Berry kicks off season two on Sept. 6 at Maryville

Berry College will kick off its 2014 season, the second in school history, on Sept. 6 at Maryville College in Tennessee.

Berry played Maryville at home in 2013 to kick off its inaugural season, a game Berry lost by a 37-0 margin. Berry then travels to LaGrange, Ga., on Sept. 13 to take on LaGrange College.

Berry takes a week off before returning to the gridiron on Sept. 27 for a pair of home games, against Rhodes College and Washington University. The Rhodes game marks the first Southern Athletic Association games of the season for the Vikings.

Berry is scheduled to conclude its second season on Nov. 15 against Southeastern University, an NAIA squad. Its complete 2014 schedule is:

  • Sept. 6: at Maryville (Tenn.)
  • Sept. 13: at LaGrange
  • Sept. 27: Rhodes
  • Oct. 4: Washington (Mo.)
  • Oct. 11: at Centre
  • Oct. 18: Hendrix
  • Oct. 25: at Birmingham-Southern
  • Nov. 1: Millsaps
  • Nov. 8: at Sewanee
  • Nov. 15: Southeastern University

Berry finished its inaugural season with a 1-9 record. The Vikings are scheduled to play its 2014 home games at Barron Stadium in downtown Rome, Ga., a few miles from campus.

Earlier this year, the school said it is relocating the site of its planned football stadium “out of respect for the nesting site of Georgia’s most famous pair of bald eagles,” school officials said this week.

Work on Valhalla stadium, which will also host lacrosse and track and field, is set to begin this fall, according to the school. The stadium is to be completed by the 2015-16 academic year.

The original site selected for the stadium was located near the nest of bald eagles. The school has set up cameras that live stream the eagles’ action; the cameras have garnered more than 17 million views and a corresponding Facebook page has more than 60,000 followers.

The eagles built their nest in the spring of 2012 and returned that fall. They produced a pair of eaglets in 2013, and a third eaglet hatched in February; the younger eaglet just took its inaugural flight.