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Gianni Amodemo playing in last year's county championship. MARIANNE BARNETT
Westhampton Beach seniors Gianni Amodemo, left, and Riley Miller. Amodemo was nominated for USA Football’s Heart of a Giant Award presented by Hospital for Special Surgery and the New York Giants. RON ESPOSITO
Playing in the Suffolk County Division III Championship against rival Sayville last November, Gianni Amodemo, a Westhampton Beach High School junior at the time, tore his groin. Knowing what was at stake at the time, Amodemo didn’t tell any of his Hurricanes coaches or teammates, and instead played through the injury.
In the days following his team’s loss in the county championship, Amodemo found himself in the hospital due to a staph infection in his injured groin. It was a devastating injury for a student-athlete who prides himself in being at every practice and off-season workout. Due to the injury, Amodemo couldn’t play any winter sports or attend any offseason football workouts. Then, when the infection came back not once, but twice, doctors were unsure if Amodemo was going to be able to play football his senior year.
“Multiple hospital visits, multiple surgeries. [The infection] came back multiple times. I spent three separate times in the hospital,” Amodemo explained after his team’s latest victory this past weekend. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to play football again. Doctors weren’t sure. But I just stayed persistent.”
The Hurricanes’ starting safety known for his hard-hitting and toughness said that doctors basically left it up to him as to whether he was going to get back on the field. After missing all of the winter and all of the spring, and most of the summer, Amodemo eventually returned to the field on the first official day of practice for fall sports, August 21. His head coach, Bryan Schaumloffel, along with his teammates, welcomed him back with open arms.
For his hard work, grit, determination and character, Schaumloffel thought it would be fitting to nominate Amodemo for the 2023 USA Football Heart of a Giant Award presented by Hospital for Special Surgery and the New York Giants. It was announced last week that Amodemo was part of the second weekly group of nominees, which includes nine others from the Tri-State area. The voting period for these nominees is now open until Sunday, October 15, with the final vote tally determining who will be named the weekly group’s finalist. To vote, and for more information on the program, go to usafootball.com/programs/recognition-awards/heartofagiant.
At the end of the six-week voting process, six finalists and five wild card finalists will be named for a total of 11 finalist honorees. Each finalist will receive a $1,000 grant for their high school’s football program, with the grand prize winner’s school getting an additional $9,000 equipment grant. The grand prize winner and his coach will be honored on the field at a future New York Giants game this season. The grand prize winner will be selected based on video submissions stating why they have the Heart of a Giant.
“He’s a had a tough winter coming back from it,” Schaumloffel said of Amodemo and his injury. “He wasn’t able to play a spring sport. He kept on having little minor setbacks, and he’d be like, ‘I’m ready! I’m going to be back!’ And then all of a sudden there would be another setback, ‘Coach, I’m not fully back yet.’ He pretty much lost a whole summer, too, and we knew that so we obviously limited him early a little bit, as the amount of plays he had early on in the season. But I think he’s 100 percent now and getting better every week.”
Amodemo said he endured a lot of pain to get back to the sport he loves. But thanks to the help of his family, friends, trainers and coaches, he was able to get back just in time for the season.
“Getting back out here, I kind of worked through it. Slowly, it got better and better, and now I feel like I’m hitting my stride,” he said. “I’ve got a good group around me. My trainers, my coaches, they all just motivated me to come back and stay persistent with it.”
Now celebrating the program’s 10th year, Amodemo is not the first Hurricane to be nominated for a USA Football Heart of a Giant Award. He joins Dylan Laube, who was nominated by then head coach Bill Parry in 2017.
“Doesn’t matter what he goes through, he’s still the hardest hitter I know,” senior classmate and teammate Nolan Michalowski said of Amodemo. “And that’s never going to change, either.”
“I come to hit,” Amodemo added, with a smile.
