The Long Island Football Championship commenced in 1992, and the William Floyd High School Colonials have been a consistent winner in the Suffolk County Division I conference.
The Colonials have won 14 Suffolk County Division I titles since the inception of the Long Island Championship (LIC). The past two years, William Floyd played Massapequa High School, from Nassau County, in the Class I championship.
The LIC is the culmination of the high school football season. Each county, Nassau and Suffolk, comprises four divisions by enrollment, notably referred to in the LIC as Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, or Class 4.
Each division in the county will have their own bracketed playoff. Each county will have four winners. The county winners will play their respective “class” counterparts in the LIC. Each year, the LIC alternates between Hofstra University in Nassau and Stony Brook University in Suffolk.
This past November, Massapequa narrowly defeated William Floyd, 42-40, in an exciting, high-scoring Class 1 shootout. Massapequa is now tied for second place with William Floyd for the most Class 1 LIC wins with five. Freeport High School tops the list with seven LIC Class 1 wins. With Massapequa winning, each county has won the Class 1 LIC 16 times, but Nassau has won the last six meetings. Connetquot High School won the very first Class 1 championship back in 1992 and has two overall.
Looking at all the teams vying for LIC Class 1 glory, seven schools have won multiple championships and only 12 teams have won at least one in the 32 years of existence. William Floyd has been consistently dominating the competition and head coach Paul Longo has been there every step of the way.
Longo is a retired guidance counselor, spending 33 years as an educator in the William Floyd School District. This year marks his 30th year as head football coach and he was inducted into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame in 2022.
“I was originally thinking about going to law school,” Longo said of getting into coaching, but when he started to coach his little brother’s baseball and hockey teams, he really enjoyed it.
Longo ultimately decided to be a teacher and coach, and hasn’t looked back. Longo has been retired for eight years, but still coaches the football team.
It is hard to stay on top, year in and year out. When asked about what is needed to be a great program and coaching staff, Longo said you need to put the time in and extra time. Being organized, a good communicator, and hiring the right people around you are elements to be successful. “There’s so many moving pieces—get the best people around you and let them do their thing,” Longo said. He knows when to intervene and when not to.
Another prominent coach that knows how to build winning teams is Russ Cellan, from Freeport High School. Cellan has the most Class 1 LIC wins with seven at Freeport. Just like the coaching staff, in order to be successful, the team needs to work harder than the average person. Cellan looks for players that are willing to put the time in. “You don’t have to go to every camp that is being offered, but be willing to do whatever it takes and be able to sacrifice some of your free time,” Cellan said. He continued to say that it doesn’t necessarily translate to a LIC, but it will make the player and the team better.
Cellan has tremendous respect for Longo and the William Floyd program.
“The Floyd program is a reflection of Paul,” Cellan said.
Cellan continued to explain that he is a tireless worker, puts in countless hours, and is a real good guy.
“It is a tough thing to do,” Cellan said about being good every year.
William Floyd does not have down years, Cellan exclaimed, and it was always a pleasure playing against Longo during their hard-fought battles in the LIC. Longo stated that Freeport was one of toughest teams he faced during his coaching tenure.
To help with the planning and organizing for the football season, there is a chairperson appointed. The chairperson is a sitting athletic director who is the liaison between the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, Section 11, and the football coaches in Suffolk County.
“I work with all the football coaches on the varsity, JV, and middle-school levels throughout every division and class in Suffolk County,” said athletic director Timothy Horan from West Islip School District, who is the Section 11 football chairperson.
Horan enjoys when kids and coaches reach their full potential.
“It’s fulfilling just knowing that you’ve had some help in their ultimate success,” Horan said of being an athletic director and the chairperson,
The divisions are broken up by the student enrollment numbers and sometimes the division will have 12 or 14 teams. Enrollment for schools goes up and down—that’s why each year the divisions are different.
In Division I, the top eight teams make the playoffs. Longo thinks eight might be too much.
“If you are the 1st seed and you’re playing the 8th seed and you have a great season, but now you get a couple injuries, you can get knocked off,” Longo said.
Four teams might be too few, so a good compromise could be to have six teams make the playoffs and the top two teams get a bye.
As far as what happens to the teams who win the LIC, their season is over. There is no state playoff in football like there is in other sports. Longo would like to see a state championship, but it seems like it’s not possible.
Horan said that if football was to move on to a state championship, it would completely undermine the current structure that Nassau and Suffolk currently have. The four-division format would have to be adjusted and compressed.
Another deterrent from moving forward is the rest of New York State allows private schools to play in the public-school championships.
“Private schools have a competitive advantage in terms of recruiting from 10 different zip codes, where public schools recruit from one,” Horan said. He feels there’s not a lot of support for that.
Cellan would also like a state playoff if it is possible, but agrees the Long Island numbers are different.
“You want to preserve the Long Island Championship and it’s tough to integrate the two,” Cellan said.
The Long Island Championship has been great for Long Island, so messing around with the classifications and divisions will propose a problem. Cellan continued to say, the worst thing that could happen is modifying the current playoff structure to go play in an empty Syracuse Carrier Dome to give up the LIC.
William Floyd has been a model program for high school football. The community is supportive and Longo said the parents have always been good to him. On his top moment coaching at William Floyd, Longo said winning three straight Long Island Championships and winning 42 straight games.
“Going three and a half years without losing a game and winning three LICs, I think that has to be way up there,” Longo said.
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