A loss to Parkland in the final game of the regular season coupled with a loss to Whitehall in the semifinals of the Lehigh Valley Conference tournament dropped Emmaus to 17-4 overall on the season and into a fifth seed in the District 11 tournament. The worst part of that seeding is that they have to hit the road for their opening game of the tournament, traveling to Stroudsburg for Wednesday's game.

The Mounties lost to Pocono Mountain East in the Mountain Valley Conference championship, putting them into the District 11 tournament as the fourth seed, while PM East grabbed the number two seed, just behind top-seeded Whitehall, the LVC champions.

In the loss to Whitehall, Emmaus managed just two hits off the Zephyrs' Jacob Wloczewski, who threw a complete game against the Hornets. As has been the case throughout the season, Emmaus got a good pitching performance from leftie Josh LeMaster, who allowed just two unearned runs thanks to four Emmaus errors.

"I've said it before; 'you don't win baseball games, you lose them' and that's about as poor as we've played all year," said Hornets coach John Schreiner after the loss to Whitehall. "Their kid [Wloczewski] pitched really well and so did Josh [LeMaster]. The score should have been 0-0, but you're not going to win when you make four errors."

All four of the errors were by infielders, which has been the Achilles heel of the Hornets. Whitehall got its first run when the Zephyrs had runners on first and third and the Hornets dropped the ball attempting to tag a runner for the third out of the inning. In the sixth, Whitehall posted an insurance run when Jonathan Winter worked a bases-loaded walk to force across the second run of the game.

Emmaus had a chance to tie the game in the second when Zach Fotta led off with a double and one out later Jacob Pacheco was hit by a pitch. Both runners moved up on a wild pitch, but Wloczewski got the second out on a pop fly back to the mound and a ground ball to end the inning. The only other hit came on a Connor Healy pinch-hit single.

Emmaus had one other runner when Luini Ortiz walked with two outs in the fourth - the only walk allowed by Whitehall - but was picked off first by catcher Ryan Bonshak.

Stroudsburg finished the season 18-4 overall, but also made some mistakes of their own in the MVC Championship. A runner left early on a sacrifice fly, turning a run into a double-play and they didn't get anything out of a bases loaded, nobody out situation that gave Pocono Mountain East (14-8) a lot of momentum and helped the Cardinals to their first ever MVC title.

While Schreiner knows the Hornets get somewhat of a clean slate in the district playoffs, he also knows that his team isn't playing its best baseball right now.

"We've got to play better than this. This was the worst we played all year and we'll get nowhere if we don't play better."