Northampton’s wrestling team will have had roughly 25 days off from competition once the District 11 individual tournament begins the weekend of Feb. 20, but that’s not anything out of the ordinary for this year’s wrestling season.

The K-Kids elected to not wrestle at the District 11 team tournament, just like nearly every other school in the district outside of Bethlehem Catholic and Notre Dame, which led to the event being canceled before granting the title to two aforementioned teams.

But for head coach Seth Lisa, the decision to skip out on district duals was a cautious approach amid the COVID pandemic.

“It was a difficult decision not to enter,” he said. “Our team has been wrestling well and wanted to compete but the risk was too great. The placement of the tournament in relation to individual districts made it too risky to enter because of quarantines and shutdowns. The individual postseason is an opportunity for everyone to achieve individual goals and I wanted them to have that opportunity.”

Northampton hasn’t wrestled since Jan. 27 when they lost to Nazareth 32-29 in their only defeat in three dual meets this year. Their bout with Parkland was canceled too, leaving them with plenty of downtime in between the individual district tourney.

But downtime has been a theme this season from the very beginning, which is probably the most normal part of this winter. With districts being the one event everyone has circled on the wrestling calendar, the lead up to this weekend for many area teams will be buzzing with excitement to finally wrestle in a major event.

“We [had] two weeks to get as prepared as possible for districts,” said Lisa a few weeks ago. “Nothing can replicate the amount of matches we would have had but we [planned] on having a great two weeks of practice. It’s tough to keep it fresh. Mixing up practices and types of workouts help but its February and everyone is ready for the postseason to get here.”