With the 2020-21 high school basketball season now over in the Keystone State, coaches have turned their attention to the offseason.

The offseason is, of course, a time for teams to not only get stronger and faster but also work on basketball activity such as shooting and ball-handling. It’s a critical time for players to improve on any weaknesses they have and keep building upon their strengths.

But this period, which allows for open gyms, wasn’t available for teams last season due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which left players to fend for themselves when it came to workouts and basketball activity since team workouts were prohibited.

And when teams were able to practice ahead of the season’s start, they were stopped in their tracks when Governor Tom Wolf’s mitigation guidelines led to a three-week delay on the start of winter sports.

But the start eventually came, and teams in the state, wearing masks while playing, persisted and the basketball season was finished this past weekend with the PIAA state title games in Hershey.

“It was certainly the most unique season that I’ve ever been a part of, I probably can speak for every coach and team in the nation with that,” Kane boys coach Caleb Landmesser said.

Luckily for the coaches and players, they probably won’t be in the same spot as last year as the vaccination rollout throughout the country continues, but precautions could still be in place.

“Hopefully we can go back to normalcy which for us is all summer, we do open gyms four days a week in the mornings for about an hour and 15 minutes and then they can go in the weight room,” Coudersport boys coach Scott Easton said.

The return of open gyms this summer could also mean the return of offseason scrimmages and tournaments such as the Elk County Shootout, which was canceled last year. Easton said Coudy would participate in that and it would, of course, offer the team an opportunity to play against other teams and measure its progress.

“We got to do some plyometric stuff to make sure the kids are getting quicker,” Easton said. “But we’ve got to get out and shoot a lot from behind the arc to work on our form and our range.”

Shooting is a popular skill that coaches said their teams will be working on this offseason.

Prior to the season, Bradford girls coach Bob Hannon said the lack of an offseason last year forced the team to learn on the go and its shooting was going to take time to hit its stride.

Hannon is hoping for a better offseason turnout this summer than in years past so that the squad can make improvements on its shooting, ball handling and more.

“We can’t pick the ball up in November and think we’re going to be OK because it just doesn’t work that way,” Hannon said. “You got to be able to put the ball in the basket and that only happens if you play and if you come and you shoot and you work on your ball-handling and you work on your shooting.”

That overall skill development is what Landmesser said the Kane program prides itself on, which will definitely be an emphasis for the Wolves this summer along with strength and conditioning.

“The main focus is, we’re going to try to get together and play as much as we can,” Landmesser said. “We want to get a lot of actual court time in, but just having a ball in the hands — doing things that make you better every single time where we have the ball in our hands, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Like all teams that had seniors this year, getting back to a somewhat normal offseason will give them an opportunity to rebuild the program and find out who could potentially fill the gaps left behind by the departures.

There will be numerous big shoes to fill in the area with Bradford’s Hannah Lary, Coudersport’s Sarah Chambers and Rosalyn Page and Port Allegany’s Bree Garzel all being examples for as far as local girls basketball teams go. Garzel averaged 22.2 points per game for the Lady Gators as a senior.

“We’ve got lots of girls in the program — a good junior high program, so we hope we don’t have to rebuild too much,” Port coach Jamie Evens said. “You can never replace a Bree Garzel or a (current Pitt-Bradford freshman and former Port star) Cailey Barnett. Next year is going to be a lot of spreading the wealth a little bit more than relying on one person. But we’ll work this summer and see where we’re at.”

The offseason is no doubt a crucial period for teams, coaches and players in all sports. And as things hopefully go back to a sense of normalcy, so too will the sports we watch, play and love.