Seth Lisa has been looking forward to the days of getting back together with Northampton’s wrestling team.

As last week marked the program’s first official activity allowed by the school district, Lisa, as well as every other coach in the state, are in the grip of a coronavirus winter season that will come with it’s share of roadblocks each day.

“It’s nice to finally get back together with the kids,” said the Northampton wrestling coach before the shutdown, “but I can see how tough it can be on you mentally. You really don’t know what the next day is going to give you until about 2:30 p.m., where you just hope something hasn’t happened to not allow the team to practice. I’m sure things will change when you get into a groove after a couple weeks, but it’s been challenging.”

As it turns out, Gov. Wolf put a halt on sports activities.

But, getting through each day is the biggest hurdle for coaches, athletes and administrators at this point. The growing case numbers each day is just part of the overall landscape of reality at the moment, one that Lisa is trying to take day-by-day.

The Kids wrestling team was split up into two groups of 14 wrestlers this week to participate in running and lifting, as the indoor measures only allowed certain amount of people indoors. This week is when the team was supposed to be able to get into live wrestling. Lisa planned to follow a similar plan of 14 wrestlers one day and 14 the next day on an alternate practice schedule.

“I’m pretty sure that’s how we’ll do it,” he said before the shutdown. “At this point, our guys aren’t gearing up to wrestle 45 matches this season. We want to scale them up to get them in shape, but we also don’t know when we’re going to even compete.”

The East Penn Conference schedule was set to start on December 15, but the league voted last week to delay things until January 15 before the ruling came down to halt sports until January 4.

The other challenges for winter sports is wearing masks during practices and competitions.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Health has ruled that all winter sport athletes must wear face coverings “while actively engaged in workouts and during competition.”

Exceptions to the order provides “if wearing a face covering would either cause a medical condition or exacerbate an existing one, including respiratory issues that impede breathing, a mental health condition, or a disability.”

The order pertains to all winter sports: basketball, wrestling, swimming, and indoor track. Coaches, officials, spectators and school personnel who attend the events are also required to wear masks.

Brian Downs, Public Information Officer for the Lehigh Valley Health Network, has added, “We are providing the school’s athletic programs the same recommendations that the state is recommending regarding masks.”

The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) has petitioned the DOH to rescind the order, stating that wearing masks while engaged in competition will cause unsafe risks to the athletes. They reportedly have received no response as of last week. The PIAA has come out in favor of allowing each district to decide if masks are worn during competitions.

Lisa said that his team has been wearing masks throughout this week’s workouts and was planning to follow the same procedure this week when live wrestling was supposed to get underway.

How those masks will affect wrestlers is the great unknown for him so far.

“I know it’s tough for the kids to run with the masks on because they’re just gasping for air sometimes,” he said. “We haven’t wrestled yet, so I’m not sure how it’s going to be, but it’ll be something we monitor [when we get back].

“We can only control what we do with our team. All the other stuff is out of our hands. As long as we can come to practice, we’ll show up everyday.”