You've probably noticed how athletes these days generally have some type of music device plugged into their ears to listen to their favorite music as they train or prepare for a meet. Maybe it's something old school by the Stones or the latest from whoever young athletes are following on that particular day or week. For Emmaus swimmer Greg Ritchie, there's another choice; himself.

The senior sprinter released an album of his music about a month ago and having checked it out on Spotify.com, it's pretty good stuff. And, Ritchie is preparing to take his passion for music even further when he attends Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduation.

"It's kind of a mix of pop, rock, blues and soul," said Ritchie. "I grew up listening to Motown, so I try to incorporate some of that with a modern pop sound."

Before he heads off to Boston though, there is work left to be done for Ritchie in the high school pool. This past weekend, Ritchie went up against Hershey's Vinny Tafuto, regarded as one of the best sprint swimmers in Pennsylvania, and came up short, with Tafuto capturing the 50-yard freestyle. While Tafuto is highly regarded, so is his Hershey team, which picked up a win in the boys events by a score of 110-70 and won the girls events 123-63.

The meet proved to be a learning experience for Ritchie, and hopefully for the rest of his teammates. Coach Tim O'Connor believes Ritchie has to push himself if he wants to compete at the state level.

"I was very honest with Greg this past week and I told him that I don't think that he's where he was a year ago," said O'Connor. "He got a dose of reality today going up against the fastest sprinter in the state and he saw that in the 50, when you come off the wall and you're already a body length behind, that doesn't bode well."

Ritchie seems to have accepted his coaches' challenge and was paying attention to a lot of things in the meet against Hershey.

"Being a sprinter, I know that my starts and turns are absolutely crucial, in the 50 especially," said Ritchie. "It gives me something to go after

"I know exactly what I need to do and exactly what I need to work on and I'm going to put that into practice and see where I am at the end of the season."

O'Connor wasn't as disappointed by the fact that his team was beaten by Hershey as he was with some of the efforts that he saw.

"I was hoping our kids would at least be mentally tough enough to be disciplined and that didn't happen today," said O'Connor after the loss.

O'Connor mentioned his team's lack of aggressiveness in coming off the wall and in making their turns and believes those areas just aren't strong enough for his team to compete with the best programs, even though he sees that aggressiveness during practices.

"What's most disappointing is that all of our focuses at practices hasn't transferred over to our meets yet," O'Connor said. "We're breaking out of walls very lazily, we're not attacking our turns very well and sometimes, you can get away with that against the local competition. But when you go up against teams like [Hershey], they're going to chew you up."

The loss dropped the boys team to 5-1 overall and 3-0 in the LVC, while the girls are 3-3 overall and 3-1 in the conference.

A developing bright spot for Emmaus has been the performance of their divers. Serena Speer took the top spot in Saturday's girls diving event, with Anna Overholtz finishing second and Ally Davies fifth. On the boys side, Matt Bussiere took the top spot.