Sports

Aside from the big-ticket Artists and Writers Game and Ellen's Run, there's plenty of slow-pitch softball and a tennis pro-am in Southampton Saturday.

In the end, Leif Hope, who has been an integral part of The Game for a half-century, said, it’s all about entertainment and raising money for four local charities — the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center, Phoenix House, the Retreat, and East End Hospice.

This coming weekend will be a busy one sports-wise, with the Artists and Writers Softball Game at East Hampton’s Herrick Park Saturday afternoon and Ellen’s Run at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital Sunday morning.

The recent graduate of Messiah College in Pennsylvania, who was the nation’s leading scorer in men’s soccer in the fall, has signed a contract with Stumptown Athletic of Charlotte, N.C., an entry in the newly formed National Independent Soccer Association.

Block Island paddle leaves from the Montauk Lighthouse early Saturday, while East Hampton lifeguards hit the national competition in Virginia Beach this weekend and men's and women's slow-pitch teams take to the Terry King field in Amagansett.

The Pink Panthers, a team made of up the late Travis Field’s schoolmates and friends, made it four in a row at the popular softball tournament played in his name this past week at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett.

Julie Ratner has from the beginning seen to it that nearly all of the money raised by the race, put on by the Ellen P. Hermanson Foundation, has been put to good use here. Ellen’s Run happens on Aug. 18, starting from Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

A hotly contested five-on-five basketball tournament at the Sportime Arena in Amagansett and 3 and 6-mile paddleboard races off Havens Beach in Sag Harbor Saturday morning left their contestants spent, while at the same time raising money to be spent on Down syndrome and breast cancer research.

It's Travis Field benefit softball tourney time, while a benefit paddle happens at Havens Beach on Saturday. And don't forget the junior lifeguarding competition at Indian Wells this weekend.

East Hampton Soccer Fever and Maidstone Market played to 1-1 ties in two games in the 7-on-7 league’s regular season, but in the playoff final at East Hampton’s Herrick Park last week, it was all Maidstone.

Bonac's 11-and-under softballers take third place upstate, and an East Hampton paddler embarks on a 25-mile race around Manhattan on Saturday.

At dawn on Aug. 10, a Paddlers 4 Humanity fleet of 50 or so paddleboarders and kayakers is to set forth for Block Island from the foot of the Montauk Lighthouse, and it goes without saying that the roughly 18-mile crossing is challenging.