Coach makes case for shortening football season

Earlier tonight, I wrote a story about how local basketball coaches are dealing with the layoff caused by this week's heavy snowfall.

I talked to several coaches for the article, but didn't get a hold of two of them -- Delone Catholic boys' coach Jim Dooley and York Catholic girls' coach Kevin Bankos -- in time to fit their responses into our print story.

Still, both are tremendous coaches, and both had an interesting perspective on the weather-induced layoff, so I thought I'd include both their comments here.

As you'll see, one was more outspoken that the other.

Dooley: Too many games, too little time

For Dooley, the scheduling fiasco spawned by the snow is more evidence that officials need to rethink how the high school basketball and football seasons are laid out.

"What will hopefullly will come of this is that we're playing too many games in too short of time," Dooley said. "You can't be playing football in December. If we don't believe in specialization, you can't do that. If you do and you want kids t have the opportunity to play multiple sports, you have to have some semblance of balance in the school sports calender."

Dooley pointed out that when he started coaching, the basketball season used to begin in late November and end near Valentine's Day.

Opening night this season was Dec. 11. That means the regularly scheduled YAIAA regular season (which was supposed to end Feb. 9) stretched 61 days.

In other words, not a whole lot of time.

Dooley said the cramped scheduling means weather-related postponements have a more crippling effect.

"You shouldn't play three games a week," Dooley said of the basketball schedule. "Would you have a football team play 2 games a week?"

Dooley mostly blamed the elongated football season for the logjam.

"Maybe people will say 'Holy cow, we've got to do a better job,'" he said. "That's what I hope, but I doubt it."

Delone Catholic (14-6) was able to practice Friday ahead of its Saturday visit to York Suburban (18-2). If the Squires can pull the upset, they would hold onto the No. 3 seed in the upcoming YAIAA tournament and play West York in the first round.

"It's very difficult at this time of year for this to happen, because what every coach will be concerned about is the timing," Dooley said of the layoff. "You run any sort of halfcourt game, the timing in very important."

Bankos: We scale back anyway

While most coaches I talked to expressed concern with how the break would affect their teams, Bankos seemed much more low key.

"It's the time of the year that we scale back anyway," said Bankos, whose teams have had a pretty decent track record this time of year. The Irish have made four straight state finals.

"We try to shorten our practices now," Bankos said. "It might even be helping some teams who have injuries and rest before the playoffs."

Bankos said York Catholic had a shootaround Friday in preparation for the team's visit to Fairfield on Saturday. A win would hand the Irish a share of the Division IV title.