Merged Trojans football leads six Blind Brook teams with 225 student athletes starting fall season practice
August 29, 2024 at 1:45 a.m.
Blind Brook kicked off its fall athletic season with its first official Section 1 practices Monday (8/26) with four teams working out at the high school and middle school and two off campus, but the big news is that football is back albeit at a different school as part of a newly merged team.
And therein lies a tale of persistence in the face of adversity.
Blind Brook will field six teams during the upcoming fall season-soccer, tennis, volleyball and cross country with all four members of that quartet practicing and playing their home games on the BBMS/HS campus.
Blind Brook's merged teams will play at different locales.
Home away from home
Football, newly merged with Edgemont, will practice and play its home games at Edgemont in Greenburgh, high up on the Scarsdale border. And the Blind Brook swim team, long merged with Rye and Rye Neck, will continue to practice and swim their home meets at the Hommocks Middle School on the Larchmont/Mamaroneck border.
Exactly 225 varsity and JV student athletes have registered for the six teams—11 for football.
So while the number of grid aspirants is small, the significance is big time.
Last year at this time Blind Brook had to drop football because only 10 to 12 students came out for the team and Athletic Director Kimberly Saxton was concerned for their safety because that wasn't enough to field a team for competitive league play.
No quit in her
But she didn't want to deprive any B.B. student who wanted to play football of the chance to play the sport they loved. So she sought a merger with another school of similar size and academic and athletic prowess and thought she had one with Hastings-on-Hudson. The Trojans even went through an unofficial scout team practice with Hastings. But Section 1 turned down that proposed merger for bureaucratic reasons of their own.
Rather than give up, Saxton sought a new merger for the 2024-25 season, thinking that with more time before the season was to start, Section 1 would reconsider. So she did. And Section 1 did as well.
Although it wasn't easy.
Saxton initially sought mergers with four different schools, from nearby Port Chester (which turned down the merger after a survey showed parents didn't want one with neighboring Blind Brook) to Putnam Valley (probably too far away), and from Hastings (the school Section 1 originally turned down) to Edgemont (which was approved).
Coach sums up feelings
The Blind Brook football coaching staff was as happy as the Trojan football players, their parents, the student body and the Rye Brook football aficionados who look forward to Blind Brook playing merged football with the Eagles And vice versa on the Edgemont side.
"This is my 12th season with the Trojans and 22nd overall coaching high school football," said Blind Brook head coach Darren Perillo. "As last season was so sad and disappointing, I am feeling very good about our decision to merge with Edgemont. We have over 25 players out for the merged team, and 11 of those players are Blind Brook kids."
And the merged Blind Brook coaches liked what they saw at the initial practice, that group including Perillo and his assistant coach Jordan Griffith, and modified coaches Joel Jenson and Domenic Scipioni.
Players to watch
"The biggest name to watch from Blind Brook this year is senior running back and defensive lineman Carmine Casino," according to Perillo. "He is a big strong kid that runs hard and is almost impossible to tackle one on one. Defensively, you cannot block him with one lineman. I am excited to see what he does with this opportunity this year."
Fernanda Julian prepares to pass the ball to a teammate in Blind Brook’s final regular season game last year. She was All-League, All-Section and All-State last year and will be among the many talented players on this year’s team.By File Photo
Especially since he was singled out by Lohud as one of the elite players to watch in Westchester on their watch list as the best of the best in the Lower Hudson Valley before Blind Brook dropped the sport last season.
"Sophomore middle linebacker and running back John Marino is another Blind Brook player to watch on the merged team," said Perillo. "He has a knack for the ball and finishes through ball carriers."
He also has great expectations for the other Blind Brook players who have signed up for the merged team: Charlie Hammer, Chris Persaud, Elon Katz, Harrison Kuznetzow, Rocco Brunetti, Jayson Lowe and Matthew Taveras.
"I have high hopes for this merged team and can't thank the Edgemont community enough for taking us in. Coach Pape (James Pape, the Edgemont head coach) and I share a common vision, and I think this team can be special," Perillo said.
The new merged team will get a chance to see how special they can be when they open their new fall season next Friday (9/6) against Irvington at 6 p.m. at Edgemont—ironically the same time and date Port Chester opens away against Horace Greeley with an undermanned Rams team that could use 11 more local players on their depth chart.. Especially talented Trojan players like Casino and Marino.
Vballers lead B.B. pack
But ironies aside, every Blind Brook coach thinks their team could be special, perhaps none with higher hopes than Lady Trojans volleyball coach Gina Carlone, who accomplished something that rarely happens when she was named League Coach of the Year in two sports (VB and softball) during the 2023-24 season.
Carlone, whose VBallers won the first Sectional Championship in school history in the past, looks to be primed to do it again with a team built around senior Fernanda Julian (All-League, All-Section and All-State last year), the Rosenfeld twins (Oriah, All-League, All-Section and All-State, and Ella, All-Conference, both juniors) and such talented players as seniors Maria Gracia Leyva Pereyra and Madeline Hirsch, junior Tanisha Venkatapur and sophomore Georgianna Haas.
But those are just a few of the sports story lines waiting to be written by the Trojans and Lady Trojans with six teams hoping for happy beginnings at various times in the fall season leading up to even happier endings.
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