If you’ve paid attention to college sports at all over the past year, you know the struggle it has been to get through schedules during the coronavirus pandemic.

Games get postponed, moved up and canceled altogether like it’s beer league softball or rec-league hoops at the local YMCA.

If the games get played at all.

And I’m talking about the highest-profile college sports like “Power Five” FBS football and Division I men’s basketball.

Now imagine what it’s like on the D-III hockey level. In your first season as a head coach.

That’s been Michael Gershon’s reality at Chatham for 10 months. He’s not only in his first year as head coach of a program that went 3-21-1 a season ago but he’s also in his first year as a college head coach, period.

The Cougars are finally scheduled to open on the road against Stevenson (Md.) on Friday night. Then they return to play the Mustangs on Saturday at home. Gershon is hoping his team gets to play at least 10 more games currently scheduled after that leading up to the United Collegiate Hockey Conference playoffs. They are slated to begin March 31.

“It’s definitely not how I thought my first college head coaching position would start,” Gershon said Sunday. “It’s been a challenge, but it has been an exciting challenge. … But we are one of maybe 30 schools that are playing this year. So we are honored and privileged to be able to play. We want to make it the best year possible. Especially for our seniors.”

With that in mind, the Cougars are taking the unique approach of making sure senior day is on opening night, just to make sure the seniors get proper acknowledgment in case home games have to be sacrificed at the end of the season.

Gershon didn’t jump into this situation entirely blind, leaving his previous job as an assistant coach on Derek Schooley’s staff at Robert Morris. He was hired in mid-April, about a month into the pandemic. But back then, most of us were thinking we’d be close to normal by autumn instead of being knee-deep in the weeds almost a full year later.

Given the additional cost of testing players and staff four times a week, the logistics of travel and exposure risks affecting player safety, it would’ve been extremely easy to just punt on athletics at the D-III level for the foreseeable future. Some have even done so on the D-I level.

Thankfully for Gershon, he insists the school has been backing those efforts for months, and he hasn’t had to do any arm twisting to keep the program’s season afloat.

“We are very lucky that our president Dr. David Finegold and athletic director Leonard Trevino are extremely passionate about athletics and men’s and women’s ice hockey here. We’ve really had the green light to go ahead and play since October,” Gerson said.

The players are wearing masks during practice and sometimes even during games depending on what the protocols are in whatever municipality they happen to be in on a given night.

“We just want to play,” Gershon said. “So whatever the regulations are, we’re happy to follow them. We just want to get out there and showcase our guys and what they are putting in and how we are trying to play.”

You can hear our entire podcast with Gershon here as we discuss the Western Pennsylvania influence on his roster and coaching staff, talent cultivation at the D-III level and the dedication his players have shown to pull off the season.

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