Whenever coaches, fans and players look back on a season, there are usually a few moments that stand out along the way. For a winning team, they're the turning points and the highlights. For a losing team, they're the should-haves and lowlights.

When the final analysis is done on the girls basketball season, the autopsy reveals a season that may have been disappointing, but there were plenty of good things that happened to the team, too.

While they went 15-8 in Billy Dunn's first season as the head coach, they had three seniors who were very seasoned and are all playing college basketball, including one Division I player and another in a Division 2 program.

This year's team had three strong seniors, but each was very different from the seniors of last season. Only one of this year's team is going on to play college ball - Maraya Bowen at the University of Scranton - although it certainly wouldn't have been out of the question for all three of them to continue their careers in college, had they chosen to do so.

The first thing that pops out from this season is that the Lady Hornets lost both meetings with Allen, a team that finished just 2-9 in the Lehigh Valley Conference. The first loss included a dispute over the number of timeouts that Emmaus had very late in the fourth quarter, leaving the Hornets out of timeouts shortly after being told they had another remaining. Turning around those two losses, would have put Emmaus into the district tournament for the second straight season.

Among the highlights; a triple overtime 45-44 win against Easton in a key game. The Hornets were down by as many as 10 in the second half and battled back to tie the game and send it into what were three of the best overtime periods you could ever hope to see. It was one of many times this season when the players showed their determination and battle back. They also played Northwestern - one of the best teams in the area - in a hard-fought game on the road, making a statement about just how tough this team could be. And perhaps their two best halves of the season came in games against rival Central Catholic, who left the gym both nights knowing they had been in a battle.

"The hardest part of this past year is that we spent so much time," said second year coach Billy Dunn. "That's why you can't always measure the investment of time in wins and losses. We spent hours in the gym in August, we would set up fans and it would be 100-degrees and every kid would come.

"I don't know that I would do anything different. The girls gave everything that I could ask of them."

The team loses three seniors - Bowen, Kelsey Bacon and Anna Baer - and Dunn credited those players with adding quality leadership to the team and realizes that it's going to be tough to not have them around down the road.

"I'm sad to see them go, because you become more attached as each year goes," said Dunn.

"The girls and the coaches made a big difference for me. Not just in the way I play, but the way I am off the court," said Bowen, who communicates with the seniors who went ahead of her and is getting input from them on what the college basketball game is like. "Leah [Horton] told me, 'They don't put up with any attitude or anything,' so I'm learning."

For Bacon, there is college soccer to look forward to, but it's hitting her that high school is drawing to an end.

"I go back and forth, but now that the season's over, it's kind of hitting me how things will change," she said.

Baer may have picked up one of the most important lessons that she could have learned during her time on the team, and it was one that Dunn hoped he would be able to drive home for each of the girls.

"This is life, basically; what the team is," said Baer. "It teaches you how to get along and fight through adversity and how you can be so much better when you work as a team."