Huntington 101 Begins to Take Shape

The 101st edition of Huntington High School’s varsity football team is already taking shape. A tentative schedule will be announced in about three weeks after Section XI releases the seeding designation for each of the 14 teams that comprise Suffolk Division II.

Huntington 101, as the 2024 team will be known, will play an eight game regular season schedule with four home and four away contests. The top eight teams in Division II will advance to the playoffs.

Huntington 101 will be led by head coach Ronald E. Wilson. The staff includes varsity assistants Chris Taylor, Antoine Swain, Dareus Smith, Kevin Graham, James C. Byrnes and James G. Byrnes, Jr. The two Byrnes will handle the junior varsity team. Malcolm Eugene will be the strength coach as well as a volunteer assistant on all levels.

Intramurals have been underway for months with dozens of returning players regularly participating. A golf outing will be held on Monday, June 10 at Crab Meadow to benefit Huntington 101.

Only the ninth head coach in Huntington football history, Wilson is all about bringing people together; developing young people to take pride in hard work and in helping each other succeed. His ideas concerning Huntington 101 go beyond building up the team.

“My mission is to build and sustain a dynasty here with Huntington football as I have done in Huntington track and field,” said Wilson at the time of his appointment in January 2023. “We will create an atmosphere and environment for everyone to be able to succeed; first as a person and then as a student-athlete in our program. We want our players to be more successful in life because they were involved in our program. I think everybody should take the attitude that we will be working to be a champion and want to be a champion in everything we do. Every choice, every decision, everything that we do will be built around us being a champion, whether it’s on the field or in the classroom.”

After several previous attempts to launch a football program were frustrated by world war, the expected coach leaving the employ of the school district and other issues, Huntington High School finally fielded its first team in the fall of 1924. Alton R. Stevens was installed as the first coach.

Stevens lasted only one year and compiled a record of 0-4-1, but 100 years later the Blue Devil football program is still taking the field. The program has played to an all-time record of 436-331-30. The team’s most successful decade was the 1940s when Huntington won 76 percent of its games.

Huntington won the Rutgers Trophy in 1948, 1949 and 1952. The Blue Devils haven’t gone undefeated in 76 years. The 1948 team went 8-0.