With nearly half of Northampton's wrestling roster fresh of varsity faces, it's fair to say that head coach Seth Lisa is certainly looking forward to witnessing what his wrestlers can do.

The K-Kids opened up the season last night, past Press deadlines, against Dieruff in what Lisa expected to be a closer bout than some would suggest when you see the two teams in the box score.

"Dieruff has a lot of guys that have been wrestling all year long," Lisa said. "A lot of our guys have been wrestling with them during the off-season at different clubs, so they know what they have. It's going to be a good bout for us."

With the Kids featuring a lineup mixed of experienced wrestlers, along with five weights145, 152, 170, 182 and HWThaving a combined one match of varsity experience, Lisa knows that a good start against the Huskies can be a confidence builder heading into Saturday night's home match against Nazareth.

The Blue Eagles are favored to be one of the elite teams in the Lehigh Valley Conference this season and Lisa surmised that his group are the likely underdogs.

"Nazareth has been doing really well at the youth level over the years and they're starting to have some of those younger guys come up now," said Lisa. "They have a really solid team. Hopefully, we get some good pairings on Saturday because we know it's going to be a tough match."

With Whitehall on tap next week, followed by the Beast of the East tournament on December 22 and 23, Lisa and company will learn a lot about what type of team he has over the next two weeks.

"I really just want to see these guys go out and wrestle hard for six minutes," he said. "We just need to compete and build some confidence for the younger guys."