NEW ORLEANS — As a coach in a sport where social distancing is impossible, Andrew Nicola said he did all he could to keep the students on his wrestling team safe during the pandemic — following rules on restricting spectators, disinfecting mats between rounds and requiring wrestlers to change into clean singlets between every match.

So he was alarmed in January when his team from Brother Martin High School in New Orleans arrived at the Louisiana Classic wrestling tournament to find crowds of spectators clustered tightly together, with many not wearing masks.

Mr. Nicola angrily demanded that tournament organizers kick out the people who were not following the rules. “I went up to them personally and said, ‘You need to fix this, and it was not fixed,’” he recalled. “I was very upset because I knew this one was going to cost us.”

Less than a week later, more than 20 students, staff members and spectators who attended the tournament had tested positive for the coronavirus, an outbreak that prompted Louisiana sports officials to suspend the rest of the wrestling regular season.

navigate the challenges of youth sports, weighing concerns about transmitting the virus against the social, emotional and sometimes financial benefits of competition.

For months, a tangle of rules and restrictions that vary by state and sport has forced players and coaches to adapt. Vaccine rollouts and warmer spring temperatures have prompted some states to lift mask mandates and loosen guidelines, but health experts continue to urge caution for young athletes amid the spread of possibly more contagious variants of the virus.

a January report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that two high school wrestling tournaments in Florida led to nearly 80 people becoming infected with the virus, including one adult who died. In Minnesota, at least 68 cases since late January have been linked to participants in school-sponsored and club athletics, including hockey, wrestling and basketball, according to the state health department.

In at least some cases, the spread did not occur during competition, but at team-related gatherings. Recent data from the N.F.L. and the C.D.C. found that shared transportation and meals were the most common causes of the virus spreading among sports teams.

recent recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics that young people wear face masks both during games and when traveling with teammates. (The group allowed some exceptions for contact sports where masks could be a choking hazard, and individual sports where athletes can maintain a safe distance outdoors.)

But when her 11-year-old son’s soccer league put into place an indoor mask mandate after the association’s guidance was published in December, Dr. Briskin said, “they had so much backlash, they backed out and made it optional.”

His club kept the requirement, so she let him keep playing. And her teenage daughter’s school basketball team requires masks during practices, she said — though not on the court during games, but her daughter wears one anyway. Both of her children are learning remotely, Dr. Briskin said, and needed the athletic outlet.

“It was very important to have them out doing social activity, and getting physical activity, but trying to encourage it in the safest way possible,” she said.

Many experts agree that youth sports are important for both physical and mental health. That has meant school athletics have continued in some places even when students are learning virtually. And some schools and sports associations, including those in Ohio and New Jersey, also loosened academic eligibility requirements for student athletes. In Kentucky, a bill in the State Senate would let students redo a year of classes to make up for academic losses, while also granting high school athletes a fifth year of eligibility.