Can you feel it?

That sense of rivalry?

Can you hear it? The sound of cheers from the stands, not just for one team, but both?

Can you see it? The student crowd standing on both sides of the bleachers, all decked out, at Titans Gym?

If not now, you will throughout the week.

Welcome to the return of the Battle of the Bridge.

We missed it last fall. Oh, don’t get us wrong, Nashua High School North and South certainly squared off in enough events last fall, thanks to the pandemic-related scheduling clusters. Heck, they even met in a tournament game or two.

But there was no real Battle of the Bridge, no atmosphere. Remember, visiting fans were not allowed to attend games in Nashua. And it didn’t matter if the visiting team also was from Nashua.

So, when Nashua North and South played football, it was South’s home game and the stands behind the North bench were empty. When the teams played volleyball, there were no student crowds; mainly just parents and a lot of the noise was coming from the Panther and Titan benches.

“We didn’t have the same atmosphere,” Nashua athletic director Lisa Gingras said. “Obviously, the teams played each other, but we didn’t have the student crowds, we didn’t have the fans, we didn’t have the community. The schools didn’t really have, in the fall, they didn’t have their Spirit Week, because everybody was remote still.

“And even in the spring when they came back (to in-person classes) it wasn’t really a big deal.”

“Last year was a little sad, we didn’t have anyone here,” North girls soccer goalie Grace Cardin said. “We’re so excited this year, we’ll have big crowds, hopefully.”

That’s the idea. As of this writing, all the regular BOB events are a full go with full fan participation. For varsity teams, it starts with North-South field hockey on Monday at Stellos Stadium, and those games always have been pretty close. The golf teams are at Amherst Country Club on Tuesday.

But you’ll hear the noise on Wednesday at 6:15 p.m. That’s when the North-South girls volleyball teams square off and students will be going crazy for the first time since 2019. If you were at the packed North-Bishop Guertin volleyball match a couple weeks ago at BG, you’ll know what we mean. It will be twice as loud.

Then there’s the girls-boys varsity soccer doubleheader on Thursday night at Stellos, followed by the football game on Friday night and the boys and girls cross country meets on Saturday morning.

“For the kids to come back next week and have their Spirit Week and have their theme days and play each other, it should be a good week,” Gingras said.

Gingras felt that atmosphere at the Merrimack-North football game, which went down to the wire 10 nights ago, “was crazy.”

Imagine what it will be like for North-South? Two years is a long wait.

“It absolutely is (going to be crazy),” Gingras said. “And it starts Monday night.”

It sure does. And you already can feel it.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.

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