Pilgrims

Laurie Cox Memorial Fields sits on the campus at Henniker, a natural-grass pitch with a new scoreboard, a press box and bleachers — for the 2024 home opener the college expected more than 2,000 people. That is where New England College brought football back after 51 years away.

The programme first existed in 1946, when the college itself was created to give servicemen and women returning from the Second World War a place to study on the G.I. Bill. Football lasted until 1973, when it was shut down, and stayed shut for half a century. The college revived it for 2023, and the team played its way back onto a field in front of its own supporters on 7 September 2024, beating Plymouth State 20–14 in what counted as a pre-varsity opener. Laurie Cox had not seen a home game like it in decades.

A full varsity season followed in 2025, in the NCAA Division III Conference of New England, and it went the way first seasons after a long absence usually do: one win, nine losses. There is no roll of honours to point to yet.

What they do have is the ground itself, and the number that mattered most on that September evening was not on any scoreboard: a crowd of more than two thousand at Laurie Cox Memorial Fields, watching a team that hadn't existed in most of their lifetimes take the field again in Henniker.