For the first time since November 2, 2019, the Racine Raiders will field a team on Saturday. They’ll host perennial national powerhouse, the Columbus Fire at Historic Horlick Athletic Field at 7 p.m. Attendance is limited to 1,500 fans and tickets can be purchased at the Historic Horlick Athletic Field ticket office beginning at 5:30 p.m. or at a number of Racine-area ticket outlets.
Neither team played a game in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic saw sporting events postponed and canceled at all levels and across the globe. The Raiders were coming off a promising 2019 campaign where they captured the MidStates Football League title and made a deep run in the national playoffs. They lost to the Detroit Ravens, who would move on to win a national championship, in the Midwest Football Tournament championship game.
The Columbus Fire, coming off of their third national championship in January, 2019, were poised to join a new league in 2020. The Fire had to delay their plans to play in the Gridiron Developmental Football League (GDFL) until this season. The GDFL is a larger league, spread out mostly across the Eastern and Southern United States but also with teams further away. It’s similar in structure to the North American Football League that the Raiders called home for several years.
The Fire began practicing in February of this year while the Raiders had to wait until mid-April just to hold a formal tryout. That means Racine enters this game with just 11 practices under their belt, all while trying to install a different offense and with the defense having a new leader as Jahamal Hardy steps into the role of defensive coordinator vacated by Pete Deates prior to this season. Of those 11 practices, a small number have bee shortened due to other team activities, such as picture day and the Spring Fling fundraiser.
The winner of this game will be the team that can get the rust knocked off the quickest. It’s been over 550 days since the Raiders last took to the field and even longer for the Fire.
The Raiders will also have to get used to a new field surface as Historic Horlick Athletic Field underwent a renovation taking it from natural grass to new field turf in 2020. This game will be the second game ever played on the new turf. Gone is the abnormally high crown down the middle of the field which sometimes made it hard to see from sideline to sideline.
The City of Racine has made other renovations to the complex which won’t affect game play. The Trading Post, a staple under or near the scoreboard in the north endzone, will once again be housed in a separate building. The new Trading Post is located west of the concessions area, right at the west entry gate. The ticket office, the last remaining original building at Historic Horlick Athletic Field, was also renovated on the inside to make it much more usable.
what radio station are the games on ??
We are no longer carried on local radio. We have the live video web stream instead which can be found at http://www.YouTube.com/RacineRaiders. We are working on adding a low-power AM transmission to cover parts of Racine for home games but road games will only be available on YouTube.