It’s a Saturday filled with high school championships for lacrosse, volleyball and track and field.

The Southern Section Division 1 boys’ lacrosse final between Loyola and Mater Dei will take place at 7 p.m. at Fred Kelly Stadium in Orange.

The City Section Open Division boys’ volleyball final between Venice and El Camino Real is at 6 p.m. at Birmingham.

The Southern Section track and field finals begin at 11 a.m. with field events at Moorpark High.

There’s also the state swimming championships at Clovis West High. …

The City Section will hold a Tuesday semifinal doubleheader in baseball for the Open Division at Cal State Northridge, with El Camino Real playing Birmingham at 3 p.m. and Venice facing Sylmar at 6 p.m.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Howard Stern has made it clear: if he isn’t sitting in the front row at Madison Square Garden watching the New York Knicks, then he isn’t going at all. 

Stern, 71, is not known to be the biggest sports fan, but does support the Knicks, who hold a 3-2 series lead over the defending champion Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals. 

Yet despite the team’s playoff success, Stern will not be a part of the raucous Madison Square Garden crowd unless he gets front row seats. 

“You can tell your place in show business by where they place you at the Knicks game. The day they put me in the second row, I quit. Because I consider myself a first-row type person,” Stern said on “The Howard Stern Show.”

“I’m very aware of where they seat me, and it’s very important to me. If they said to me, ‘Look, you’re not gonna be in the first row,’ I’d turn around and leave. It would be embarrassing to me.”

Stern does have interest in going to an upcoming Knicks’ playoff game, but will only attend if his requirements are met. 

KNICKS’ JOSH HART SUFFERS BLOODY CUT OVER EYE IN TEAM’S LOSS TO CELTICS

Howard Stern has a couple of requirements he needs to attend a Knicks game.  (Getty Images)

“I have tremendous interest, but I wouldn’t go. I’m very self-conscious. I wait for them to invite me,” Stern said. 

“I don’t want to take advantage and I know everyone comes out of the woodwork for the Finals. I don’t want to be that guy. I prefer when the Knicks are dead last, then I don’t feel guilty taking the tickets because nobody wants to go.”

While he would like to go to a game, if invited, the longtime host does not have a lot of faith in the Knicks knocking off the Celtics and moving on. 

Howard Stern admitted that he’s made some questionable remarks on air that he’s had to apologize for in the past. (Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

“I still feel like the Knicks are gonna blow it. I get agita with that team,” Stern said. 

The Celtics won Game 5 at the TD Garden in Boston 127-105 despite not having star player Jayson Tatum due to an Achilles injury he suffered at the end of Game 4. 

The Knicks have another chance to clinch the series on Friday at 8 p.m. ET, when the series returns to Madison Square Garden. The team has not made the conference finals since 2000. 

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Last year could have been a storybook ending.

Had Clayton Kershaw been healthy, he likely would have been part of the Dodgers’ postseason rotation. He would have given them badly needed innings during their run to a World Series championship. And, in Year 17 of his future Hall of Fame career, he could have ridden off into the sunset, having little else to prove after playing an integral role on two championship teams.

“Yeah, if I was able to be a part of last year’s run and win a World Series and get to go out like that, that would have been really cool,” Kershaw said recently, contemplating what might have been if only he was available to pitch last October. “But I wasn’t. And it was still really fun to be part of. But it made it easier to want to come back, for sure.”

Back again, Kershaw is set to make his season debut for the Dodgers on Saturday after spending the first two months of the campaign recovering from offseason surgeries to address toe and knee injuries that sidelined him for the team’s title-winning trek through the playoffs last year.

Unlike previous offseasons, when the now 37-year-old Kershaw seemed to give retirement more serious thought, the three-time Cy Young Award winner made his mind up quickly last fall. Even before the Dodgers won their second championship in the last five years, he knew he wanted to pitch in 2025. After making just seven starts in 2024 with a 4.50 ERA, and missing the stretch run of the season when his long bothersome toe injury finally became too much, he didn’t want his career to end with him as a spectator, able only to cheer from the dugout as the Dodgers went on to win the World Series without him.

“For me, just getting back out on the mound is a big first step,” Kershaw said, ahead of what will be his first big-league outing since Aug. 30 of last year. “And then it’s the rest of the season, obviously. But just making it through Saturday and getting back out there is what I’ve thought about so far.”

To get to this point, the 18-year veteran had to endure a grueling offseason.

Days after the Dodgers’ World Series parade, Kershaw had two surgical operations: One on his left knee, where he had suffered a torn meniscus; and another on his left foot to address arthritis, a bone spur on his big toe and, most seriously, a ruptured plantar plate.

“If someone asked me, ‘What all did they do to your foot?’ I don’t know if I can answer all the way, but I know it’s not been fun,” Kershaw said, underscoring the complicated nature of a foot surgery, in particular, that he noted “only one or two baseball players” have had before.

“This one was painful,” he added, contrasting it to the relatively straightforward shoulder procedure he had the previous offseason. “It was like, ‘Oh, this is what people talk about when they talk about bad surgeries.’”

The worst part was the recovery, with Kershaw spending the better part of the next two months on crutches or in a walking boot.

“Trying to be on crutches and have four kids, it’s not easy,” he said. “Your offseason is supposed to be like, where you’re around and get to help more. And those first six weeks, I wasn’t much help. So it’s kind of a helpless feeling. And I don’t sit still well in general. So it was a hard process.”

Still, Kershaw’s commitment to come back never wavered. He was into a throwing program by the start of spring training. He began a minor-league rehab stint in the middle of April. And he posted a 2.57 ERA in five rehab starts, feeling he’d “turned the corner” with his foot over the last couple outings.

“Those last few rehab starts, I was more concerned about throwing well and getting guys out than I was [about] how my foot felt or anything like that,” he said. “So I think that was a good sign for me physically. And now, it’s just a process of figuring out how to get guys out consistently again and perform. That’s a much better place to be than seeing if you’re hurt.”

Exactly how Kershaw will fare back in the big leagues is an unknown. During his rehab stint, his fastball sat in the upper-80 mph range, a few ticks down from the already diminished velocity he’d had in recent seasons. He struck out only 16 batters in 21 innings, relying more on command and an ability to induce soft contact to navigate his way through starts.

On the other hand, Kershaw’s arm is as healthy as it’s been in years, now 17 months removed from his 2023 shoulder surgery. Even without eye-popping stuff last year, he proved to be competitive, owning a 3.72 ERA before leaving his Aug. 30 start early when his toe flared up. And simply having him back in the rotation will come as a boon for the Dodgers, who have been shorthanded recently with fellow starters Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki all nursing shoulder injuries.

“It’s a big shot in the arm,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Clayton has worked really hard to get healthy, and the bar is high for him, you know. He doesn’t want to just come back to be active. He wants to come back and help us win baseball games and be good. And so I know he’s excited to contribute.”

In a break from his typically stoic facade, that excitement was evident from Kershaw all week. Except when reflecting upon the departure of teammate and close friend Austin Barnes, Kershaw was smiling almost everywhere he went around the ballpark in recent days. “Is that unusual?” he deadpanned when a reporter noted the observation Thursday. He also downplayed his pursuit of 3,000 career strikeouts — he is just 32 Ks away from becoming the 20th member of the illustrious statistical club — in favor of amplifying the gratitude he felt about simply pitching in the majors once again.

“I think when you haven’t done something for a long time, and you realize that you miss it — you miss competing, you miss being a part of the team and contributing — there’s a lot of gratitude and gratefulness to get back to that point,” Kershaw said. “I definitely feel that. Now, if I go out there and don’t pitch good, it’s gonna go away real fast. So there’s a performance aspect of it, too. But I think for now, sitting on the other side of it, just super excited and grateful to get to go back out there again.”

When asked if he ever planned on hanging it up, Kershaw then laughed.

“Somebody will tell me to retire at some point, I’m sure,” he said.

But, after finishing last season injured and grinding through a long rehab this winter, that point is not now, not yet.

Eighteen years later, Kershaw still feels he has more to give.

“At the end of the day, you just want to be a contributing factor to the Dodgers,” he said. “You don’t want to just be on the sidelines. So I’m excited to get back to that.”