Riverhawks begin baseball season with first of 27 theme nights at all home games

The Edmonton Riverhawks start their season Friday with the first of 27 theme nights at Re/Max Field. CTV News Edmonton's Evan Kenny has more.

Good times are in the forecast starting Friday night at Edmonton’s Re/Max Field.

That’s where baseball’s Riverhawks will open their summer collegiate West Coast League season at home (7:05 p.m.) against the Wenatchee AppleSox, starting with the first game theme of the year: the Home Opener Party plus Indigenous Celebration.

Each of the Riverhawks’ 27 home games through the end of July will have a theme, says Maddie Murdoch, the marketing and game day director for the team.

“We don’t want to bore people, we want something new and fresh every single night,” Murdoch told CTV News Edmonton on Friday.

It’s safe to say those who attended a game in the river valley ballpark were plenty entertained: the Riverhawks set league attendance records last season, including a single-game mark for their Canada Day game in front of a sell-out crowd of 9,200, an average attendance of 4,888 and total attendance of 131,966.

Murdoch says the Riverhawks staff knows “people come here because they want to have a good time.”

“The baseball on the field is always amazing, but our job is to make sure that even if you’re not a huge baseball fan, if you come to the ballpark, you’re still going to leave having (had) a great time, no matter if you know every single stat on the field or not,” she said.

The Riverhawks, who started play in the WCL in 2022, made the playoffs in 2025 for the second year in a row, advancing to the North Division final, which they lost to the eventual league champion Bellingham Bells.

Jake Lanferman, who’s entering his fourth season as their head coach, said the experience gained by returning players from last year’s squad will go a long way in helping them in this season’s quest for the title.

“Last year, going to the North Division Final, the guys we brought back had a great experience, and we were really close to what we were trying to accomplish,” Lanferman said.

“They’re going to lead the way with presence, understanding playing at home, what it feels like in front of a ton of fans. I feel like we get the advantage (there): It’s tougher for road teams to play here when everybody’s rooting for us.”

The trick is to bond with your teammates and get everyone pulling in the same direction, Riverhawks catcher Jason Green said.

“It’s tough when you’re coming to summer ball, you don’t know everyone at the start, but we’re all good ballplayers; there are good ball players everywhere we play,” said the second-year American. “The biggest thing is being able to gel with your teammates, and if we can do that, it’s going to help us a lot.”

The Riverhawks’ opening-weekend homestand against Wenatchee will be followed next week by a week-long road trip to Vancouver Island, where they’ll face the Victoria HarbourCats and the Nanaimo NightOwls, before returning home to host Victoria on June 9.

Tree Huggers alternate identity for 2026

In anticipation of Friday’s start to the WCL season, the Riverhawks introduced their alternate identity and its corresponding outfit: the River Valley Tree Huggers.

It’s the latest city-inspired theme for the team, who’ve previously used the Green Onion Cakes, the Silver City Dragons and the Talus Balls as their alter-egos.

The jerseys, created by local artist Mike Lundy, are coloured sage green and brown, and use various river valley elements – greenery, trails, parks and the river – in its design.

Cactus Rats start season on Friday, too

The Edmonton area’s other summer collegiate baseball squad, the Energy City Cactus Rats of the Western Canadian Baseball League, also opens its 2026 slate of games Friday night in Fort McMurray.

The Cactus Rats, the former Edmonton Prospects franchise that played out of Re/Max Field until the Riverhawks signed a lease with the city to take it over, are scheduled to play their first home game on June 6 against the Brooks Bombers at their new ballpark in Spruce Grove, which has been under construction since the fall of 2023. Early this month, the team said there was “no definitive date” for when the stadium, called the Energy City Metro Ballpark, would be open to spectators.

The WCBL includes teams from Alberta and Saskatchewan, including provincial rivals the Bombers, the Fort McMurray Giants, the Sylvan Lake Gulls, the Okotoks Dawgs, the Medicine Hat Mavericks and the Lethbridge Bulls.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Evan Kenny