It seems like just yesterday we were getting excited for the 2025 Rhode Island high school football season and, in the blink of an eye, the season is over.
We’ve covered a lot during the season, and managed to send a reporter or photographer to cover every single team this season, and there’s always more to talk about.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWith the Super Bowls over, and this being written on the eve of the State Championship game, we wanted to take a quick look back at the 2025 regular season and some of the issues, stories and teams that interested us, with some quick hits at the back end of the column.
Is there a football problem in Providence?
Providence public schools have a proud football-playing tradition and the success of Central and Classical only adds to that.
But with dwindling numbers on all rosters and budget cuts eliminating things such as freshmen football, there is a lingering question about the future of the sport in the city.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementCentral started the 2025 season with healthy numbers but went from 60 players to less than 30 by the end of the regular season. Classical has produced talent but has never had a large roster size and this year was no different.
Mount Pleasant is struggling to get players on the field and didn’t win a game in Division II. Hope had some of the best top-end talent in Division IV, but with less than 20 players on the roster, it had trouble sustaining success over four quarters. Juanita Sanchez has some players, but requires a co-op with Providence Country Day in order to field a team.
The city needs to take a serious look at fixing football in order to make it both safe and sustainable. Taking money away from football isn’t the answer and cutting programs shouldn’t even be brought up.
There’s one obvious solution, but it’s going to take actual work from the Providence schools administration and the Rhode Island Interscholastic League.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt’s time for Providence to follow the lead of Pawtucket and combine the city's programs.
There is no reason not to do this. Making the co-ops wouldn’t be difficult either.
It could be started by putting Central and Classical together. The schools are next to each other and with the Providence Career and Technical Academy hanging in the shadows, it’s a perfect fit — although the coaches may disagree. Call them the Capital City Purple Knights or something and make a program that would contend for state titles annually.
Hope, Juanita Sanchez and Mount Pleasant should also co-op together immediately and let St. Patrick’s and Achievement First, the two small charter schools that can’t sustain football on their own, join. That might mean cutting ties with Providence Country Day, but East Providence should open its arms and welcome that program.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThose smaller Providence schools have had issues with roster sizes and this would solve it. It would create a safer situation for all parties involved and, with this many schools merging, give them a better gameday experience at Conley Stadium than they have now. Call them the Providence Steamrollers, a nod to Rhode Island’s former pro team that played at Conley, and build a new tradition.
This is all easier said than done. It would require the city administration to do the actual work and the RIIL to use some logic over its black-and-white rule book.
Hopefully it will happen, because Rhode Island high school football is better when Providence is going strong.
Scituate's Drake Dumont gets into the defensive backfield.Spartan surprise
In 2014, Scituate went 6-2 and made the Super Bowl for only the second time in program history, then went 11-42 from 2015 to 2023. With a large senior class, the Spartans turned things around with the best regular-season performance in program history, but lost in the quarterfinals of the Division IV playoffs.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWith a massive graduation loss and the departure of head coach Damon Scarduzio, it looked like things were headed in the same direction.
They didn’t. Scituate brought in David Hanson, who also coaches baseball at the school, to run the program. With a human bulldozer in the backfield in Drake Dumont, the young Spartans came together and finished 5-3, the first time the program had back-to-back winning seasons since 1968-69.
Scituate qualified for the playoffs as the No. 5 seed and then pulled off a huge win over Smithfield. While the Spartans battled tough, they fell to top-seeded Narragansett in the semifinal.
To say this season was a success for the Spartans would be a massive understatement. Scituate has the smallest enrollment among football-playing public schools not in a co-op and sustainability can be difficult. Hanson and the Spartans made it happen.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe bad news is the Spartans won’t be sneaking up on anyone next fall.
The North will rise again
While the season didn’t end the way North Kingstown hoped, make no mistake about it, the program isn’t going anywhere.
Sustainability is the biggest challenge every public school program faces. The Skippers have it and it’s not difficult to see why.
This is the moment in the story when those not from NK groan and start talking about Pathway Programs that allow anyone to go to North Kingstown High School and let them recruit football players.
North Kingstown’s current success was built over a decade ago by Joe Gilmartin with his contributions at the youth level. When he took over as the head coach of the high school team, he built a program that worried about what it was doing and not what anyone else was doing. Accountability mattered and Gilmartin didn’t let his teams believe they were playing at a disadvantage.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe also believed in community, which is why he and his high school program remained a fixture on the youth football scene. Fran Dempsey continued that work when he replaced Gilmartin and David Giorgi does the same thing today.
North Kingstown’s biggest advantage is being one of the larger schools in the state. The players they get from outside districts are leaving their home districts for a reason — because NK is providing something they can’t get at home. That’s the same reason kids leave public school communities to go to private schools.
There are other terrific programs that work the same way. Burrillville, Portsmouth and Westerly have programs that are able to contend and compete because of the culture within the community and the coaches, current and past, who did their part to sustain the culture. Their ceiling will always be incredibly high but their size makes the floor significantly lower than most.
Complaints about private school advantages and public schools with pathway programs are coming from programs and districts that lack the accountability these other programs have. Schools are failing their kids, both in the classroom and by not investing in athletics, and then have the audacity to ask why their students leave for other institutions. They don’t want to hear the truth.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSome schools do sports better. It’s not because they’re private. It’s not because of pathways. It’s because they invest in their own. And once communities start to realize that success at the high school level takes a village, everyone will be better off.
Woonsocket opens its new Dionne Track and Field with a 39-6 victory over Pilgrim on Sept. 12.Field of dreams
The biggest addition to the Woonsocket football program this season wasn’t a player.
Barry Field was the Villa Novans home and while it provided a certain vibe that was unmatched, it had plenty of issues. The grass rarely made it past September, the stands were antiquated, it forced players to commute to practice and once the clocks changed, those sessions ended in the dark.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Dionne Track and Field changed all of that. The sparkling multisport facility opened in time for the fall season, and on Sept. 12, Woonsocket made sure to put on a show in its debut. Patrick Munger’s 20-yard touchdown pass to Jalil Quinones Diaz will go down in the record books as the first score at the stadium and the 39-6 win over Pilgrim was a perfect way to end the night.
Woonsocket football did what it had to do at Barry Field and, despite its subpar conditions over the last decade and maybe more, the team still won Super Bowls and contended every year.
Expect the same type of work ethic and success. Having Dionne should serve as motivation enough for current Novans and give reason for any young player who may catch a game on Friday night to decide they want to be on the field someday.
Burrillville head coach Gennaro Ferraro.Quick hits
∎Thanks to all the coaches who sent in results and scoring plays. To those who didn’t, I don’t want to hear from you during awards season.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement∎The wildest game I watched didn’t take place at a field. It was at my kitchen counter on Halloween, when I knew Cranston West was going to win, 19-14, but didn’t believe it until I saw how the final three minutes played out.
∎In 2026, I really hope coaches and ADs work together on scheduling smarter. Play on Thursday. Schedule Saturday night games or afternoons. Make your game the game. Don’t get lost in the crowd. That’s how you get coverage.
∎The season didn’t go the way Pawtucket wanted this fall but Shea and Tolman joining forces for the first time was a resounding success. Now it needs a proper nickname.
∎I feel for the victim in the Smithfield hazing incident. But I also feel for the kids on the team who weren’t involved in the incident. It’s easy for adults to say, “Someone should have said something,” without remembering what it was like to be a teenager. Those kids don’t deserve the scarlet letter they had to wear this past month.
North Kingstown's Nick Stafford gets ahead of his pursuers.∎There wasn’t a player who had a bigger breakout season this fall than North Kingstown’s Nick Stafford. Gee, I wonder who could have predicted that?
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement∎Schools need to clean and adjust their NFHS cameras immediately.
∎For the RPI to be truly effective, it’s time to go to a classified postseason with four championships based on enrollment — private, large, medium, small.
∎Older folks might not understand but the third uniform trend is great for programs. La Salle and East Providence wearing black unis was great to see, Hope’s new gear looked great, but North Providence going full Oregon with its Gold Rush homecoming gear was next level. This stuff matters and other schools need to jump on the trend.
∎Congrats to all the parents! It's the first season in a while that I didn’t see someone in the stands get arrested or ejected. (P.S. I wrote this before the Super Bowls, so this may be a jinx).
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement∎Middletown is the gold standard for concession stands, Burrillville is just as good for different reasons, but the cheeseburger made by the Cranston West food truck, run by culinary students, is the best concession food I had anywhere in 2025.
∎RIFC and the people who run Centreville Bank Stadium should have offered up the state-funded facilities for Pawtucket during the regular season, or on Thanksgiving. I remember a certain baseball team in the city that was proud to contribute to high school athletics without trying to price-gouge schools and the league.
East Greenwich's Owen Lehne tosses a pass.∎Way too early football predictions for 2026: Backed by an experienced offensive line, Hendricken rolls to the State Championship; Barrington or Burrillville win Division II, unless they play each other; North Providence and East Greenwich are your D-III favorites and Central Falls will have a chance if it drops to D-IV and may be joined by Chariho, that will be a monster if it falls.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement∎What I’m most excited for in 2026 is to see how this uber-talented Class of 2028 will blossom as juniors in the fall. There is some serious top-end talent.
∎Now that the football season is over, I’m doing this new fun thing on the weekends — seeing my family. It’s weird.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: A look back at issues and stores from the 2025 RIIL football season
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