Leave the gun, take the points.
Jimmy Barbarise’s hit mob show, “Capo: Rise to Power,” may be filming Season 2 — but the lead actor’s focus is on Season 1 of Long Island University Sharks women’s flag football as inaugural head coach.
“A lot of the parents, when I do the team calls, the first questions aren’t about flag,” he told The Post with a laugh.
“It’s, ‘I watched it. I loved it. When’s Season 2 coming out?’ and I’m just like, ‘Let’s talk about your daughter now?’” added Barbarise, who dished out signed posters to player families.
The Centereach-born goodfella — he previously coached the University of Tampa to a No. 3 national ranking and is an LI flag football Hall of Famer — picked a heck of a year to jump into the Shark tank.
The New York Jets and their Betty Wold Johnson Foundation kicked in a healthy $1M to LIU’s Eastern College Athletic Conference to launch America’s largest collegiate flag football league of 15 teams.
Sweetening the deal, championships for the coveted “Betty” trophy will be played at MetLife Stadium starting in 2027 when the World Cup concludes.
“It’s so surreal,” said wideout E’lise Lyrse during the league’s massive media day at The Meadowlands.
“I’ve never seen people come together for a sport like this,” added the sophomore who moved from LIU’s rowing team to try her luck on the gridiron.
Getting their button
Lyrse isn’t the only flag football newcomer repping the Sharks this season, as Barbarise’s team has only four women with prior experience.
“We’re really starting from scratch,” the head coach admitted, saying he opened the books to anyone.
“I sat in the common area and asked people if they wanted to play football… we had players asking roommates.”
But sharks are born swimming.
The mob man picked two experienced first years as his football family’s captains to get newbies ready: High school teammates at Valley Stream, running back Ryann Blount and cornerback Sophia Songveeratham.
Blount said they “would run our own little clinics” that taught the basics of the 7-on-7 game, like route running, plus lots of conditioning.
“Months before coach was even on campus, we were training just on the grass, just running around in the dark — just doing everything we could to get any progress,” added Lyrse, who described the group as inseparable.
When asked how many players watch Barbarise’s show, the captains hilariously declined to comment.
“I swear we’ll get to it,” Blount said.
Made for this
While the first season may be a building year, Songveeratham is confident that Long Island’s explosive high school flag football landscape will certainly pad out the roster moving forward.
“We had about 26 seniors on the team,” she said of her senior year at Valley Stream.
“It’s so impressive how the programs have been growing so much over the Island. … I want to see how much this can go, and I can’t wait.”
Barbarise added that the local hotbed is making his job easier as well.
“A lot of them have reached out,” he said. “I’ve got a road map to recruits.”
But the Sharks — one of the loudest teams at the Jets media day — don’t plan on waiting to show the flag football world what they’re made of come game one vs. Mercy on St. Patrick’s Day.
“I know my team, I know we can do it,” said Blount. “Watch out for the new kids on the block.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
