Class of ‘84 Thanksgiving football game

For the 33rd year, Oceanside High School’s class of 1984 took to the field at Merle Avenue and played a game of football on Nov. 29, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It’s a longstanding tradition, class reunion and lunch for these men. It’s called the Turkey Bowl.

The Turkey Bowl started in 1979, when a group of friends played a game of football at the field on Merle Avenue after Thanksgiving. Merle Avenue was the Junior High then, now it is the High School.

“We played a pickup game of football that thanksgiving,” said Joe Cuomo, one of the co-founders and organizers. “Pretty much with one exception [it’s been] carried out all these years.”

Some years only eight or ten people came out to play the game, but attendance picked up after the 25th High School reunion and the rise of Facebook — the Turkey Bowl even has a Facebook group. “We get requests from people who weren’t even in our class to join the group,” said Tricarico. “They just lived in Oceanside.”

“Every year Mike [Tricarico] does a video for the game,” said Cuomo. “It’s kind of become a fun tradition for people involved in the group.”

This year, about twenty people played the game and fifty people went to the lunch afterwards at Kasey’s Kitchen and Cocktails in Rockville Centre.

“The games have gotten shorter and the eating and drinking have gotten longer,” said Mike Tricarico, another co-founder and organzier for the Turkey Bowl.

The game has also changed in how it is played. It used to be a tackle game but now it’s flag football. And kickoffs were taken out a decade ago.

Most of the players are Oceanside High School graduates who still live in the area but some of the players have come from far away — like London and Switzerland. Tricarico and Cuomo said that some out of towners visit their families around Thanksgiving so they can play in the Turkey Bowl.

“It’s neat that people try to travel around it,” said Tricarico.

Nowdays, many of the players are the sons and nephews of the Class of 1984 and every year gets closer to the point when half of the players are children. “The kids are starting to take over,” said Cuomo. “Something we kind of laughed about years ago and [it’s] starting to happen.”

“I think we’ll probably play it until we are probably not able to play it anymore,” said Tricarico. “My son is four and I’d love to be able to play it with him at some point.”