The boys tennis season is still in the early stages, but so far it's been both successful and repetitive for Emmaus.

The team has opened the season 3-0, winning each match by a 6-1 outcome. Last week, the Hornets took care of both Liberty and Freedom, one of the better teams in the Lehigh Valley Conference, winning matches on their home court.

Last season, Freedom finished 10-1 in second place in the Lehigh Valley Conference, two games ahead of Emmaus. For the Hornets, they might have caught a break when they got to play Freedom early in the season.

"[Freedom], such as Beca or Liberty, have some athletes on their team and they start getting better as the season goes on," said coach Dmitri Diamondopolous. "Those guys who don't usually play tennis get a feel for it, so it's nice to catch Freedom early this season."

Doubles play an important role in high school tennis and Diamondopolous believes the depth on his team is strong enough that they can be strong in doubles play this season.

"The key thing is that you want to have depth, because doubles wins the matches," said Diamondopolous. "Right now, our doubles teams have some solid depth at two and three. Four, we're still trying to tinker with, but once we get that together, I think that we will be pretty solid."

One of those key doubles players is senior Kevin Fine, who holds school records and was a scholar athlete nominee as a goalie on the soccer team. Fine teamed with Kyle Jaeger in the season opener and was been paired with Gavin Dougherty in the matches against Freedom and Liberty. The pair downed their opponents from Freedom 6-0, 6-0 and conquered their Liberty match with scores of 6-2, 6-1.

Fine just started playing tennis in his sophomore year and enjoys it, but still considers soccer to be his favorite. He picked up the sport because his father plays and his brother Andy, who also played soccer and tennis at Emmaus, picked up the sport and liked it. That was enough for the younger Fine to give it a shot.

"After my freshman year, I decided I should try it, and it turned out that I like it," said Fine after the win over Freedom. "Soccer's still number one, but this is a fun sport that I can still take seriously and play in the spring."

"Kevin is a great kid, first of all, and I actually coached his brother back in the day when Andy was here," said Diamondopolous. "Kevin came out for tennis and we knew he was a good athlete and he's doing well for us. He's a good kid to have on the team."

Fine will be attending Bucknell University in the fall to major in mechanical engineering and likely play soccer at the club level, although he hasn't completely ruled out playing varsity soccer with the Bisons.

In singles play, Rowan Hobson is a perfect 3-0 this season and Mike Hensler is 2-0. Hensler teamed with Ryan Jaeger in the season opening win against East Stroudsburg South and picked up a 10-0 win in that match as well. Freshman Matt FitzMaurice won his first two singles matches of the season, but dropped a 6-4, 6-3 match against Freedom for his first loss of the season.

This week, Emmaus has road matches against Nazareth and Whitehall before matching up against last year's LVC champion Parkland at home on April 4.