It’s August, which means Transition Time as we fade out of summer sports and slowly merge into the start of the high school and college seasons:

First, this weekend marks the end of the 2023 Nashua Silver Knights season, Sunday’s game being the regular season finale and there will be no playoffs for Nashua. Ironically they end the season with a 3 p.m. game at Holman Stadium against the team nearly a year ago they defeated for the FCBL title, the Vermont Lake Monsters.

That was a great moment, and there are a lot of players from that night of Aug. 12, 2022 that are with the team now but will likely be wrapping up their Silver Knight careers on Sunday.

What happened? We’ll no doubt hear from the team’s management on what may have gone wrong on the field and how to fix it. But the last three seasons, two of them non playoff years, have a common denominator: Horrendous starts. And in 2021 and this summer, the Knights just weren’t able to climb out of the holes they dug, which is a shame. That is certainly something general manager Cam Cook and field manager Kyle Jackson will ponder as they lay the groundwork for next year sooner than later. It’s difficult with college seasons ending at different times, high school players arriving late, etc. to get a sound roster to start the season. But other teams did.

There have been some good moments, but still, a disappointing season, just the second time in the franchise’s 13 years that it will miss the playoffs.

—- Still on the Knights, Sunday will be a special day as the Nashua Lions Club will be awarding the William V. Neverett Memorial MVP award to a Silver Knight for his 2023 efforts. The award, is appropriately named after the late William Neverett, father of former Knights VP and manager B.J. Neverett, who was a former Nashua Lion, and longtime supporter of local athletics and a Knights season ticket holder.

Our choice? We’d go with right fielder Shane McNamara of Londonderry and Eastern Nazarene, who is the team’s leader in homers and RBIs and was hitting at last look in the mid-.280s. We’ll see.

— The Nashua athletic community in general as well as the Nashua Athletic Department took another hit with the recent passing of former longtime coach, official, and in recent years game clock keeper Paul “Coach” John Wesinger, who was a big help to the athletic department. More than that, he was a class act, a great guy with a great sense of humor and always, always, always someone you enjoyed seeing at games, be it in the Stellos Stadium press box or one of the high school gyms. He will be sorely missed.

Yours truly remembers when Wesinger was ill a few years ago and late public address announcer Bob Bates, a good friend, would provide all with updates. Now the two of them are certainly scheming something with grins in the world beyond.

— More sad news: Former Campbell High School boys soccer coach Bill Miller, who also had a prolific college coaching career, passed away last week. Miller was certainly one of a kind — the best kind. He guided the Cougars to back-to-back Division III titles in 2018-19, and made sure that his teams not only learned the game of soccer but the game of life as well. His players absolutely loved him. RIP Dr. Miller. You will be missed in the soccer world.

—- Bishop Guertin football coach Anthony Nalen knows he lost a lot to graduation, but will try to rebuild a program that fared well under former coach John Trisciani. But consider this: Arguably the Cards’ three best players the last two seasons who have graduated – quarterback/safety Matt Santosuosso, tight end/defensive end Jakob Baker, and two-way lineman Rocco Geraci – are not playing college football as of now, which we already generally knew. Santosuosso decided on playing basketball at Plymouth State and Baker is making his academics a priority at the University of Tampa. Those were arguably three of the best football players in the area. Oh well.

—- Are you ready for the transition? After the Silver Knights end their season this weekend, and as of this writing we’ll see how the Nashua James E. Coffey Post team does in the Senior Legion Northeast Regionals, the high schools will return. Football practices begin next Friday, Aug. 11, and then on Monday, Aug. 14, most if not all of the other fall sports begin their tryout sessions. Check your school’s web site for all the info. Nashua North and South will have some tryout sessions at the school fields and others at Stellos Stadium. Yes, it all begins before you know it.

— We usually try to take our summer time off when things might be a little slow, and with the Silver Knights mainly on the road thanks to the Legion tourney at Holman and the FCBL All-Star Break. But we missed another state title for Coffey Post, the return of Monkey Boy to Holman, the retirement of Patrice Bergeron, a super max contract for Celtics Jaylen Brown, and the start of Patriots training camp, although that as of mid-week has been fairly uneventful.

It just shows there’s really no good time to get away, is there?

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