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York Catholic set for four games in six days


The snow might be pushing out, but the York Catholic girls’ basketball team will be feeling the residual effects next week.

The Fighting Irish can thank the winter weather for the extra game on their schedule for the week. They were originally scheduled to travel to Dallastown on Saturday, but the snow pushed the game to Monday and is forcing York Catholic to play four games in a six-day span.

Making the task tougher is the fact that the inclement weather means practice time will be almost nonexistent before their meeting with Dallastown on Monday.

“Having Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off isn’t ideal at all,” York Catholic head coach Kevin Bankos said. “With kids being off four days, it is tough to get them back into the swing of things right away playing a game before you practice. But, everybody is dealing with the same thing so we’ll make it work.”

After Monday’s game, the Fighting Irish will travel to Hanover on Wednesday. They will then play a pair of weekend games at Delone Catholic on Friday and at Steelton-Highspire on Saturday.

The short turnaround after each game could make it challenging to not overwork the players. Since it is late in the season the coaching staff tends to go with shorter practices already, according to Bankos. So the York Catholic coach isn’t quite as concerned about the issue.

“I’m just one of the coaches that believes that by late January if you’re going an hour and 15 minutes, that's probably plenty anyway. So it’s more like game conditioning than a practice,” Bankos said. “We go pretty quick ... three things and we go pretty hard, and then we try to get the kids out of there to rest. It’s a long season … Right now you just shorten things up a bit and go over more game planning.”

Mixed into the already chaotic week is the Friday night contest against Division III rival Delone. The Squirettes beat the Fighting Irish earlier in the month at York Catholic in a close 53-49 game. The Squirettes are in a similar boat this week with York Catholic since they will also be playing on Monday and Wednesday before the Friday night showdown.

However, just because there is a highly anticipated game on Friday doesn’t mean the Irish are overlooking their earlier games.

“We certainly had our hands full with Hanover the last time we played them and Dallastown is coming along,” Bankos said. “Their kids are healthy again, so they’re two good opponents. We don’t look ahead very often. We try to keep the kids focused on every game matters this time of year.

“You have power points and (league) playoffs. There’s things that matter for all these games, and Wednesday is a league game. If we don’t take care of business Wednesday then Friday is really an irrelevant game except for the rivalry.”