Lou Silva and Paul Sullivan know exactly what St. John’s Prep and Xaverian are dealing with right now.

The Catholic Conference powers are playing on Thanksgiving and then again a week later at Gillette Stadium for the Div. 1 state title. There have been many scenarios floated on social media ranging from cancelling the Thanksgiving Day matchup to even using junior varsity players.

What adds to the drama: the Catholic Conference title still has not been settled. St. John’s Prep would clinch the CC championship outright with a win, but a Xaverian win and a Catholic Memorial win over BC High would create a three-way tie for the title. To take it one step further, should Xaverian win and BC High knock off CM, it would give Xaverian and St. John’s Prep a share of the league championship, though many would claim the Hawks would be a worthy claimant of the title based on head-to-head.

As of right now, officials from both schools have indicated to the Boston Herald that they plan on playing the game as they have on past Thanksgiving Days: all-out with the sole purpose of winning.

Silva went through a similar scenario in 2009 when he was head coach at Marshfield. His team played the annual Thanksgiving Day game with Duxbury, then played them again in a Div. 2A semifinal contest four days later. He acknowledged it was something he would have preferred to avoid at any cost.

“It was brutal,” Silva said. “Because we were playing Duxbury twice in four days, you really couldn’t put in a complete game plan on Thanksgiving because you wanted to save a few special plays for the playoff game in case you needed them.”

Marshfield lost the Thanksgiving Day game (17-7), but rebounded to defeat Duxbury in the playoff game (27-6), then edged Masconomet 13-12 to win the championship. As much as Silva relishes the title and revenge victory, losing on Thanksgiving still stings.

“Oh God, we hated losing that game,” Silva said. “I don’t care if you’ve only played the opponent for three years, 30 years or whatever, it’s a huge game. For us, it was a game for bragging rights and losing that game hurt – it still does.”

Things were a little different for Sullivan at North Attleboro in 1998. With the old playoff system, teams pretty much knew who they could face well in advance (only league champions received bids) Seeing the possibility of having to face Attleboro twice in a week, Sullivan tried to be proactive to no avail.

“We did reach out to the MIAA,” Sullivan said. “We were hoping that they could change things around so that we were not aligned with them, but they said no.”

Things didn’t affect North Attleboro on the field as the 1998 team was a juggernaut. They went on to defeat Attleboro on Thanksgiving, then doubled their fun in the Div. 3 EMass Super Bowl, winning 33-14.

“It was a challenge having to face Attleboro twice, I am curious to see what Xaverian and St. John’s Prep are going to do. Attleboro had a good team that year, but we were fortunate to have a very good team. We had a lot of really good players on that team.”