Injuries Leave Jericho High Unable to Finish Varsity Football Season

Jericho canceled its varsity football season three games in after injuries left too few healthy players, becoming the fourth Long Island school to do so this year.

Jericho High School on Long Island will not finish its varsity football season, bringing the campaign to a halt after three games. Injuries thinned the roster to the point that continuing safely was no longer possible, and school officials chose to end things rather than press ahead.

The decision makes Jericho the fourth Long Island school to drop varsity football this year, joining Amityville, Port Jefferson and Holy Trinity. Of those four programs, three, Jericho included, did so because of player availability.

The injuries occurred during a Friday night game, according to Superintendent Dr. Robert Kravitz, who explained the thinking behind the cancellation. He said some of the team's seniors were hurt in that game, and he did not want to send younger students out to face physically bigger players from opposing teams, which is why the season was ended.

Head varsity coach Brendan Lahti said several members of the team had suffered injuries that would keep them sidelined for the rest of the year. Kravitz added that only around six seniors who were fit to play were still with the squad, and underclassmen made up most of what remained.

The shutdown landed only after the players had invested months of work preparing for the fall. Ninth grader Garrett Duffalo said he was upset by the news because he loves football and has been playing it since his middle school days. He said the group spent the summer conditioning because everyone understood the team was short on size, and the intent was to give everything for a full four quarters.

Another ninth grader, Nishant Pandit, said the news disappointed him because he had hoped to suit up this season, though he came to see the decision as the right one in order to keep the seniors from getting hurt. He added that having far more available players would have helped, but with most of the seniors and a junior unable to play, facing other schools was not realistic.

Patrick Pizzarelli, executive director of Section VIII, said schools that have trouble filling their rosters probably need to step back and examine whether football is genuinely what the students in their communities want. Where interest amounts to only a handful of kids, he suggested pairing up with another school as one possible path forward.

New York state requires teams to dress a minimum of 16 players, and 11 must be on the field during play.

In the longer term, Jericho officials said making sure students can still play football down the line is a priority, and they are weighing the choices in front of them. Kravitz framed the goal as holding on to the school's Jayhawk players rather than letting the program slip away, and Duffalo said he intends to keep playing because he loves the sport.