Rays Returning to FHSAA

After a year in the Sunshine State Athletic Association (SSAA), the Marco Island Academy football team will return to competing in the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) in 2026. The team is currently conducting spring practice in anticipation of their May 21 jamboree at First Baptist Academy, where they will compete against FBA and Canterbury.

“We're going back to the FHSAA but we're going to be independent,” said Rich Costante, second-year head coach. The Rays (4-6) advanced to the Final Four of the SSAA in 2025, where they were beaten 28-26 by Windermere, located in the Orlando Metropolitan Area. Playing in the upstart SSAA, the Rays excelled when playing like-minded schools. The SSAA started as a single-sport organization (football) in 2008 and now has 120 member schools. The FHSAA encompasses over 850 schools. Costante moved the Rays back to the FHSAA after the league made changes this spring.

"The FHSAA is launching the Independent League,” Costante said. "And they're going to have a playoff for that and have a league champion. It won't be a state championship, but it'll be an independent league champion. So that's what we’re going to shoot for. It's all the same concepts as what the SSAA did, just under the FHSAA umbrella.”

The Independent League, approved by the FHSAA board in March, will have its own postseason, separate from the 1A-6A state title tournament. Schools can join the league as full members or member by sport, which is the option the Rays are exercising for football. As independents, the Rays will be able to set their own schedule.

The FHSAA launched the new classification to try to stop the exodus of member schools to the SSAA. Over 50 schools had moved to the competing SSAA. Small schools, especially rural schools and small private schools, were joining the SSAA rather than compete with powerhouse programs. The SSAA offered a level playing field for schools like MIA, a public charter high school. The new FHSAA scheme is a two-year pilot program. Meanwhile, the SSAA is not going away and will continue to cultivate what they call a small-town football culture.

“Florida is one of the few states that has two associations and you kind of get to pick and choose,” Costante said. “We went with the SSAA last year because there was no postseason opportunity in the FHSAA for us. In order to play a playoff game, you had to be in the district and you had to qualify for the playoffs. Now that they're doing this independent league, you don't have to be in the districts. Our district would be St. John Neumann, Community School, and FBA. Getting through a season healthy would be almost impossible. Now with the Independent League, just like the SSAA, we can schedule whoever we want. We have the opportunity, if we qualify, to play in the playoffs. The benefit for me as a whole with us going back to the FHSAA is it allows our student athletes to get honored for awards like the Dairy Farmer Player of the Year and the All-Academic teams that the FHSAA does. They're really building and broadening their partnership with different entities. Being a full member in the FHSAA gives our student-athletes an opportunity to qualify for scholarship money.”

On the field, Costante likes what he’s seeing so far this spring.

"We've got about 20-30 kids that have shown interest this spring,” he said. “We've been averaging anywhere from 16-22 at a practice so far, which is great. Last year, for spring, we were at about 10-15. So the numbers are definitely up. You always would like more numbers, but we're getting ready for the spring game. We're going to play FBA for a little bit, then Canterbury for a little bit. And Canterbury and FBA are going to play each other. So it's going to be kind of a little round robin. It's going to be nice. We get to do a little competition against other people than ourselves.”

FBA is only a few years off of a state championship season. And while they aren’t the same dominant team they were before firing their head coach last year, they still play at a higher level than MIA is used to. Canterbury, coming off a 6-6 campaign, blanked the Rays 34-0 last season.

“The reason I like doing this is we’re not quite ready to play FBA, Neumann, and CSN. But playing them in the spring game is a low-risk way of seeing where we sit. They’re going to be better than us. They're going to have more bodies than us. I know that going in and I would never play them in the fall. But spring is a great time to play a team like that. Just to kind of see where we are, where we're stacking up, and what we need to work on. Canterbury is a team we're going to see in the regular season. It's actually our last home game this year. We may even see them in the playoffs playing in the Independent League. Canterbury is kind of one of those teams that I've built up a nice friendship with; it's kind of like a friendly rivalry that we’ve got going with them."

While Costante loses a number of starters from last year’s team, he likes the players he has coming back.

“We're bringing back Carter Good,” he said. "Zac Massie is our second-string quarterback. We’re returning most of our linemen. We lost our running backs, linebackers, and our receiving corps. Losing Ryan Winterick is a big loss. We've got positions to fill there. But we've got some guys sliding into different positions that are looking really good. Anthony Abin is looking really good at running back. We still have Hutch Hamilton, kind of our jack of all trades. He's very tenacious. So I'm excited. I've been telling people that we don't have that game breaker that Ryan was on the roster. But from A- Z, I feel we are more talented this year."

Costante expects more players to join the fold come fall practice.

“We get to add some freshmen,” he said. "So I know there’s going to be a handful of them that we're going to add. Last year, I think we added eight freshmen when it was all said and done. I'm expecting to end fall between 22-30 players. If we add eight more to that, that gets us up in that 35-40 range, which is nice. You never know who may transfer in or who may move down, so you never know who we could get."

The Rays are still plagued by the lack of a feeder system since Marco Island Charter Middle School disbanded its football program several years ago.

"There's no feeder system,” Costante said. "I'm trying to make some connections with the South Naples Trojans Pop Warner club. My son Dominic played in it last year, so hopefully I can get a little relationship going there again. It feeds Lely, I get that, but I want to get more island kids playing football at a younger age so that when they get to high school, hopefully they're going to come here.”

Costante likes the direction the program is going.

"It's going well,” he said. "I'm probably more excited about this season than I was last season. The kids know our offense. We're tweaking the defense a little bit, so there’s a learning curve there. I told the players that right now we’re where we were last year in week three or four. I feel we're far, far ahead of where I thought we would be. Which is nice, especially since we have a spring game in two weeks."