For the Catasauqua wrestling team, it is a time of regrouping and also battling through the injuries.

The Rough Riders recently dropped a 45-18 decision to Northern Lehigh in which Von Cervantes (107) won by forfeit, Johnathan Cordon-Pinto (145) won by a fall, and Braden Bartholomew (215) and Jacob Ramos (285) each picked up wins by decision.

Head coach Jon Reed realized his team needed to turn back the knob a bit.

“After the Northern Lehigh loss we went back to the basics for our next few practices knowing our kids were not doing some of the basic things correct,” stressed Reed.

“We had to look at the match and season as a whole and realize that we have five or six kids in our starting lineup that just started wrestling this year. That is tough to wrestle any of the teams we do as most of those kids have many wrestlers who have been doing it for years.”

Reed also noted that the team has been hit with rash of injuries lately that has helped to slow their overall progress. Evan Reed, the coach’s son at 145 pounds and returning starter, has been lost for the season with a knee injury.

“We are starting to get hit with the injury bug and have one of our better kids out for the season which really hurts during these dual meets, especially when we are so inexperienced to begin with,” added Reed.

“As we prepare for the second half of the season we really started concentrating on getting back to technique most kids learned in youth wrestling. We will continue to keep grinding in the room every day and hope the kids can pick up some better technique.”

Reed sees the veteran group of Cordon-Pinto, Bartholomew, Ramos and Gavin Hacker continuing to be the leaders of the team, and he is looking forward to seeing how they wrestle the rest of the year.

Reed sees it as a challenge ahead.

“We as coaches understand we have a tough stretch coming up and look to our more experienced kids to continue to improve and place in some of the upcoming tournaments we have,” stated Reed. “The less experienced kids we just want learning more and more every day and get better as the season progresses.”