McGovern, who assists Rich King in coaching the Bonackers, “they had six or seven guys in front of the ball.”

October 22, 1987

    It was the Jamie Grubb and Walter Casiel show Saturday at LaSalle Military Academy’s fir-lined football field as the East Hampton High School quarterback and its wide receiver combined on three touchdown pass plays, of 15, 6, and 35 yards, to win the League Seven game 20-6.

    . . . Afterward, Ted Meyer, Bonac’s coach, said that Bill Barbour Jr., David DiSunno, Nick Algios, and Jason Menu, all linemen, had played solidly on defense and offense.

   Goals by Nick West 6 minutes and 13 seconds into the game and with 10 minutes and 24 seconds left to play earned the East Hampton High School boys soccer team the county Class A championship at Dowling College’s Brook­haven campus Monday, by a 2-1 score over Elwood-John Glenn.

    It was the second year in a row that the Bonackers have won the county title, and the third time in four years that they’ve contested it. The exciting win set up a rematch with Jericho for the Long Island championship yesterday, also at Dowling.

   A number of East Hampton High School teams, namely football, girls volleyball, boys volleyball, and girls swimming, made the postseason in addition to the county-champion boys soccer team, not to forget the strong showings of the tennis doubles duo of Daniella Dunphy and Gillian Neubert and cross-country runner Dana Cebulski who competed at the state level.

Friday, November 16

GIRLS SWIMMING, state meet, Ithaca College, also Saturday.

Saturday, November 17

BOYS SOCCER, state Class A final, Middletown High School, Middletown, time to be announced.

Thursday, November 22

RUNNING,  3 and 6-mile Turkey Trot races around Fort Pond, co-sponsored by the East Hampton Town Parks and Recreation Department and Keeshan Realty, The Circle, Montauk, 10 and 10:10 a.m., registration from 8 to 9:30.

   To return to the Suffolk County Class A boys soccer final, East Hampton High’s team underwent two severe tests, battle royals with Miller Place, in the first round here Friday, a game that East Hampton won 1-0, and with Eastport-South Manor, in the semis here Saturday, a game the Bonackers came from behind to win 3-2.

    The Panthers and the Sharks were tall, bruising teams, but the Bonackers, who have been well coached by Rich King and Don McGovern, are just as tenacious in contesting 50-50 balls as they are skilled in ball-handling and passing.

Thursday, November 8

BOYS SOCCER, first round county Class A tournament, Miller Place at East Hampton, 2 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, first round Division II tournament, East Hampton at Sayville, 5 p.m.

Friday, November 9

BOYS SOCCER, county Class A semifinal, Eastport-Shoreham winner vs. East Hampton-Miller Place winner, site of higher seed, 2 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, county Class B championship game, site of higher seed, 4 p.m.

Saturday, November 10

   Tortorella Pools as of Oct. 24 — no games were played Oct. 31 because of hurricane outages — led the East Hampton Wednesday evening 7-on-7 men’s soccer league going into this week’s matchups.

    Maidstone Market, which won its ninth straight playoff championship in August by defeating Tortorella 3-1 in the final, came into the week in second place, with a 4-2 record. Tortorella was 5-0-1.

   It is no surprise that Davis Eames, the 12-year-old champion A.T.V. rider, and Julie Baum’s 7-year-old son, Liam, who suffers from an aggressive form of epilepsy, have teamed up, Baum said during a telephone conversation Monday.

    “Each of them has an ability to touch other people’s hearts — they’re empathic,” Baum said. “They have the gift of bringing people together. Neither of them puts anyone down — they see through differences. This gift is not common. If it were, the world would be a far better place.”

   When a visitor to Jeff and Melissa Eames’s house in Springs the other day noted that no other competitors could be seen in the photos of their 12-year-old champion Quad-racing daughter, Davis, they had to acknowledge that that was because Davis, who’s been riding A.T.V.s since she was 4 and racing them since the age of 6, invariably left her peers in the dust.

    About 10 years ago, Leif Hope, the Artists-Writers Softball Game’s impresario, had the idea for an exhibition at Guild Hall of the works of the myriad artists and writers who had played in this annual agon over the years.

    “At first, I was offered a back room,” said Hope during a conversation Monday. “Now, they’re giving us the main gallery, and the show will run from June 15 to July 27.”

Golf Champs

    The following won championships recently at the Sag Harbor Golf Club: Tim Sweeney, men; Robin Corwith, women; Peter Donohue, senior men; Jean Thompson, senior women, and Ray Romano, first flight.

    In addition, Mark Weinhardt was the men’s low qualifier, and John Acquino and Liz Granitz were the president’s cup winners.

   Cory Midgett, a 16-year-old junior at East Hampton High School, recently finished a season of Charger division racing at the Riverhead Speedway, winding up seventh among 18 contenders in the point standings.

    For virtually the entire season, Midgett was the youngest of the drivers at the speedway.

    “He’s got a long way to go to become a NASCAR driver, which is his dream,” Cory’s father, Brian, said during a conversation Friday, “but given his age and our shoestring budget, what he did this summer was fantastic.”

Thursday, November 1

BOYS SOCCER, first round county Class A tournament, Miller Place at East Hampton, 2:30 p.m.

Friday, November 2

GIRLS SWIMMING, East Hampton at League III championship meet, Hauppauge High School, 4:30 p.m.

FOOTBALL, first round Division IV tournament, East Hampton at Babylon, 7 p.m.

Saturday, November 3

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, county Class B semifinal, East Hampton High School, 10 a.m.

Monday, November 5

   East Hampton High’s field hockey and girls soccer teams said farewell to fall last week. For these young teams presumably the best is yet to be.

    You wouldn’t have thought girls soccer had gone winless in League V this season given the high spirits with which Mike Vitulli’s charges played in the regular-season finale here with runner-up Islip.

    East Hampton helped Islip to its first goal, a defender deflecting a corner kick by Lexi Jones, a junior, who was subbing that day in the goal for Francesca Schelfhout.

   Ryan Pilla, “The Car Doctor,” who operates out of his well-appointed shop on Scuttlehole Road, recently completed a Mazda trifecta, adding a New Jersey Motorsports Park lap record to speed records he had set this past Sports Car Club of America season at Lime Rock and Watkins Glen.

    There are two tracks at the Millville, N.J. site — the Lightning track and the Thunderbolt track. Pilla set his record on the way to winning the race, and the S.C.C.A’s Mazda series, on the latter loop.

   “We were playing for our lives,” Pete Vaziri said in the euphoric aftermath of Friday’s beatific 33-14 victory under the lights at McGann-Mercy in Riverhead.

    Indeed, Friday’s high school football game was a must-win for the Bonackers, who, as a result, nailed down Division IV’s last (eighth) playoff spot. That means they’ll be playing in the first round at top-seeded Babylon, which crushed them 44-7 in the season opener on Sept. 7, but Babylon (a traditional thorn in East Hampton’s side) can wait.

   The Montauk Rugby Club finished the regular season here Saturday with a 46-5 thumping of Bayonne, N.J., thus winding up in second place in the Empire Geographical Union with a 6-1 record.

    Now the Sharks must wait until early May to find out whether they’ll be one of the two sides from the Northeast and New England regions to advance to U.S.A. Rugby’s Division II Sweet Sixteen.

   A record turnout enjoyed an extraordinarily warm October day at Crescent Beach on Saturday for the Shelter Island Fall 5K run and walk. Mary Ellen Adipietro, the race’s director, said on Monday that 670 had registered and almost 600 finished the race, a benefit for the Coalition for Women’s Cancers at Southampton Hospital and the North Fork Breast Health Coalition.

   Josh Brussell, who coaches East Hampton High’s boys volleyball team, said following his team’s sweep of Westhampton Beach here Friday that it’s likely the Bonackers will have a home playoff match.

    Kathy McGeehan, the girls’ coach, who was helping to keep score that day, said she’s hoping for a first-round home playoff match too.

    “We know how to solve John Glenn,” McGeehan said, “but we’ve yet to actually do it. It has to do with taking care of the ball.”

Thursday, October 25

GIRLS TENNIS, county team tournament playoffs, sites of higher seeds, 3 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Mount Sinai at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, October 26

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, Center Moriches at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

FOOTBALL, East Hampton at McGann-Mercy, Riverhead, 7 p.m.

Saturday, October 27

BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton at freshman-sophomore meet, Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park, 9 a.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Eastport-South Manor at East Hampton, scrimmage, 10 a.m.

   After bowling a perfect game, the first in her life — and she has been bowling since the age of 7 — the 42-year-old Dot Grossman dropped to one knee and cried.

    Asked if he’d gotten “the shot,” her husband, Ian, who is the East Hampton Bowl’s general manager, and who watched the singular perfect game unfold, said he had not, though it would have been hard to do, he added, “because everyone ran to her and enveloped her in hugs.”

   The East Hampton High School boys soccer team repeated as the League VI champion here Saturday, routing Amityville, the only team that had beaten it during the regular season, by a score of 4-1.

    The visitors’ goal, by way of a penalty kick resulting from an inadvertent hands ball in the penalty box, came late in the game, long after everything had been decided.

    Ed Petrie, the state’s winningest public high school boys basketball coach, who on Sept. 22 became an inaugural member of East Hampton High School’s Hall of Fame, was among four honorees inducted into the Westchester Sports Hall of Fame on Oct. 10.

Standings posted on Section XI’s Web site Tuesday morning showed that East Hampton High School’s boys soccer team was in first place in League VI with a 7-1-0 record, and that girls volleyball, boys volleyball, and girls swimming were in runner-up spots.

    Moreover, boys and girls cross-country were each in third place in their leagues, golf was fourth, girls tennis was fifth, field hockey was eighth among 11 teams in Division III, and girls soccer was last in League V.