Gone are the student cheering sections shouting, “Air ball!” every time an opponent’s shot missed the rim.

Absent are the cheerleading teams energizing the home crowd to amp up the noise to ear splitting levels.

No longer is the parade of grandparents coming to watch their grandchildren make family memories playing a sport for their hometown school.

Welcome to the 2020-21 winter sports season.

In the Schuylkill League and Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, no visiting fans are allowed, and home fans are limited to passes given to players for family members. In the Colonial League, no fans are allowed at all.

The ball bouncing up and down on the hardwood, and coaches shouting instructions are the only sounds one can hear during the action, no matter the score.

Last week, in Jim Thorpe High school’s gym that has a capacity of about 2,500 people, a total of 42 fans watched a girls varsity basketball game between the Olympians and the Pottsville Crimson Tide.

In an unusual move triggered by the quiet gymnasiums all teams are experiencing, Pottsville’s bench players clapped their hands continuously during most of the game in an attempt to spark their team’s comeback before Jim Thorpe eventually came away with the win.

Area coaches were asked if the unprecedented quiet gyms affected the competitive nature of the games.

Jim Thorpe boys’ coach Jason McElmoyle said there is a definite effect of a hometown crowd during certain moments of play.

“We miss the student section, especially when the game is on the line, They were our sixth man,” said McElmoyle. “It’s part of the great atmosphere of high school basketball when the student section yells, ‘You can’t do that’ when an opposing player commits a foul, or when they purposely miscount down the last few seconds of a period to try to get an opposing player to hurry his shot.”

Palmerton boys basketball coach Ken Termini’s team must play all of its games in front of no spectators per Colonial League rules. The only ones in the gym are the two teams, a group of six cheerleaders, and the game officials.

“Home court advantage used to be huge,” said Termini. “Notre Dame, Bangor, and our Palmerton fans came out in big numbers and were extremely loud. I would be naive to think our crowd didn’t provide our players some extra energy.”

Panther Valley allows three tickets of admission for each player at home games. Girls basketball coach Bill “Dapper” Lynn believes the near empty gyms have little or no effect upon the play of his team, but there is one advantage to his coaching style.

“I have a veteran team,” said Lynn. “They have not really been impacted tremendously by a lack of crowd noise.”

“The one thing about quiet gyms that I’ve noticed as much as anything is that I don’t have to yell as loud now because they can all hear me from anywhere on the court.”

Termini explained that the pandemic has forced coaches and players to adapt.

“Just like COVID has made society make adjustments in the way we live, it has done the same with high school basketball,” he said. “We have to create our own energy, our own juice for motivation.”

McElmoyle said that one important thing to remember is it’s not the coaches who play the game.

“The players are 16- and 17-year-old teenagers, and they like to have their friends and their families come to the games, and for the seniors, if they play their last game or two away, their parents can’t be there with them.”

Termini said that after the pandemic is done, families and fans should realize that watching a basketball game is a “privilege and not a right.”

“When everyone can come back to the gyms to see the games, it’s my hope they can be a little kinder with their behaviors, and be more positive toward those who play and officiate the games.”

Lynn agreed with the sentiment expressed by Termini.

“We all have to understand the situation we have here,” he said. “We have to live with it and learn from it.”

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ON HOLD ... The Marian girls’ basketball team recently paused activities due to a positive COVID-19 test within the program. The Fillies will be idle until Jan. 30.

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TAKING OVER PART I

... This season has seen several new faces in new places on the sideline. Dan Muir was hired to lead Pleasant Valley’s girls’ basketball program, taking over a team that had been led by Nadia Gauronsky, who accepted the girls head coaching position at Jim Thorpe, for the past 11 seasons with great success. Gauronsky posted a 145-117 record, and qualified for the district playoffs nine times, reaching the semifinals twice (2012, 2014). Through Wednesday, the Bears were 0-2.

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TAKING OVER PART II ... Patrick Wanamaker has taken over the Northern Lehigh boys program this season, replacing Jeff Miller, who resigned in June. Wanamaker had been an assistant coach for 13 years, spending eight of those with Northwestern and five with the Bulldogs. He brings championship experience to the program, having served on the Northern Lehigh staff for the 2008 Colonial League and District 11 title runs. He was also a member of the Bulldogs’ staff that won the 2010 league championship. At Northwestern, he was part of a run that included three trips to the District 11 playoffs, and a berth in the state tournament in 2019. As a player, Wanamaker was a member of the Northern Lehigh program from 2004-07. He was also part of the 2007 Colonial League championship squad, and a First Team all-league selection that same year.

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1K CLUB

... Skyler Searfoss scored a game-high 23 points, including the 1,000th of her career, as Jim Thorpe cruised to a 62-33 Schuylkill League victory over Blue Mountain on Jan. 12. Searfoss poured in 11 of her 23 points in the first quarter as the Olympians built a 27-7 lead. The Olympian junior achieved her milestone point on a layup early in the third quarter. The Olympians rallied past previously unbeaten North Schuylkill (4-1) 58-56 on Tuesday and are currently 5-2. Palmerton’s Kody Kratzer scored a team-high 16 points in a 58-41 loss to Salisbury and now has 995 for his career. Kratzer’s next opportunity to hit 1,000 points will come tonight as the Blue Bombers host Wilson.

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NEW LOOK(S)

... The coronavirus pandemic has created a new normal for almost everyone, and sports are no different. One major change during the winter sports season will come in the pool, where swimming and diving competitions in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference will all be contested virtually this year. Teams will still compete against other programs, but not in the same pool - they’ll just swim/dive at their own natatorium. Both teams will contest a regular dual meet with officials at both locations to start each event and enforce rules. Times and scores will be tracked into the standard computerized system, then results will be merged at the end of that meet. Places and a final score will be determined. Other sporting events also have plenty of new features, from masks to alternating between two mats in wrestling and planned timeouts in basketball. Another new scheduling quirk for schools in the Schuylkill League is the introduction of doubleheader matches - wrestling each other twice in one day - as a way for teams to get more competitions in and maximize their time on the mat.

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NAIL-BITER

... The Northwestern wrestling team edged Wilson for a 37-36 Colonial League victory on Jan. 13. The Tigers (1-2) won on Criteria D, as the team having won the greater number of matches, including forfeits, 7-6. Eli Dellicker (138) and Mason Brensinger (152) each had pins for Northwestern, while Buck Miller (172) and Isaiah Johri (285) both won by decision.

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BREAKING OUT ... Jim Thorpe’s Kaiden Herron erupted for a game-high 20 points in a 66-59 Schuylkill League win over North Schuylkill on Monday. Herron had nine of his game-high 20 points in the fourth quarter to lead Jim Thorpe (1-4, 1-3). Before that performance, he had scored just five points total in the team’s four previous games.

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STRONG START ... Freshman Stephen Hood made an instant impact in his first appearance for the Panther Valley boys’ basketball team this season. Hood poured in a game-high 26 points, and also pulled down 10 rebounds, to help Panther Valley open its season with a 70-53 nonleague win over Kutztown on Jan. 9. Drew Kokinda also contributed 15 points for the Panthers, who used a big fourth quarter to pull away for the victory. Hood and Kokinda both had four three-pointers in the contest, while Chase Weaver chipped in with 12 points. All three players are freshmen.

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PERFECT

... The following Times News area wrestlers were still undefeated through at least three matches entering Wednesday: Lehighton - Aidan Gruber (6-0), Lukas Ferguson (6-0), Steven Fritzinger (6-0) and Richard Fronheiser (6-0); Tamaqua - Aaron Coccio (6-0) and Nate Wickersham (6-0).

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COMING SOON

... The first set of Times News Wrestling Rankings will appear in next week’s notebook. There won’t be a one-size-fits-all system for this year’s rankings, with schools having competed in a wide range of matches. But the rankings will, as always, be judged based on quality of competition and victories. The bout minimum, at least initially, will likely be a moving target.