It’s about time to put away the rain gear and the boots, lace up my British Knights and get ready for a few months of indoor, winter sports.

Out with the smell of hotdogs and in with that of heart-stopingly buttery popcorn. These are just a few of the things I look forward to as winter practices began Nov. 16.

But even though balls have started falling through the hoops, the boys are in the pool and the mats are rolled out, we’re not quite finished with fall.

Yes! We have officially entered the dreaded overlap period between fall and winter sports.

Every year I hear mutterings about how this will affect the potential of local winter sports teams, more specifically basketball.

It’s the clash between basketball and football that is usually most talked about, because football is the only sport where success can seriously abbreviate a hoops roster.

This is a relatively new phenomenon to me, as my alma mater never was in danger of any title and there was typically no hope for the basketball team either.

It’s actually funny because once this week, and next week, are over, all the talk will stop.

I’m not exactly sure where it is, but there is some threshold that a football team hits when advancing through a state tournament that seems to make people forget about almost anything.

Now starting my third year of covering prep sports and I have covered three football teams reaching a championship game in one classification or another in my previous two years, and after the quarterfinals that threshold is hit.

Suddenly, even the most diehard prep basketball fans seem to stop caring about the practice time their team is losing due to prior commitments and are just happy to witness such a magical season. Even the top-ranked teams don’t always make it out of the second round — nothing is certain when it comes to prep sports and a run like the Marysville-Pilchuck team is making should be treasured.

Even if a team falls just short of making the title game, or winning it, everybody is happy because they are back on the court, mat or in the pool by the following Monday.

I don’t know about you, but there is something oddly calming about that.