All winter sports teams took a break for the holidays, a few even had a more extended break than others. Then there is the Aberdeen Christian girls’ basketball team, who will have a two and half week layoff since their last official contest.

“It’s good and bad. Some of the girls had some injuries, so I was kind of able to rest some of those, but it is like starting the season over again for the second time,” said Knights coach Michael Rohrbach. “We basically gave them a week off and then we’ve just hit it hard this week and run them back into shape.”

It’s already been an interesting season schedule-wise for the squad. For starters, the basketball season got off to bit of a delayed start because the Knights played in the state volleyball tournament this past fall.

When the season did start, Christian played four games in eight days and was scheduled to have five games in nine days before the weather postponed one of the contests. Now, as they return to action, the Knights are set to play three games in four days, starting Monday night.

“It’s definitely the weirdest start to a season we’ve had,” Rohrbach said. “We delayed practice with volleyball, so we had about a week to really go hard and get ready, and then we hit the games hard. Kind of same situation now, a week to go really hard for three games in four days, so it’s going to be interesting.”

Rohrbach said the time off has allowed him to scout a few upcoming opponents, but he is more concerned about his own team than anyone else on the schedule.

“I always tell the girls, our greatest opponent is always going to be ourselves, because I want to make sure that we’re getting better each game and doing what we need to do,” he said. “We try not to look at who we’re playing, but just get better each day.”

The Knights are 4-0 and rated fourth in the most recent Class B poll, but there are always things to work on.

Rohrbach has used the break in action to modify a few things here, tweak a few things there as the squad prepares for the second half of its season.

“I think the biggest for me was it allows you to evaluate what you’ve done so far, make tweaks to what you are doing, we’re able to add some new stuff in a little bit and kind of build on what we did those first couple of weeks,” Rohrbach said. “We’ve added another defense or two. We want to keep teams off balance a little bit. Our man is pretty good, but there’s going to be a lot of games where maybe it’s not working our way or we need to keep teams off balance, so we have some of that and we have some traps figured out.”

Rohrbach gave his players a full week off and has spent the past week on conditioning drills as well as implementing some of the changes he has developed since the team last played on Dec. 16. He has tried to simulate game-like conditions each day as well.

When the Knights do return to action, they will be looking at another new experience, playing at the Aberdeen Christian School Gym instead of the Aberdeen Civic Arena. The Knights will host Britton-Hecla Monday and Iroquois-Doland Tuesday.

“It will be fun because those are girls-only games, so being in a little bit smaller gym will kind of make it feel like some more excitement and energy in the gym,” Rohrbach said. “So I’m excited to have both those games here at the school. It’s a great place to play as well, so it’s nice to have a couple of games here.”