Dennis Wandle devoted himself to Long Island youth sports programs as a founding father of some of the most successful programs on Long Island. He is a visionary and community leader who impacted the lives of thousands of Sachem student-athletes. He passed away this week at 83.
Wandle was born in the Bronx in May 1940 and raised by a single mother who left his father when he was just six months old. He had no contact with his father for the remainder of his life. His grandparents also played a large part in raising him; he referred to them as Mama and Daddy. With his mom being a single mother in the 1940’s she often had to pretend Dennis was her brother just to get a job. He came from very humble beginnings, living in a tiny apartment above a candy store on the corner of Castle Hill Avenue and Blackrock Ave in the Bronx.
He had little growing up but to him, he had everything: the love of his family and great friends that remained by his side his entire life. He proved that it does not matter if you have what people call a “traditional” family unit; you just need people around you to love and nurture you. He could have gone down many different paths in life with the hand he was dealt, but with the guidance of his mother and grandparents, he made the right choices as they instilled family values and integrity in him and a love of sports thanks to his grandfather. Wandle did the same for hundreds of kids over the years that he coached and mentored by helping guide them through decisions that changed the course of their lives for the better.
Dennis played football, baseball, and basketball in every Bronx schoolyard around. He even tried fencing. He always said it did not matter how poor you were; you just needed a ball and a few friends. After graduating at the top of his class from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, he played and coached the undefeated Black Knights semiprofessional football team. He also received tryout invitations from Major League Baseball teams as a top high school hitter and catcher.
At the age of 23, when he married his wife of 60 years, Rosalie Cirigliano, this only child from a very small family, inherited six brothers-in-law and a mother and father-in-law whom he loved very much. He had great admiration for his father-in-law after not having his own father in his life and losing his grandfather at just 21 yrs. old. Eventually, they moved to Long Island in mid-1970 with their three children.
This athlete from the Bronx could not believe how many grass fields existed on Long Island, yet no one was playing youth football. He connected with his eventual cofounder of Central Suffolk football to start a youth football league in Ronkonkoma in 1974. After three seasons, Wandle decided to leave Central Suffolk because he wanted to have intramural football and travel. The league did not support travel football because they did not think the interest was there.
Wandle approached the football coaches and district administrators in the Sachem Central School District to spark an interest in his dream of a youth travel football program and see if they would support the program and be willing to allow the use of the school fields. His co-founder of Central Suffolk told him he would not be able to get 100 kids to sign up for travel football and that leaving the league was a mistake.
In 1976, he held that first registration, and 470 kids signed up. This was the birth of the Sachem Athletic Club (SAC), which still exists today after merging with South Shore Youth in 2010 and being renamed Sachem Sports Club (SSC). In the early 80s, Dennis went to the Town of Islip to get a designated complex for SAC, searching for vacant lots in the Sachem district and working closely with the local PAL officials, and that was the birth of the PAL complex on Furrows Road and the Sachem Athletic Club’s affiliation with PAL.
SAC dominated PAL youth football from 1976 to 2004 and has won more PAL championships than any other youth football league on Long Island. Over the years, SAC has offered many different sports, starting with football and adding cheerleading, roller hockey, boxing, basketball, softball, baseball, lacrosse, and soccer.
In 1975, the Ronkonkoma Little League was told to split into two leagues because it was getting too large. Dennis and a friend started the Connetquot Little League. He coached baseball there for many years.
The varsity soccer coach at Sachem High School and other school district officials realized that kids had to start playing when they were six or seven years old to be competitive at the high school level. Not having a youth program was a disadvantage, so they approached Wandle about adding Soccer as a sport to SAC, which he agreed to.
After one season and 80 kids registering, he could see that the soccer program would grow just as rapidly as football. Since he wasn’t much of a soccer guy, he approached and encouraged the group to take over the soccer portion of SAC and start a separate soccer league. They incorporated their own league, and this was the birth of Sachem Youth Soccer League Inc. – commonly known as -SYSL, one of the largest and most successful youth soccer programs on Long Island.
Wandle was happy to see any sport flourish because he was certainly a fan of giving kids an opportunity to play something they loved, and he would do anything he could to support any sport in the Sachem school district. One of his biggest goals was making it affordable for families and having all coaches volunteer their time, unlike today’s youth/adolescent sports industry, where programs pay coaches. He wanted kids to have an outlet and the ability to experience the joy of being on a team. He was a big believer that many life lessons were learned on the field.
In 1979, Wandle wanted to add youth lacrosse to SAC. There were very few existing lacrosse leagues in other school districts, so many games had to be on the road, traveling to Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, and even Canada to play. As years went by, other local districts started forming youth lacrosse leagues, and SAC was able to stay local to play. This league became a direct feeder into the high lacrosse team, with many of its most successful alumni starting in SAC, just like the league had done for the high school football program.
He changed careers in his 40s and went on to become a history teacher and school coach, first coaching football at Seneca Junior High in Sachem before moving over to the Islip school district, where he spent 23 years as a history teacher, Dean of Students, Varsity Football, Lacrosse, and Girls Basketball Coach. He loved his Islip family; those were some of the greatest times of his life. He truly felt that once he arrived in Islip, he never “worked” a day in his life. He loved it so much; it felt like a privilege to get to do what he did there. His love for the purple and gold Buccaneers of Islip ran deep, and he truly considered them family. He retired in 2005 and spent his remaining years with his family and extended family of people he mentored and coached over the years who always stayed connected with him.
No matter where he went, he was always running into someone who knew him and had a story about how he helped improve their life. There are countless stories from those young kids, now adults, telling him how he inspired them to become coaches in their childhood and high school years. He also taught them the importance of volunteering and giving back to the community and what it meant to be an all-around good person. He also found immense joy in watching his own children and all his grandchildren excel in various sports at the youth, high school, and collegiate levels, which made him so proud. As busy as he was as an educator and coach, he made it to every game he could to support them all.
He was a husband, father, son, grandfather, grandson, nephew, son-in-law, brother-in-law, godfather, uncle, coach, mentor, and friend to many. He will be greatly missed, but his impact on the foundation of Long Island sports and the countless athletes and students he inspired will live on forever.
He is survived by his wife, Rosalie, son Dennis Wandle Jr. daughter; Debbie Olshefsky (Brian); daughter Joanne Pignataro (Michael); and nine grandchildren: Katie, Jennifer, and Jake Wandle, Brian Jr., and Alexa Olshefsky, Joseph and Jenna Pignataro and Tracey and Frank Hennenlotter.
Services will be held on Sunday, January 28 from Noon to 5 p.m. at Moloney Funeral Home,132 Ronkonkoma Ave., Lake Ronkonkoma. Funeral mass will be held on Monday, January 29 at 10 a.m. at Good Shepherd Church, 1370 Grundy Ave, Holbrook. In lieu of flowers, please send donations in his name to either Shriner’s Children’s Hospital or Gigi’s Playhouse in Patchogue.
