It was a little more than a month ago when Parkland and Emmaus girls tennis teams met in the regular season, with the Lady Trojans grabbing a 7-0 victory.

The two met up with each other again in the District 11 team championship, with Parkland grabbing the district title with a 4-0 win over Emmaus. The fifth match - the meeting of the two teams' top doubles players - ended in a two-set tie.

The doubles match between Emmaus' Katrina Guido and Elise Van Ormer and Parkland's Rachel Wong and Colleen Wylie turned into a marathon, with two sets taking over an hour-and-a-half to play. Wong and Wylie grabbed the first set with a 6-3 win, but Guido and Van Ormer fought off the Parkland duo for a 6-4 win in the second set.

"It was tough to get warmed up for the match and I think that affected us in the first set," said Guido. "But then we settled in and started to make some shots in the second set and it became a different match."

The Emmaus tennis program has improved greatly under coach Kelly Musselman, who just finished her third season as the head coach. Last season, Emmaus qualified for districts as the fifth seed, but lost in the first round to Northampton. This season, Emmaus was the three seed behind Parkland (number one) and Stroudsburg (number two) and the Lady Hornets picked up an impressive 4-1 win over the Mounties to advance to the finals.

"I am so proud of our girls," said Musselman. "They worked very hard and had a great season. We've also got some young girls coming up who are ready to show what they can do, so with some hard work in the offseason, they should be able to take over for the girls who we'll lose to graduation."

Emmaus will face some key losses. The top three singles players (Kelly Nguyen, Cat Garrity and Victoria Chan) all graduate, as does Guido.

"They won't be easy to replace, but that's all part of what every team has to face, is losing good talent, so you just have to have good underclassmen to step in and we do have some very good talent coming along," said Musselman.

Only the district champion advances to the state tournament, so Emmaus' season is over following a 12-2 regular season with a 10-1 record in the Lehigh Valley Conference.