1984 Oceanside alumni gather for 42nd Turkey Bowl

Over the Thanksgiving break, members of Oceanside High School’s class of 1984 met once again for their 42nd annual Turkey Bowl. The tradition, started by High Schools alumni Joe Cuomo and Mike Tricarico, began in 1980 during their freshman year on the field behind the Oceanside Kindergarten Center at Merle Avenue.

For over four decades, the game has been a way for friends and family to reconnect and bond over football during the holiday season. As the class of ‘85 got older, many of their children joined the game, embracing the tradition.

This year, the game included multiple female players for a change, one of which being 1985 alumna Kathleen King. King, who is a Rockville Centre native and Massachusetts resident. King said that over the years, she usually watched her sons play in the game and supported them from the sidelines.

“It’s probably the first time in six or seven years that I played football,” King said. “I don’t know what changed this year. I just thought it’d be fun to jump in the game. It was nice that everybody was like ‘great, no problem at all’.

The game also highlighted one of Cuomo’s nieces, High School freshman Katie Lovelock, who was the first female to catch a pass in the history of the tradition. In 2019, Sophia Perpero, another one of Cuomo’s nieces, was the first female to ever play in the Turkey Bowl, 39 years after the tradition began.

“Several years back, Sophia asked me at Thanksgiving why girls never played,” Cuomo said. “And I told her because they never asked but they were more than welcome to. So, she asked if she could play and she wanted to be the first girl to score a touchdown. And she was.”

After the game, a large section of the group meets at EGP Oceanside, a local restaurant owned by one of his classmates, located just behind the field on Long Beach Road. Cuomo notes that the group, sometimes totaling over 40 people, would be accommodated with a room at the restaurant, where the meeting would become a small class reunion.

“When we were in high school, I would say the post game meals were probably us going to 7-Eleven, getting Big Gulps and microwave burritos, and sitting in the parking lot on the concrete blocks,” Cuomo said. “And over time it moved to Taco Bell, when we were in college and some of us in law school and just starting our jobs. And then as we got a little older, we matured a bit, so we started to pick a local restaurant and EGP became the right place to have it. At this point this is a brotherhood and a sisterhood. It’s just about old friends, whether they’re male, female, young, old, having a good time. Getting to see each other’s families grow up, catching up and maintaining a tradition over all these years, and we’re open to anyone that wants to be a part of that.”