As winter snow produced a whiteout on Monday, the Bethlehem basketball scene has been on ice over the past week as well.

With another COVID outbreak at Freedom last week, the school took a cautious approach to canceling all athletic activities until this past Monday.

That meant that the Freedom boy’s basketball team still hasn’t played a game this year and have been off from any organized activities since January 19.

Head coach Joe Stellato, at this point, understands it’s better to be safe than sorry, as his team awaits to get some competitive action on the court.

“I think I’m numb to all the changes that are happening and just trying to stay as flexible as possible,” he said. “We were supposed to start up again on Monday, but then the snowstorm pushed stuff back again.”

The Pates are now scheduled to take on Liberty on back-to-back days this Friday and Saturday in their first dose action this year, assuming everything goes well for both teams this week.

Liberty had its own set of issues last week when Superintendent Joseph Roy suspended the team for three days due to improper mask wearing in their game against Northampton the previous week.

The issue came to a head at last Monday’s school board meeting when several school board members voiced their concerns over pictures from the contest where players had masks under their nose.

The Hurricanes (0-2) didn’t see any action last week, as they had five games postponed heading into this week. They hope to get back on track with their games against Freedom this weekend.

As a result of everything happening with Freedom and Liberty last week, Bethlehem Catholic didn’t have any contests either since they were scheduled to play both schools last week.

They look to kickstart things with a series against Northampton on February 4 and 6.