The East Penn Conference formally adopted a tiered delay and mitigation plan for the start of the fall sports season on Tuesday.

The league voted unanimously (18-0) to push the season back amid the Covid-19 pandemic and realign the conference for the fall season to reduce risk of transmission.

However, the conference and its officials also wanted to make sure that school could start on time and open safely before they rolled out sports.

“Our number one goal is to allow schools to open safely without contact sports before school starts,” said EPC vice president and Liberty athletic director Fred Harris. “Like anything else in this climate things can change. We’ve all had discussions as a league over the past three weeks and it was good to see everyone on the same page for this. We want to have a season for the kids.”

Some sports competition dates will still start in August, as the first date for golf will be Aug. 20 and tennis Aug. 24, but football’s opening night will be Oct. 2. Field hockey, soccer (boys and girls) and girls volleyball are slated to start on Sept. 25, while cross country is Sept. 4.

Divisions will be aligned by county and contests will be played within the county only.

The approved divisions are as followed:

Lehigh - Allen, Central Catholic, Dieruff, Emmaus, Parkland and Whitehall;

Monroe - East Stroudsburg North, East Stroudsburg South, Pleasant Valley, Pocono Mountain East, Pocono Mountain West and Stroudsburg;

Northampton - Bethlehem Catholic, Easton, Freedom, Liberty, Nazareth and Northampton.

Football will play their five divisional games, while tennis, soccer (boys and girls), golf, and field hockey will have 10 game seasons, featuring home and away contests.

Girls volleyball will have 10 games in the division with a home and away series, but also have an 11th game based on seeding. Cross country will have five meets.

The conference and District 11 are still trying to iron out the details for volleyball, since the max capacity for indoor venues is currently 25 people.

Harris said they are working on getting clarification on how to move forward under the current restrictions.

Practice dates for every school will be different, as schools are having offseason workouts currently and will continue to have them until the lead up of the season.

As far as Bethlehem goes, Harris said practices would officially start on Sept. 14.

There will be no conference playoffs this season, as teams will be crowned with divisional titles.

The question about fans attending contests is still one that’s up in the air.

“That remains to be seen, but ultimately we’ll follow the governor’s direction for that,” Harris said about allowing fans inside stadiums.

Independent games outside of the conference have already been floated around the football rumor mill, as Harris acknowledged that schools could potentially play games in September prior to the October 2nd opening night, but was hopeful teams would stick to the condensed EPC schedule.

Ultimately, Tuesday’s news was a positive step moving forward in the fall, even if it cuts out nearly half of the competition dates for programs across the conference.

“This is a huge difference compared to the spring because we didn’t play at all,” said Harris. “Kids never got that opportunity to play [in the spring] and as a father of a senior parent it was tough. We have a tremendous goal of having a season for the kids and some kind of season is better nothing.”