Perhaps a free week on the calendar isn't such a bad thing for Northampton's wrestling team.

Following a difficult 35-20 loss to Liberty last Saturday night, the K-Kids have some time to reflect on their current position of sitting at 3-4 overall and 2-3 in the LVC.

Teams like Liberty (5-0) and Emmaus (7-2) have enjoyed rare victories over the Kids this season, as last weekend's Hurricane win was the second in the last 20 years over Northampton.

With last night's bout against Freedom postponed till Monday, Jan. 14, because of a suspected skin condition on Freedom's team, head coach Seth Lisa hopes this is a week to sit down and recharge the batteries.

"We're using this week as time to improve our wrestling and conditioning," Lisa said. "We have a few guys healing up and we are getting focused for the second half of our year."

Liberty's Grimaldi Gonzalez earned a 10-8 decision over Zach Valley at 126 pounds in the marquee bout of the night last week, as both wrestlers were state medalists from a year ago. Liberty won eight of the 13 bouts on the night. Northampton got major decisions out of Bobby Fehr at 160 and from Todd Hetrick at 120, but Liberty got the most out of bonus points, with falls from Joe Curzi (106) and John Ritter (113) in back-to-back fashion, along with a match ending pin from Malik Lovell (152). Noah Klingborg (170) also added a 16-0 technical fall over Jarrod Coleman.

William Eaton (182), Jason Kocher (195) and Josh Coleman (138) each earned decisions for Northampton to round out K-Kids' victories on the night.

Liberty won three bouts that were within two points to give them the edge in close encounters on the night when Jake Gunning posted a 3-2 decision over Imad Azar at 220, followed by Louis Csaszar's 1-0 decision over Ty Marinelli at heavyweight.

Gonzalez's two-point win over Valley wrapped up the final close bout on the night.

"Liberty did a good job winning the close matches," said Lisa. "We had opportunities to win three or four more matches but we weren't able to come out on top. You have to win close matches to win close dual meets."

Northampton now faces an even tougher end of season stretch, starting with next Monday's bout against Freedom (5-2), followed by Bethlehem Catholic (5-0) coming into town on the 16th.

The Kids then travel to Easton (7-0) on January 23rd to round out their next three matches.