Amityville cancels varsity football season, will only field JV team, report says

Amityville High School will only field a junior varsity football team this season after injuries in practices and scrimmages forced the school to cancel its varsity program, according to a report.

The school’s director of athletics, Evan Farkas, told Newsday that the decision came down Monday morning, when it became clear Amityville would not have enough healthy upperclassmen to field a varsity team. Farkas said he informed Suffolk’s sports governing body Section XI that the program will only play a junior varsity this season.

“We really tried to make it work at the varsity level,” Farkas said in the Newsday article. “But we’re a very young group of players and there are developmental and safety concerns. This really stings because we wanted it to work out.

“But it’s the right decision to rebuild the program. We have the right staff to develop some talented players with a junior varsity schedule,” he added.

Amityville, which had been the 13th seed in Suffolk’s Division IV and was slated to open the season Saturday at No. 12 Wyandanch, becomes the second team to drop varsity football this year in a division made up of Suffolk’s smallest-enrollment schools. Port Jefferson canceled its varsity football season last week, also citing a lack of players.

“Our policy reads that if two teams drop before August 1, we can re-seed the division,” Section XI executive director Tom Combs told Newsday. “If it happens after August 1, we have no choice but to award forfeits.”

Both Amityville and Port Jefferson will forfeit all eight of their games.

“It’s unfortunate because now we’ll have a few teams getting two forfeit wins and playing only a six-game schedule,” Combs said in today’s report. “But they can go into the team portal and try to schedule a game with other available teams.”

Amityville will play a six-game junior varsity schedule.

When Port Jefferson cancelled its varsity season last week, many fans and alumni clamored for the district to suit up JV players for varsity and save the varsity season rather than have a JV team this fall.

But Amityville first-year coach Paul Mastronardi said that is not a realistic option. the biggest issue being the safety of the younger players.

“It’s in the best interests of our younger players to reset,” he told Newsday. “These kids should be playing junior varsity football, as most of them are only 14 years old.”

_{Top: Google Maps Street View (Amityville High School football field, 2025).}