Central Islip JV athletes battle budget cuts

It looked like Central Islip High School junior Richard Middleton was going to miss a year of wrestling on the junior varsity squad.

Voters in Central Islip adopted a budget last spring that eliminated all middle school and junior varsity sports this school year. But, through local fundraising efforts, the junior varsity program has been almost entirely restored and Middleton is wrestling this winter.

"If it wasn't for wrestling, I would be out on the streets. That is the way the community is," Middleton, 16, said Friday.

But come spring, he and other junior varsity athletes might lose out on playing baseball or softball. That's because while they gathered about $130,000 through fundraising, undertaken by the community and the high school's athletic director, they are still about $10,000 short of their goal.

In May, voters in the low-wealth Central Islip school district approved a $171-million budget that included a tax increase of 7.57 percent, as well as teacher layoffs and the program eliminations. Restoring the 10 junior varsity teams for boys and girls would cost about $140,000, athletic director Larry Philips said. A district graduate, he has worked there for 19 years and said he could not recall a time when junior varsity sports had been cut.

"The student athletes - they were upset," he said.

Islip Town Councilman John Edwards said Philips asked him to help. "In any community, to tell the JV-age kids that we are not going to give you a kids program, it would be a tragedy," Edwards said. "But in that community in particular, with some of the problems they have had, it would be a real setback not to have a JV program."

Philips said the campaign focused on junior varsity sports, as the middle school program was too expensive to restore.

As word of the fundraising effort spread, contributions came in from donors such as Jon Reese's Make It Count Foundation, Bethpage Federal Credit Union, and John Corrado, president of Suffolk Transportation, which runs the district's buses. Donations also came from district employees, retirees and parents, and students held fundraisers as well.

"Now we need only 10 grand," Edwards said.

With financial uncertainty and the prospect of further cuts in state aid, it is not clear whether the district will be able to restore both middle school and JV athletic programs next year. The superintendent and school board president did not return calls for comment Friday.

"Hopefully the district will do the right thing and reinstate sports," Philips said.