By Five Boro Sports
If it were a little over one month ago, Ali Shama’s experience at York College on Saturday afternoon would have been vastly different. Since 2005, Shama had been an assistant principal at John F. Kennedy HS in the Bronx and the school’s girls’ volleyball team was competing in the PSAL Class A championship.
But on Oct. 14, he was hired as the principal of Francis Lewis HS – the school facing Kennedy in the volleyball finals.
Shama wore a gray Francis Lewis athletics hooded sweatshirt to the match, but his emotions stretched across both sides.
“It was (hard),” he said after Francis Lewis beat Kennedy, 21-15, 21-13, to win its second straight city championship. “So many of those kids I have emotional ties to. I watched them grow up.”
That’s why, in addition to the Lewis hoodie, he wore a Kennedy football jacket and a JFK jersey underneath. Shama counts JFK coach Iris Bromfield as one of his many supporters during his three years at the school.
“I clapped, but I wasn’t cheering as much as I was in the other games,” he said. … “Kennedy is always in my heart.”
Shama, 40, is a Bronx guy. He was a star defensive lineman for Lehman HS in the 1980s and went on to play nose guard at C.W. Post on Long Island, where he graduated in 1991. He was second on the team in sacks and fourth in tackles his senior year when the Pioneers were Liberty Conference champions.
Shama, who has a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Lehman College, is thought of as somewhat of a rising prospect in the Department of Education as well as a computer technology pioneer, but he makes no secret of his sports background. He’s seriously open to Francis Lewis, the largest school in New York City in population, starting a football program.
“He loves sports and he’s really cool,” Kennedy senior Mariely Hernandez said. “He went to a lot of games – football, volleyball, gymnastics. Everything.”
"He's fitting in very well at Francis Lewis," Patriots junior Alicja Pawelec added. "Everybody loves him and everyone thinks he's awesome. He went to a lot of our games this season, especially in the playoffs, and I also saw him at the boys' soccer semis which shows that he's supportive of the Lewis athletes."
He’s also a firm believer in athletics as a complement to education.
“It’s a commitment of time – to teammates, classmates and the school,” Shama said. “I think there’s something to be said about high-school athletes.”
And although he’ll always love Kennedy, he made one thing known to the Lewis coaches and players in the first few weeks of his tenure.
“I told them,” Shama said, “I’m a Patriot now.”
