Sports

   The U.S. Women’s Open is to be played at the Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton this week, beginning today, and among those listed as players to watch in Newsday’s preview Tuesday were eight South Koreans, one of whom, the 16-year-old Lydia Ko, the U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, lives in New Zealand.

    In the past nine years, beginning with Se Ri Pak in 1998, South Korean golfers have won the U.S. Open six times. They’ve taken the last four out of five — Inbee Park in 2008, Eun-Hee Ji in ’09, So Yeon Ryu in ’11, and Na Yeon Choi, whose nickname is NYC, last year.

   Boston, and the fatal terror attack there in April, was very much on everyone’s minds leading up to the 34th Shelter Island Overcoming Obstacles 10K Saturday, and consequently certain precautions, such as prohibiting backpacks and providing clear plastic bags for the collection of refuse at the start and finish lines rather than metal bins, were taken, but all, the race’s director, Mary Ellen Adipietro, said, went smoothly.

   It was a celebratory week here soccer-wise, highlighted by the Under-16 Hurricanes’ Long Island Cup championship win Saturday, a first, and their 2-0 shutout of Auburndale-Bayside Sunday that crowned an undefeated Long Island Junior Soccer League Division 1 season.

    The Hurricanes, coached by Don McGovern, who helps Rich King with East Hampton High’s powerful program — the Bonackers have made it to the county finals in three of the past four years and are two-time defending county champions — thus finished the travel team spring season with a 13-0-1 record.

   Peter Heinz, 36, a Manhattanite who’s summering in Springs, had just biked 30 miles out to Montauk and back on Saturday when his girlfriend, Analisa Cipriano, told him that a triathlon was about to get under way at Maidstone Park. Away they went, and though Heinz arrived late, he quickly swam his way into the lead in the 300-yard swim and didn’t look back during the course of the 7-mile bike and one-and-one-half-mile run.

    The triathlete, who was eighth at Mighty Hamptons last fall, registered for the race after winning it in 40 minutes and 15.42 seconds.

    Going into last night’s games at East Hampton’s Herrick Park, Hampton F.C.-Bill Miller led the Wednesday evening 7-on-7 men’s soccer league with a 5-2-0 mark, though the Hideaway, thanks to a 3-1 upset of perennial-champion Maidstone Market on June 12, was right behind, at 4-2-1.

    The Market, whose entry in an 11-on-11 league at Calverton is undefeated, was in third place, along with Tortorella Pools, each with 4-3-0 marks. Tuxpan, which played Bill Miller tough in a 1-0 loss on the 12th, was in fifth place, and Bateman Painting, a former champion, was last, at 1-5-1.

   The future of tennis is in good hands if the attendance at the East Hampton Indoor/Outdoor Tennis Club’s “festival” for kids was any indication.

Saturday, June 22

PICKLEBALL, introductory clinic, East Hampton Indoor/Outdoor Tennis Club, Daniel’s Hole Road, Wainscott, 8:30-10 a.m.

TENNIS, Kids Day, Hampton Racquet Club, Buckskill Road, East Hampton, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

Wednesday, June 26

MEN’S SOCCER, Maidstone Market vs. Tortorella Pools, 6:30 p.m.; Hampton F.C.-Bill Miller vs. Bateman Painting, 7:25, and The Hideaway vs. F.C. Tuxpan, 8:20, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

Thursday, June 27

U.S. WOMEN’S OPEN, opening day, Sebonack Golf Club, Southampton.

   Both of Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School’s Final Four state playoff teams lost in semifinal contests Saturday; the boys were edged 1-0 in a pitchers’ duel by Seton Catholic, a Binghamton area team, and the girls were shut out 7-0 by Frewsburg.

    Seton Catholic and Frewsburg went on to win the state Class C championships, in baseball and softball.

   Jim Nicoletti, who heads East Hampton High School’s Hall of Fame committee, announced the selection of the Hall’s second class at the athletic awards dinner on June 5 — a group that comprises 11 individual honorees, two coaches, and two championship teams.

    The designees are to be formally inducted on homecoming day, Saturday, Oct. 12, at a ceremony following a breakfast in the high school’s cafeteria.

    A 21-year-old native of New Zealand, Michael Poole, won Saturday’s 31st Montauk triathlon in 1 hour, 47 minutes, and 54 seconds, a record.

    Poole was 11th out of the water, in 21:13, though only two seconds separated him from the eventual runner-up, Tom Eickelberg, who was the first to emerge from the brisk and choppy one-mile Lake Montauk swim.

   The Yellow Slugs were anything but sluggish as they defeated the favored Oilers 6-3 in the spring adult roller hockey final at the Sportime Arena on June 4.

    And they did it despite conceding the Oilers four power plays, three of which resulted from penalties assessed the Slugs’ slick and quick forward Neil Powell.

    The game provided an interesting matchup inasmuch as Tommy Powell, Neil’s brother, was in the goal for the Oilers. Neil got the better of Tommy on two occasions in the first half, with Matt Brierley adding another for a 3-0 halftime lead.

Turbo Tri

    A triathlon for competitors 17 and up comprising a 300-yard Gardiner’s Bay swim, a 7-mile bike leg, and a one-and-one-half-mile run is to be held at Maidstone Park in Springs on Saturday at 6 p.m.

    The race, over the same course that younger triathletes are to traverse next month, is a fund-raiser for the growing I-Tri program, which is designed, according to I-Tri’s founder, Theresa Roden, to empower adolescent girls. “Transformation Through Triathlon” is the program’s motto.

Friday, June 14

SOCCER, East Hampton High School alumni game, high school’s turf field, 5:30 p.m.

Saturday, June 15

SHELTER ISLAND 10K, with Bill Rodgers, Joan Benoit Samuelson, and Dick Beardsley, Shelter Island High School, 5:30 p.m.

TURBO-TRI, 300-yard bay swim, 7-mile bike, and 1.5-mile run for competitors 17-and-up, benefit I-Tri program to empower adolescent girls, Maidstone Park, 6 p.m., with party to follow at the Maidstone Park pavilion.

Sunday, June 16

   Ian Lynch, the Colgate-bound East Hampton High School senior and class valedictorian, made the all-state golf team as a result of his 15th-place finish in the state tournament played on Cornell University’s course last weekend.

   It was the first time that Lynch, who also was the recipient of Suffolk golf’s sportsmanship award, had made the all-state team.

   The 31st Montauk triathlon, founded by the late Bob Aaron, is to be contested Saturday morning, beginning at 7:30, with what promises to be a brisk mile-long swim in Lake Montauk.

    Both defending champions, the 21-year-old Ryan Siebert of Patchogue and Laurel Wassner, a 37-year-old pro from New York City, who became the first female to win this race outright in 2011, won’t be here, Merle McDonald-Aaron, the race director, said Monday.

    Registration is, as usual, closed, inasmuch as the 650-competitor limit has been reached, McDonald-Aaron said.

   Melissa Edwards, who coaches Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School’s softball team, thought when the season began that this would be a rebuilding year, but, lo, her overachievers proved her wrong, to her delight.

    The Whalers, whose anchors are Kasey Gilbride, the line-drive hitting shortstop, and Samma Duchemin, the pitcher, clinched the county Class C championship at home last Thursday by defeating their perennial rival, Port Jefferson, 6-3.

   “We’ve given out seven or eight scholarships now,” Maureen Bluedorn said, with a smile, the other day at the well-appointed Stony Hill Stables in Amagansett, as the most recent recipient, Georgia Bunce, 8, with her mother, Megan, looking on, prepared to saddle up for a lesson in the pony ring.

    Bluedorn was referring to the year-old Stony Hill Stables Foundation’s laudable effort to extend the joy and challenging demands of equestrian sport to more and more youngsters here.

Saturday, June 8

MONTAUK TRIATHLON, 1-mile swim, 22-mile bike, and 10K run, intersection of West Lake and Star Island Drives, 7:30 a.m.

SOFTBALL, state Class C semifinals, Morse Fields, Queensbury, 9 a.m.; final,  Adirondack Sports Complex, Queensbury, 2 p.m.

BASEBALL, state Class C semifinals, Broome Community College, Binghamton, 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.; championship game, 4.

SWIM ACROSS AMERICA, kick-off reception, Sag Harbor Yacht Club, 6-9 p.m.

Wednesday, June 12

   A rain delay on May 28 interrupted what proved to be the deciding game of the county Class C baseball series, at which time Pierson High School’s Whalers were sailing along on the crest of a 7-0 lead.

    Jon Tortorella, Pierson’s coach, would rather the game had continued that day, noting that soon after the postponement decision it stopped raining. But, in the end, it mattered little as the Whalers, who went 19-1 in the regular season, continued to dominate Port Jefferson on May 29, winning the championship 9-4.

   Shawn Roberts, who red-shirted this year at Georgia Tech so that he could have another year of eligibility, easily won the Bonac on Board to Wellness 5K from the Reutershan Parking Lot to East Hampton Village’s Main Beach on May 22 in 16 minutes and 45 seconds.

    “He was coasting,” said John Conner, when told that Roberts’s employer, Barbara Gubbins, had said he was “a 1:48 half-miler.”

    “If he had been going all out, I think he would have run it in 15-something, or less,” said Conner, who added that he had run as fast as the winner when he was 50.

   Shooting rounds of 76 and 75 at the Indian Island golf course last week, Ian Lynch, who is to attend Colgate University in the fall, became, according to his coach, Claude Beudert, the first Bonacker to qualify for three state championships in the sport.

    Lynch, whose first-day score ranked him 10th among the county’s individual competitors going into the tourney’s second day, finished fifth, thus qualifying him to play in the state tournament this weekend at Cornell University.

   Scorpion, which had stung Virgen del Milagro to win Sportime Arena’s indoor soccer (futsal) championship in early March, was, in turn, bested by the Bautista brothers’ team, now known as F.C., in the spring men’s open final, which was played at Sportime on May 18.

    In the men’s 38-plus title game, which also was hotly contested throughout, Liga Sayausi prevailed 8-7 in a penalty kick shootout that broke a 3-3 tie.

   Pierson High School’s baseball coach, Jon Tortorella, was hoping to get a playoff game in Saturday, but despite having covered the batting circle and the pitching mound with tarpaulins late Friday afternoon, the second game of the county Class C championship series was put off until Tuesday.

    Tortorella, of course, was hoping that his 19-1 Whalers would win Tuesday, thus obviating the need for a third game and advancing them to the Long Island game, which is to be played Monday in Nassau County.

    John Kernell, a Springs resident who can lay claim to being Montauk Downs’ most avid golfer and proselyte, reported following the United States Golf Association’s media day at the Sebonack Golf Club recently that the U.S. Women’s Open there at the end of June ought to be a big draw.

    “It’s a beautiful course, at an exclusive club that most people would never be able to go to otherwise, the tickets are very reasonable — $125 will get you in for the whole week, from Monday through Sunday — and the quality of golf will be first-class.”

   Chris Reich, who coaches East Hampton High School’s boys track team, reported Monday that his freshmen and sophomores had held their own in a countywide freshman-sophomore meet for all of Suffolk’s schools.

    Of chief interest was Erik Engstrom’s third-place finish in the 2,000-meter steeplechase, “in an incredible time of 6 minutes and 41 seconds, even though he fell after leaping the water jump. He’ll compete in the 3,000 steeple in the division meet this week.”

   Don Reese of East Hampton Youth Football has embarked on a campaign to breathe new life into a program that in recent years has experienced a decline in numbers.

    “It’s two things,” he said during a conversation Friday. “Parents’ fear of concussions is part of it, as is the fact we now have a very large Latino population in the early grades who grow up playing soccer and know very little about football.”

   Sag Harbor’s Havens Beach seemed a wonderful place for Main Beach Surf & Sport to start its paddleboard race season Saturday, for the race’s beneficiary, Kevin McAllister, the Peconic Baykeeper, had spurred that village’s board of trustees to underwrite an inventive project there that, if faithfully monitored, ought to clean Havens Beach up.

Golfers Win

    The East Hampton High School golf team on Monday at the Indian Island course in Riverhead won its fifth division title in a row as Ian Lynch led the way with a 76, earning the senior a spot in the tourney’s second day, along with his teammate, Matt Griffiths, a junior, who shot a 79.

    “It kind of takes the sting out of the fall season when we finished third, behind Southampton and Pierson,” said East Hampton’s coach, Claude Beudert.

Saturday, May 25

BASEBALL, county Class C tournament, Port Jefferson-Southold winner vs. Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 11 a.m.

Tuesday, May 28

BASEBALL, county Class C tournament, game three of championship series, if needed, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4 p.m.

Wednesday, May 29

MEN’S SOCCER, 7-on-7 games, Maidstone Market vs. Bateman Painting, 6:30 p.m., Tortorella Pools vs. FC Tuxpan, 7:25, and Hampton FC-Bill Miller vs. The Hideaway, 8:20, Herrick Park, East Hampton.

May 5, 1988

    Going into yesterday’s game here with Greenport, the East Hampton High School baseball team continued to hold onto first place in League Eight, at 9-1, with Mercy keeping pace at 7-2.

    East Hampton won all three games it played last week, finishing a sweep of the Southold series with 13-5 and 17-3 victories, and stopping Greenport 10-3.

    Eric Pettersen, Scott Loper, and Pat Bistrian, each of whom drove in two runs, led the way in the 13-5 win at Southold on April 27. Kenny Wood was the winning pitcher.

May 12, 1988