By:Scott Brinton
At precisely 12:15 p.m., practice ended, and the squad marched tiredly off the field into the school, through its unlighted kitchen and down the hall to the locker room. Players carried their helmets in their hands, breathing heavily and sweating. One young man slipped as he clattered across the tile floor in his cleats. He was all right. He laughed, and the others joined in.
It was a seemingly normal practice. But of course, it wasn't. It was the first time in a year that the Mepham squad had practiced together. In 2003, the Bellmore-Merrick Central District Board of Education abruptly canceled Mepham's football season after it was revealed that three varsity squad members had sexually abused three junior-varsity teammates at a Pennsylvania training camp. All three perpetrators pleaded guilty to the crime. One is on parole and living at home in Bellmore, where he receives tutoring. One was sentenced to boot camp in Pennsylvania. The third is undergoing counseling at a Pennsylvania facility.
On Monday, a crowd of photographers gathered outside Mepham to get shots of the squad as it practiced. The ongoing story of the Mepham team's hard fall, it seems, has hardly died.
But seeking to get out a new message that the squad is rebuilding in a caring, positive atmosphere are its five new leaders: varsity head coach Tom Piccirillo, junior-varsity head coach Tom Mazeika, varsity assistant coaches Tom Amoroso and Bret Malone, and JV assistant John Coscia.
All three victims are back on the team, according to Central District officials. They are still hurting terribly, family and friends say. But Piccirillo, 38, a Suffolk County police officer who played quarterback for Calhoun High School in the 1980s and coached Wantagh football for a decade, has pledged to make the upcoming season fun for all the players. He wants to build friendships with team members. And he said the squad has a theme for the 2004 season: "We're going to move forward together."
"We're not running from things," Piccirillo said. "We're going to face it and move past it." The players, he said, "really want to prove Mepham is a great place."
Piccirillo said the coaches "are getting plenty of support from the administration. We've got a great staff of young, enthusiastic coaches. We're up for a challenge. We'll take one step at a time and hopefully build a more solid program."
Mepham's five coaches at the time of the attacks were dismissed last year. They are now suing the Central District for wrongful termination, and they are taking legal action as well against the perpetrators' families. The three victims are suing the district, the former coaches, the perpetrators and their families. Over the past 11 months, Mepham football has dominated discussion at many Board of Education meetings, which have turned raucous at times, with heated exchanges between parents and board trustees. The former coaches have held news conferences. And the victims' families have appeared on national television to tell their sons' terrible stories.
Many questions linger. The victims' families and friends say players who knew about the attacks and kept silent about them over the past year shouldn't be allowed to play football. But district officials say that knowing who knew what and when is difficult to determine.
The victims' families are also disappointed that the three perpetrators received what they call light sentences. The three were tried as juveniles, but the heinous nature of their crime warranted adult treatment in court, the families say.
Against this highly charged backdrop, the Mepham team must begin anew. Saul Lerner, the Central District athletic director, said he believes the new coaches are up to the task. "We're truly lucky to have reassembled such an outstanding team as we did. I have great expectations for this group," he said.
Joe Corea, Calhoun's retiring athletic coordinator, who continues to coach football and baseball at the school, had nothing but praise for Piccirillo, who played for him. "He had speed, and he had a lot of class," Corea said. "He was a good kid. The administration made the right decision" in selecting him as head coach.
Piccirillo, the father of three young children who has a bachelor's degree in phys. ed. and coaching from C.W. Post, said he applied for the head coach's job because "I wanted to come back [to Bellmore-Merrick] and bring my experience and hopefully do some good."
Mazeika, the JV head coach, played football for Piccirillo at Wantagh, where he graduated in 1997. Mazeika, an All-County center who won the Sportsmanship Award from the Nassau County Football Coaches Association, said of his former coach, "I looked up to him a lot. ... I felt like I knew him very well."
Malone, an assistant, also played under Piccirillo at Wantagh and will be a first-year phys. ed. teacher at Mepham. The one-time All-County quarterback, who played football at SUNY-Cortland, said that Piccirillo "was one of the reasons I went into the [teaching] profession. I'm looking forward to being on the sidelines with him."
Amoroso, another assistant, teaches health and phys. ed. at Sewanhaka High School and played quarterback at Beach Channel High School in Brooklyn. Amoroso, who has a master's degree in health and an administrative certificate, said the first day of practice went well. "The kids were pushing each other," he said. "There was a lot of enthusiasm." He added, "We're already having a lot of laughs."
Piccirillo said the coaches plan to concentrate on fostering team unity this season. The players, he said, "are feeling us out, and we're feeling them out. It takes time to build trust and a relationship."
