If you’re a high school basketball coach, you expect and understand injuries.

You worry about team chemistry and fragile egos and playing time.

You know now that some pushy parents are an issue.

You make sure that all the kids get on the bus after the game — and that the manager doesn’t forget the basketballs.

But there is nothing in the coaching handbook that prepares you for a fire that nearly destroys your gym.

There are dozens of ways that River Forest High School students have been displaced and inconvenienced since a 17-year old former student climbed into a second floor office at the school and decided to torch it on Oct. 21.

One of them involves the gym. In short, the girls basketball team hasn’t heard the pitter-patter of their tennis shoes bang against their floor since last season. The fire caused the wall on the south side of the gym to buckle, and the team won’t be able to play until a date yet to be determined.

Until that time, the Ingots will make do the best they can. That means confronting and coping with the overwhelming anger that can enrage you when someone does something as inexplicable as this.

Not only has the rhythm of the season been interrupted for the Ingots, but so has their daily routine. Some teachers don’t have textbooks to teach and the gym itself is piled high with desks and chairs and boxes from the school.

Because of the fire, the team has to share practice time in the junior high gym with the boys team.

“I’m angry at whoever did this,” senior Krystal Montes said. “They did it for no reason at all.”

River Forest head coach Rich Heavilin’s first thought when he heard about the fire was his four seniors. The Ingots, 5-17 last year, were expected to improve with all the experience returning.

He flinched when they told him they might have to play all their games on the road.

Said Montes: “I just thought, Oh, no senior night and no home games. I figured it’d be a long season if we had to ride on the road every night.”

After Heavilin realized how extensively the school was damaged — officials estimate it’ll cost $2 million to make the repairs — Heavilin realized they were lucky.

“Practicing at the junior high is a small price to pay for what could’ve happened,” he said.

Incredibly, Heavilin is hopeful that they can start to practice sometime this week.

The plan is to rid the gym of the stuff piled inside and then shore up the wall. During Christmas break, they’re going to rebuild it.

“It’s pretty amazing what they’ve done in two weeks,” he said.

Heavilin, too, is amazed by the way his team has responded to the situation. They have never complained and they figure that someway, somehow this is going to make them a better team.