Last season Sleepy Hollow's football squad enjoyed a great year, making it all the way to the Section 1 Class B championship game before losing to Nanuet 29-6, the eventual state finalist.
This year the Headless Horsemen won't have the opportunity to go back to the Class B championship game because they have moved up to Class A this season.
The state qualifications to compete in each class (Class AA, Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D), changed. Last fall if a school had 625 or more students in grades 9-11 from the previous year, it was considered a Class A school.
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Sleepy Hollow had 614 students, thus was in Class B because it fell below that mark. For this upcoming gridiron campaign however, the number to compete in Class A was changed to 600 and with Sleepy Hollow's student count at 624, that puts the Headless Horsemen in Class A this fall.
"The state is trying to make each class even, where each class has roughly 20 percent of the teams," Sleepy Hollow Athletic Director Chuck Scarpulla said.
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Scarpulla's school will have the challenge of playing bigger teams like Rye, Harrison, Eastchester, Roosevelt, Nyack and Spring Valley. The Headless Horsemen will open the season when they host Rye at 1:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 11.
"We are going to be the smallest A team," Sleepy Hollow Head Coach Steve Borys said. "We are over the limit by a handful of kids. We have been on the fence the last couple of years. We've been one of the biggest B's or smallest A's"
Scarpulla feels his squad will be prepared for the jump back to A.
"We have good coaching staff and a good group of players, so we will be ready," Scarpulla said.
The leader of that coaching staff is Borys, who is looking forward to the challenge of returning to Class A.
"The move is all the same to us," Borys said. "We are disappointed to lose some of our Class B rivals like Pleasantville and Nanuet. We enjoy playing them. But it's also good because we get to keep our rivalry with Rye going."
That opening day date against the perennial power is something that will be special.
"It's going to be a great game against Rye, with a great crowd," Borys said. "Those are the games that you look forward to playing in. The kids are excited. They are happy that they get to play Rye again. We lost to them last year and we are looking to make amends for that."
The fact that Sleepy Hollow enjoyed a winning season in Class A two years ago makes Borys confident that his team can be successful again. Sleepy Hollow held its own in 2008 when it played in Class A, as it went 5-4.
"Class A is a good division," Borys said. "We lost to some really tough teams but we also had some success that year too. To play in A, it's going to be a great opportunity for our team."
