Noah Crane always believed the region would support a summer college baseball team.
Today, the Upper Valley Nighthawks president and founder, Crane is celebrating the organization’s decade of success on and off the diamond.
The 2026 regular season, which is in its late stages, marks 10 years since the Nighthawks first took the field at Maxfield Sports Complex in White River Junction for their inaugural season as part of the New England Collegiate Baseball League.
The NECBL is a wooden-bat college summer baseball league founded in 1993. Part of its mission is to “give student-athletes who lived and/or went to school in New England a better chance to have their talents recognized by major league scouts,” according to its website.
“I’m a little blown away by the fact that it has been a decade,” said Crane, who — along with his father — was also responsible for ushering in the now-defunct Laconia Muskrats, who had their inaugural season in 2010, to the NECBL.
“There’s a sense of, ‘Oh shoot, I’m getting old,’ and also a deep appreciation for all the people who have made this team a reality,” he added.
Crane, a Woodstock High graduate who also pitched at UMass-Amherst, acknowledged that had Maxfield existed back in 2010, there’s a real shot the Nighthawks would now have been playing ball in the NECBL for much longer.
“For me and my family, this is a way that we could give back to a community that has cared for us and served us well over many, many years,” he said.
“I love baseball, I love community, I love entertainment, and so marrying those three things is what we do with the Upper Valley Nighthawks. People are going to get to see excellent baseball, they’re going to have a great deal of fun, they’re going to be able to unite over something that is Upper Valley-specific, and it’s incredibly affordable.”
A growing organization
The Nighthawks have certainly evolved over these 10 years. Gone are the days of a stationary camera sitting behind home plate taking in all the action for an internet broadcast. So too are the days of Crane trying to do everything himself.
The Nighthawks now boast a robust staff, whether for the broadcast — which now has six cameras these days — or in other areas such as analytics and social media, among others.
The organizational shift is also felt by the players. Pitcher Nick Tamburro, a native of New Jersey, is in his fourth season with the Nighthawks and says the organization has improved year over year since he first joined for the second half of the 2023 season, especially in terms of the treatment of players and programming.
“I give Noah so much credit: He’s the complete backbone of this entire organization, and he brings in new guys every year and he always has new guys coming in to replace guys who leave,” said Tamburro, who will pitch at The College of New Jersey this coming school year.
“He pretty much gets it to run like a professional organization through these volunteer internship positions, to help these students build their resumes, and it has made the overall experience feel more professional,” he added.
Additionally, the Nighthawks have hit some major milestones. The organization hosted its first NECBL All-Star Game last summer. More recently, the team had its first regular-season game with more than 1,000 fans in attendance at Maxfield as part of a partnership with singer Noah Kahan’s The Busyhead Project.
“If you had asked us five years ago … I think we’ve exceeded — if we had expectations or what we thought this might be 10 years in, we’re past that,” said Nighthawks vice president Matt Wright, who is in his seventh season with the organization.
For Wright, who first was an intern, then served as the Nighthawks general manager for five seasons before becoming vice president, the club’s growth can be tied to the development of a culture.
“We’re trying to get a certain person here — it’s not just a talented intern — it’s a certain personality, someone who is selfless and wants to be part of a team and a family,” he said.
‘You feel embraced, you feel welcomed’
That culture also extends to the feeling around the ballpark.
“I think when you come to a game at Maxfield, you feel embraced, you feel welcomed, you feel like there’s no stress. … I think that has an effect on people,” Wright said.
“Whether or not they notice it, having all of our staff members kind of mingling with the fans throughout the game — the players, too — is kind of a contagious thing that you don’t notice, but if you had rewinded seven or eight years back, you wouldn’t feel that,” he added. “There was no atmosphere, there was no staff, there was no program back then.”
For instance, Wright shared that he got his initial job as an intern just by emailing Crane, asking for a position without much of a process.
Nowadays, the Nighthawks actively recruit for interns and staff and hire individuals that fit the desired culture. This past offseason, the play-by-play broadcast position for the organization had 80 applicants.
While Crane acknowledged that NECBL requirements have been a driving force for these enhancements, the desire to be the best summer ball organization in the league is also an important piece.
“We want to be able to provide a professional-quality product, whether that’s our food, whether that’s our entertainment, whether that’s the actual play on the field, facility, the broadcast — we want to do those things as excellently as possible,” he said.
Playoff optimism
The Nighthawks have also been making some progress on the field, especially this season, as the squad hopes not just to celebrate its 10-year anniversary but also a potential championship.
Upper Valley held a 24-17-1 record as of Thursday afternoon, good for second place in the NECBL’s North Division, as well as the fourth-highest win total in the 13-team league. The Nighthawks’ 24 victories are the most since they had 23 in 2021 and tie the 2019 team for the second-most regular-season wins in club history. The 2017 team has the most regular-season wins in the organization’s history with 29.
“The guys are still playing hard — kind of since day one, we thought we’ve had a good group. I think Noah put a good group together, and ultimately I think the guys like each other,” first-year Upper Valley manager Chase Allen said of his squad’s success.
“We’ve had some roster turnover — we’ve had some new guys come in, some guys go home for this reason and that reason — but we’ve had a good steady core,” he added.
Among some of the players making this season possible are some familiar names: AJ DeMastrie, Alejandro Puig, Ethan Brown and Trey Sejnoha, all of whom play for Dartmouth College. The Big Green quartet decided to stick around the Upper Valley to sharpen their skills despite not having any classes.
“It’s been a really wonderful relationship for us to get Dartmouth players, who our local fans have some recognition of — gives them an opportunity to play more games. … It’s really been great to have those guys, and they’ve played exceptionally well,” Crane said.
Puig, who is third on the team in batting average (.322) and tied for third in RBIs (18), has been huge at the dish for the Nighthawks.
Catcher Nick Quagliato (Boston College) is second on the team in RBIs (25) and tied for the team lead in home runs (two). Outfielder Alex Kelsey (Kentucky) and shortstop Frank Kelly (High Point) are both hitting over .300 and have been huge with their bats as well.
On the mound Sejnoha, who has started the most games for the Nighthawks, has been mostly strong with an ERA of 3.10. Eric Santaella (UNC Asheville) has also been strong as a starter with an ERA of 3.60.
Having clinched a top-four seed for the postseason, Upper Valley will begin the NECBL playoffs on Saturday evening at 6 p.m. at Maxfield against an as-yet-to-be-determined foe. The NECBL playoffs feature eight teams; the two division winners own the top two seeds, and the rest are ranked by overall winning percentage. Each round is played in a best-of-three series format.
Heading into the postseason, Allen is confident his squad has the makeup to go on a run.
“I think there’s a lot of talent on this team,” he said. “I think this team just does a good job of playing the game at hand, and so I have a lot of confidence in this team, I think they have a lot of confidence in themselves. … When that first game hits, just try and have these guys ready and give them what we got.”
