Building Riverhead’s football community from an early age: PAL program takes a new approach

Riverhead PAL football has a new strategy for stimulating interest in football and supporting Riverhead’s football program: coordinating instruction and plays with the Blue Waves teams.

Besides teaching kids as young as 5 the fundamentals of the game, the program is now teaching youngsters the plays used by the Riverhead Middle School and Riverhead High School teams, adapted for younger players.

PAL football President Mike Heigh, a Riverhead High School JV football coach, sees that kind of coordination as essential to building the district’s football program for the future.  

Heigh knows a thing or two about leading football players to success. The 2004 Riverhead High School graduate captained the 2003 Blue Waves Suffolk D-II championship team, which won the Rutgers Trophy—an honor the Waves had not claimed in 14 years. 

A star tight end/defensive end, his outstanding performance in 2003 — including 73 tackles, seven sacks, 17 receptions for 355 yards and three touchdowns, according to Newsday — earned him honors as the county’s top lineman and the Bob Zellner Award from the Suffolk County Football Coaches Association.

He’s been volunteering as a coach for PAL football for over a decade. This is his second year as president.

Over the past couple of years, he said, Riverhead’s football program has been losing players, Heigh said. 

“By the time [players] leave the middle school, they’re losing interest, and we’re trying to change that culture and trying to bring back the community feel that we had when we were in that position,” Heigh said in an Aug. 30 phone interview. 

“We’re just trying to get that culture back, not a winning culture, but a culture that’s like a sense of belonging here in Riverhead. We want people to feel like they are part of something,” Heigh said. “And not just, hey, come here and then you leave and you’re forgotten.”

The storied 2003 season, which Riverhead finished undefeated in D-II, saw Blue Waves fans pack the stands both home and away. The town practically shut down the day the Waves faced North Babylon for the 2003 D-II championship at Stony Brook University, where a plane hired by the Riverhead Rotary Club circled the stadium pulling a banner that read “Go Blue Waves!” The returning champions were greeted by police cars and fire trucks, lights flashing and sirens blaring and a crowd that gathered for the ceremonial ringing of the victory bell adjacent to the football field at the Pulaski Street sports complex. 

A lot of PAL’s current football coaches are Riverhead High School alumni and former Blue Waves football players who experienced that kind of community support and encouragement. Besides Heigh, PAL Football League Representative/Commissioner Xavier Marcus was on the 2003 Rutgers Trophy team. Other PAL coaches were members of the 2008 Rutgers team. 

“We’re all volunteers who are out there for the love of the game,” he said.

But a lot has changed in the years since the district’s last Rutgers Trophy, Heigh said. Technology is a big part of it, he believes. 

“We had technology, but it wasn’t a big thing. We didn’t have our phones in our hands 24/7. We were outside, and we had to go ride our bikes to meet our friends. Now you can just get on the headset and talk to your friends,  without even going anywhere,” Heigh said. Kids got a sense of belonging from that experience that they don’t get through video games, even games played online with friends, he said. “And we got a high from that. Going out to make tackles, being with our friends, being outside.”

Heigh said he’s seen other football programs making connections between their varsity programs and their PAL programs. “PAL is where it started for most of the kids and they’re keeping their communities together, and they don’t lose that connection,” he said.

“You know, if you’ve got seven different coaches in the PAL program running seven different things, your kids will get lost,” Heigh said. 

He said he talked with coaches leading other programs to learn what they did to adapt plays for younger kids, “so that it’s the same plays from the PAL program all the way to high school. Then they get there, it’s a system, and they already know what’s going on.”

Heigh, who started coaching JV football this year, spoke with the other coaches in the district at each level about “bridging the gap.”  The coaches were all very receptive, he said. “They said it makes perfect sense.”

They shared their plays with him so that all six PAL teams could learn and run the same plays —modified so the youth players can understand it at their own level of play, Heigh said. 

Riverhead High School football players have conducted clinics for the PAL football program also.

Heigh said he hopes the coordination this will help prevent a drop in interest when players get into middle school. They’ll already have a sense of belonging, he said. And the same will hold true when they get to high school, he believes.

“This is our first year doing it,” Heigh said. “So hopefully in the next year or two, three years, you will see this change take effect and hopefully be a positive thing,” Heigh said. 

The middle school always has a big turnout of kids interested in playing football, he said. “That’s great, but since they have so many kids, there’s a lot of kids that lack playing time, so they don’t get that in-game, real experience,” Heigh said. That leads to a loss of interest.

Other PAL programs run teams for 12- and 13-year-olds, who are in middle school but may not get enough playing time on the middle school team.  With the older PAL teams, they can get the playing time they need “so they won’t lose a step and they won’t lose interest,” Heigh said. He said he’s looking for Riverhead PAL to add 12- and 13-year-old teams to its football program.

“This will help benefit the kids, help keep the numbers up, and then, as they transition from the middle school to high school, they keep that interest, and they have a sense of belonging and more confidence in themselves,” Heigh said. 

PAL currently has a flag football team for 5- and 6-year-olds and tackle football teams for ages 7 through 11. The PAL program also has five cheerleading teams. 

Riverhead PAL (short for Police Athletic League) also offers lacrosse and soccer programs. For more information about all PAL programs, visit the Riverhead Town website.