By Sabrina Sayed
Jay Iaquinta has been named Manhasset High School’s new varsity football coach. Iaquinta previously coached football at SUNY Maritime and Lynbrook High School. For the past 28 years, Iaquinta has been the football coach at Hewlett High School, the same high school he attended as a teenager. Before becoming a football coach, Iaquinta was a dedicated Physical Education teacher. Iaquinta himself was a receiver all throughout high school and college, where he attended St. Joseph’s College in Indiana.
“I always knew I wanted to be a football coach. Since I was in high school, I loved being active and working out with my teammates.”
When asked what he looks most forward to in the upcoming season, Iaquinta responded, “I look forward to working with motivated young men, who are also strong student-athletes.” Iaquinta wants his student-athletes to make a major commitment to the team, so that they may enhance their teamwork skills and learn to truly depend on one another as not only a team, but as a family.
“I want to implement what I have learned in my past experiences to improve the success of the team, while maintaining whatever traditions that are important to the Manhasset students as well as the general community.”
Iaquinta emphasizes that selflessness and discipline are vital to maintaining fruitful and genuine relationships amongst teammates. Most importantly, he believes that hard work is the source of all success. Throughout his time at Manhasset, Iaquinta hopes to build a reputation of being “overachievers” for the Manhasset team.
Iaquinta passionately insisted that he intends to push the team to be “the best that we can be.” Just how will he achieve that? Iaquinta plans to use the players’ strengths as a foundation for their team strategy to launch the team towards an unprecedented success.
Iaquinta’s confidence in his players and their abilities speaks volumes to the decades of experience and each success that he has picked up along the way, being named the New York Jets’ High School Coach of the Week, winning the Nassau County Football Championship in 1999, being named Football Coach of the Year and even receiving The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame Don Snyder Contribution to Amateur Football Award.
It is difficult to ignore Iaquinta’s enduring passion for the game and his profound appreciation for the way it generates generations of disciplined and selfless young men. His unwavering faith in his new student-athletes is surprising and yet reassuring in that he exudes such confidence that it becomes infectious to anyone around him. All in all, Manhasset’s varsity football team is undoubtedly in good hands.
