Longtime Rivier AD Joanne Merrill is stepping down frm the after 41-plus years. The school plans to have a new AD in place by August. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – A historic era is ending in local athletics as longtime Rivier University athletic director Joanne Merrill is stepping away from the job after nearly 42 years.

Merrill confirmed the news on Wednesday, and Rivier President Sister Paula Marie Buley made the announcement to the school’s personnel on Tuesday.

Merrill, who turns 69 at the end of the summer, will stay on for a time as Athletics Project Manager, mainly she said to help assist her successor in the transition.

“I’m going to still be here next year, but it will be like, ‘This is what you need to do this month.’,” she said. “Next year was going to be my last year. I’m not the person to take things into the next three to five years.

“It’s just time for new illusion, new ideas. … Someone else needs to come in and take things to the next place.”

According to Merrill, the hope is to have a new AD in place by August.

Merrill was appointed athletic director in 1980, and has guided the school’s athletic program through several transitions, including the addition of men’s sports once the onetime all-female school went co-ed in the early 1990s, the addition of several sports, the renovation of the Muldoon Fitness Center and the building of the Linda Robinson Pavilion. The turf field there is named Joanne Merrill Field in her honor.