One night before an all important Colonial League meeting regarding the opening of the fall sports season, Palmerton Area School District’s board of directors on Tuesday gave its support to starting the season on time.

“I’m in full support of starting sports on time,” director Tammy Recker said. “Parents are smart. Any parent who feels that athletics is something their child will benefit from knows the risks. We can’t guarantee nobody will get sick. But we can do all we can to make sure the safeguards are in place. We need to look at mental health of these kids and sports is very important for that as well.”

Palmerton Athletic Director Kyle Porembo said the league’s member schools are going to have very similar, if not the same, set of procedures for fall contests. Much of those procedures, he said, are already in the district’s resocialization plan, meaning the adaptation of that document for game play will be minimal.

“The good news is we don’t have to reinvent the wheel there,” Porembo said. “We’ll have to define what a game day will look like and that type of thing, but we’re in a good spot. Our coaches and athletes have been doing a great job with the summer workouts. If we continue to follow all of those procedures, it gives us our best chance at limiting any kind of exposure to COVID-19.”

The continuity of what has been established in those summer workout programs is one of the main advantages to starting the fall season on time, High School Principal Paula Husar said.

“Students and coaches in a rhythm,” she added. “They have a good routine going. Thank goodness we have had no issues. But that rhythm and routine is really important for children and teenagers. I think that is why we need to try and have meaningful games start as soon as possible with guidelines in place.”

That isn’t to say a return to sports doesn’t come with concerns. School Board President Kathy Fallow cited higher COVID-19 case counts in Lehigh and Northampton counties, where nearly all of the other Colonial League schools are located.

“Palmerton has been very lucky,” Fallow said. “We had only 38 cases since we started tracking. My concern is we have athletes who will be going to all these different counties and coming back and going into our school buildings. The evidence is now there that 10- to-18 year olds are just as likely to spread the virus as an adult.”

The East Penn Conference approved a tiered delay start for fall sports on Tuesday. Football would start last, on Oct. 2 and no schools would travel outside of their own county to play.

While Fallow supported an on-time start to fall sports, she said there are a lot of nerves involved with it.

“It’s kind of like handing the car keys over to your teenage driver for the first time,” she said.

Director Audrey Larvey also cautioned that the athletic program would have to tread lightly.

“Sports is not an island unto itself, it is part of the school system,” she said. “We know an athlete has already tested positive in Jim Thorpe. Athletes will be coming into the school building. We need to look at the big picture and not just act as if nothing is different.”

Whether on time or slightly delayed, sports are an important part of a high school athlete’s career, director Earl Paules said, and could keep them from turning to other hobbies.

“If the kids aren’t playing sports,” he said, “they will find something else to do and it might be worse than the virus.”