No rest for the wet and weary

The rain that wreaked havoc on the YAIAA football schedule last weekend has dried up. But the effects of some of those postponements will likely linger into this week.

Four area teams -- Bermudian Springs, Dover, New Oxford and William Penn -- were forced to play on Monday due to postponements. That means those teams will head into the Week 3 slate of games with considerably less rest and preparation time.

For some teams, the situation doesn't look too dire. William Penn (2-0) hosts a struggling Susquehannock team that hasn't scored a point yet this year. New Oxford (2-0) has a conveniently scheduled Saturday contest at York County Tech.

Dover and Bermudian aren't quite as lucky. Dover hosts Division III power Delone Catholic on Friday. But even that doesn't compare to Bermudian's predicament -- it hosts South Western at 7 p.m., in what shapes up as the Eagles' toughest game of the season.

That presented Bermudian coach Jon DeFoe with an interesting predicament: How should he budget his practice time during his three available practice days this week?

"It's certainly a challenge," DeFoe said Thursday night. "I think the problem is physically we just had to adjust our schedule. ... You can't come home at 10 p.m. and come out and get after it like you normally would on a Tuesday."

DeFoe said normally Tuesday's would include a full-pads workout and game plan implementation for the following week's game.

"But for us this week," he said. "Tuesday was a combination of Monday and Tuesday together."

On Tuesday, Bermudian studied film in the classroom, and then went out onto the field for a workout (thought it wasn't in full pads).

The game-planning part of preparation was made easier by the fact Bermudian and South Western run the same offense: the Wing-T.

But the short week means less time to recover from injuries. Starters Matt Wolf (guard) and Quinton Gearhart (defensive back) are out for at least this week, and running backs Jeisson Lloret and Ben Goldhammer are banged up.

"We expect them to give it a shot," Defoe said. "But we'll see how they actually do."

All of which makes a gargantuan task Friday seem even bigger.