Football’s downward spiral?

Safety concerns, on Long Island and across the nation, and changing demographics in the Five Towns have led to a decline in football participation locally. While three local soccer leagues are flourishing, the 60-year-old Inwood Buccaneers Athletic Club has suspended its football and cheerleading programs this fall.

“At the end of the day, enrollment was down and the number of volunteers wasn’t there, either,” said Frank DeCicco Jr., who took over the operations of the Buccaneers from his father, Frank Sr., who died in 2014. “The area has changed, and there is a decline in playing football with concussion awareness. The numbers are down for other programs as well.” 

DeCicco said that in 2012, the Buccaneers, which were founded in 1956, had nearly 160 kids try out for football. This year there were 24, and only a dozen showed up consistently, he said. According to figures from studies done by USA Football, amateur football’s national governing body, there was a precipitous decline in the participation of 6- to 14-year-olds from 2010 to 2015, from 3 million to 2.169 million.

Section VIII, the governing body of scholastic sports in Nassau County, does not chart how many fewer middle school and high school students are playing football, but Pat Pizzarelli, the county’s football coordinator, said that coaches have told him that rosters have shrunk, and the conversation in most areas focuses on safety concerns. “Syosset ran a second junior varsity team, and now they’re not doing that,” Pizzarelli said, adding that turnout, not money, is the issue. “The Lawrence [schools] community has changed drastically.” 

Pizzarelli, the Lawrence School District’s former assistant superintendent and athletic director, noted the impact of the growth of the Hispanic population, which favors soccer, in the Five Towns, as well as Orthodox Jews, who attend yeshivas and do not play public school football.

 According to census figures, the Hispanic community now comprises 42.9 percent of Inwood and has grown in other Five Towns communities, especially Cedarhurst and Lawrence. Two soccer programs, Inwood United and Inwood F.C., have been established in the past few years to accommodate that expanding population. Since 1970, the Hewlett Lawrence Soccer Club has also provided a place for local youth to learn the sport.

Affiliated with the Ronkonkoma-based Long Island Junior Soccer League, Inwood United has eight teams and nearly 200 children, according to Saul Cisneros, who oversees the local program. “We play 95 percent of our games in Nassau County and have practices two or three times a week,” Cisneros said. “The idea is to guide the kids to a better path for the future.”

Longtime Buccaneers supporter Pete Sobol said the community was a “football town,” and there has been a shift in sports interests, but not goals. “The soccer clubs are following the lead of the Inwood Buccaneers to put kids first, keep them involved and keep them away from bad influences,” Sobol said. “I hope they’re able to accomplish what the Inwood Buccaneers did, and from what I’ve seen, they’re off to a good start.” 

Curbing safety concerns

Increased awareness of concussions appears to be driving the decline in youth tackle football participation — a 2.5 percent decrease nationwide since 2008, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. And according to the Federation, there was a jump of 8.7 percent, to nearly 1.7 million, in the number of children ages 6 to 14 playing flag football in 2015.

“Due to the concussion safety issues, that’s why, in Nassau, we’re using the Heads Up program,” Pizzarelli said. Heads Up, put together by USA Football, has established student-athlete health protocols and safer techniques for blocking and tackling, and includes information on equipment and concussion recognition and response.

A study published in JAMA Pediatrics last year found that from 2005 to 2014, for every 10,000 soccer players in a sampling of 100 high schools, there were 4.5 concussions among girls and 2.8 among boys. And the rates of concussions rose during those years, researchers said, the rate among football players almost doubled. 

“Taking courses on concussions through the Long Island Soccer League is mandatory,” Cisneros said. “Concussions are a concern in soccer, but put it next to American football and we don’t have the same risk, as there is not as much contact between players. When you bump heads in soccer, it’s a different animal than in football.”

DeCicco said that the Buccaneers plan to raise awareness of their gridiron teams with a flag football league in the spring.

“You have to change with the times, and soccer and lacrosse are popular,” said Billy Alsop, a longtime Inwood resident who was involved with the Buccaneers for many years. “I had a lot of fun being with the kids, and the kids learned a lot of things.” 

Have an opinion about safety concerns associated with contact sports? Send your letter to the editor to jbessen@liherald.com.