Actual competition, like this men's lacarosse game in late February of 2020, returns to the Rivier campus on Saturday after a year's absence. (Photo courtesy of Rivier Univesity)

NASHUA – Athletic competiton finally returns to Rivier University on Saturday, after a year’s absence.

The Raiders will have four teams in action, two at home, two away. The Rivier men’s lacrosse team will play at Joanne Merrill Field at 1 p.m. vs. St. Joseph’s of Connecticut, and the Raider softball team is slated to host Northern Vermont-Lyndon in a doubleheder at their facility right next door to Merrill Field at 2 p.m.

Traveling will be Raider baseball, at Dean College in Franklin, Mass. for a doubleheader that starts at 1 p.m., and women’s lacrosse visits Norwich (Vt.) at 4 p.m.

“It’s great, it’s very exciting,” Riv AD Joanne Merrill said. “But we’re still never sure, we have to make sure every one of our test results come back clean for everyone on our team – and the teams we p;lay.

“There’s a lot of planning and hoping.”

The Great Northeast Athletic Conference presidents voted a couple of weeks ago to allow a spring season to take place, with a couple of key protocols: Teams are tested at least twice a week, athletes as well as coaches must wear masks during games, and there are absolutely no spectators allowed.

If one player tests positive, Merrill said, then that team has to shut down.

“It’s a combinations of feelings,” new Riv baseball coach Louie Bernardini said. “We don’t know what to expect until first pitch. There’s the testing, there’s the contract agreement that has to be signed between the two teams, approaching the bus, riding the bus, all the full protocols.

“The only thing that’s going to feel normal is when we have that first pitch.”

The Riv baseball team had a Florida trip last year in early March and played one game in New England upon its return. Softball hasn’t played an official spring season home game on its newly rennovated field. The Raider lacrosse teams had a handful of regular season games combined before things were shut down in mid-March.

The one Raider team that is usually playing this time of year, winding down its regular season, is men’s volleyball, thats normally starts in late January. But the GNAC did not allow any indoor/winter competition this year.

Bernardini wasn’t ready to name his starting pitchers for Saturday until watching bullpen sessions in practice on Thursday. Senior captains have been named, pitcher Dan White (currently injured) and outfielder Dillon Brady.

Locals on the Raiders include sophomore catcher Kevin Collins (Bishop Guertin), junior pitcher/infielder Jake Mainey (Merrimack), and junior catcher Anthony Mele (Nashua South).

Locals on softball, which had an intersquad scrimmage last night, are junior outfielder Emma Rousseau (Campbell), senior pitcher-infielder Kellie Kennedy (Alvirne), and freshman outfielder Alicia McKenna (Campbell).

As for lacrosse, the Raider men’s team has freshman midfielder Zach Gauthier (Nashua South), freshman goalie Ryan Palmer (Nashua North), freshman midfielder Donny Buchanan (Alvirne) and sophomore defenseman Jacob Newman (Merrimack).

There are also several on the Raider womn’s lax team – junior midfielders Madison Abreu (Nashua North) and Talia Saliany (Nashua South), senior middie Lauren Ferentino (Alvirne), freshman middie Caitlin Newell (Campbell), and senior defenseman Kayla Bednarz (Bishop Guertin).

The Raider baseball team will have its home opener – either at Holman Stadium or Harvey Woods Field (on campus of Daniel Webster) a week from Saturday vs. Albertus Magnus. Women’s lacrosse won’t play again until its first home game, Saturday, April 10 vs. Colby Sawyer.

Bernardini says a problem down the road with inequities in required protocols, schedules, etc. with the NCAA. For example, St. Joseph’s of Maine will play teams that don’t necessarily follow the same protocols they do, and have already played several games.

“When we go there on April 17 they’ll have played something like 20 games and we’ll have played six,” he said.

Another example, one GNAC school the Raiders won’t play in anything is Johnson&Wales, which won’t play teams beyond a 60-mile distance.

But either way, competition finally retuns to the city campus, and the brand new Linda Robinson Pavilion, for the first time in over a year.

“We’ll be ready,”Bernardini said. “We’e thankful and grateful to be competing, because that’s what we’re here to do.”

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