Silver Knights players sign autographs for school kids on the main concourse at Holman Stadium during Wednesday's Education Day season opener. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – The Nashua Silver Knights have begun their 16th Futures Collegiate Baseball League season this week.

Anyone up for 15 more?

The city and Historic Holman Stadium’s longest running franchise tenant took a big step toward that end as the Board of Aldermen earlier this week unanimously approved a new 15-year lease agreement between the Knights and the city.

The current deal was set to expire, and negotiations had been ongoing through the winter. The lease, according to Silver Knights owner John Creedon, Jr., calls for a 10 percent rent increase and is broken up into three renewable five-year increments. The rent is tied into the number of games that are played each season, Creedon said.

“It cements the future of the team at Holman Stadium, beyond the foreseeable future here,” Creedon said. “It nicely puts us at the mid-point of a 30-year stretch. The team has been here or 15 years at this point; the agreement now contemplates the next 15 years so we’re clearly at the midpoint of a 30-year stretch here which is awesome.

“We’re super proud that the Silver Knights are the longest running team in Holman Stadium’s existence and we’re just thrilled that the future is solid and bright.”

The lease has not been signed yet by Creedon and city officials but that is a formality and there will likely be a press conference in the near future announcing the deal. Nashua Mayor James Donchess spoke about the agreement in the opening comments at the aldermanic meeting.

“Basically it’s five years with two five year extensions on mutual agreement of the two parties,” Donchess said. “We’re happy to be able to continue our relationship with the Silver Knights.”

Donchess also promoted the FCBL All-Star Game at Holman on July 21 in his remarks.

“That is something you should attend if you possibly can,” he said.

The Silver Knights have been in Nashua since 2011 as the flagship franchise of a four-team college wooden bat league and owned by Drew Weber, who also at the time owned the professional Lowell (Mass.) Spinners. Weber sold the Silver Knights to the Creedon family, which also runs a thriving catering business in Worcester, Mass., in the winter of 2019.

The team has followed in the footsteps of the professional independent league Nashua Pride franchise that was at Holman for 11 years before being sold and rebranded as the American Defenders of New Hampshire, that lasting two-thirds of a season before being locked out of Holman. The professional independent league business model did not over the long run work. Nashua had a previous independent league team, the Hawks, for a season and a half in the mid-1990s, and there were two affiliated minor league franchises that also called Holman Stadium home – the Nashua Angels/Pirates from 1982-86 and of course the historic Nashua Dodgers from 1946-49 that broke the U.S. baseball color barrier.

None have had the popularity the Silver Knights have enjoyed, although the Pride were close but the finances were different. The business model – a wooden bat league for college players that actually pay an entry fee into the league that is run as a for-profit entity. – has proven to work.

Which is why the team, with six championships, has been able to get such a long term. The team opened its season on Wednesday with an Education Day crowd of 2,000, and last year averaged well over 1,600 per game,setting a franchise per-game attendance record.

“To me it screams support and confidence in each other,” Creedon said of the deal. “The team and the city, the city and the team. It’s been a wonderful partnership and collaboration to this point and there’s no reason that should change, and I anticipate it only getting stronger as the years continue to move on.”