In 2015, the Paul D. Schreiber High School football team began the season with 35 players and finished with 23.
Players missed 57 practices due to injury and six players suffered concussions — the most in its football conference.
The results on the field reflected the low number of players and injuries. The team was 3-15 over the past two seasons and was outscored last season 291-51.
To its credit, the Port Washington School District appealed to the Football Council, the Nassau County Athletic Council and the Nassau County Superintendents Council to place the Port Washington in a lower conference for the 2016 season.
Schreiber was a member of Conference 1, which is for schools with the largest enrollment in Section VIII of the New York State High School Athletic Association.
But as noted by Stephanie Joannon, director of health, physical education and athletics, the school’s enrollment isn’t indicative of the number of students participating in the football program.
Because Port Washington’s roster isn’t as deep as other schools’ rosters, Joannon said, more players are forced to play both offense and defense, making them more susceptible to injury.
The state association had previously agreed to a development conference in which Port Washington participated for two seasons, before the conference was disbanded.
But this time state football association fumbled the ball.
Rather than allowing them to move down in conference, the association offered to make Port Washington the No. 14 seed in Conference 1 and play the next three lowest seeds twice and two other teams.
The health of student-athletes deserves something more than football association half measures, especially when a school district that knows its players best makes a request.
The district, which has appealed its conference placement seven times in the past seven years, correctly stuck to its guns and refused to play in Conference 1.
But rather than giving up on varsity football, Port Washington opted to play an independent schedule against private schools on Long Island and Westchester.
This followed a meeting with interested parents of current and past players with, according to Joannon, 98 percent agreeing that playing in Conference 1 was not safe but not playing was not an alternative.
Joannon, the Port Washington administration, and the parents and players deserve credit for reaching a sensible solution in a democratic process.
But for some Port Washington parents, this was not enough. They called for the end of football at Schreiber entirely.
In a letter to the Port Washington Times, resident Joel Katz said he did not think the independent schedule would eliminate the problem with concussions. Citing a former unnamed school board member, Katz also said the football program costs $500,000 a year and said the money would be better spent on school academics at Schreiber, which for good measure he said did not compare favorably with surrounding school districts.
School Superintendent Kathleen Mooney said in a letter to the editor responding to Katz that the varsity and middle school programs only cost $87,557 during the 2015-16 school year. Mooney also defended the school’s academics, pointing to the success of the school overall and individual achievement of students, adding the district was committed to educating “the whole child and supports athletics as well as the arts.”
At a time when obesity and Type 2 diabetes are at epidemic proportions, the need for robust physical education programs is well established as are the benefits of developing the skills associated with playing on a team.
But there are legitimate concerns about the safety of playing football that go beyond its cost in dollars and cents.
The scientific evidence is now conclusive that football — a sport of high impact collisions — poses a threat to serious long-term damage to the brain.
The NFL’s top health and safety officer acknowledged in May — after years of denials by the league — that there is a link between football-related head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a life-threatening condition.
Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neuropathologist who has diagnosed CTE in the brains of 176 people, including those of 90 of 94 former NFL players 45 out of 55 college players and six out of 26 high school players.
“I don’t think this represents how common this disease is in the living population, but the fact that over five years I’ve been able to accumulate this number of cases in football players, it cannot be rare,” McKee said. “In fact, I think we are going to be surprised at how common it is.”
Every school district should make sure that those playing football understands the risks.
Give Port Washington credit for already having started the discussion.
