Last season, just one more win would have gotten the Emmaus girls basketball team into districts.

The season before, the Lady Hornets tied for the final spot in the Lehigh Valley Conference playoffs, but were eliminated by the tie-breaker system. This season, the seniors and coach Billy Dunn don't want to look back on anything like that at the end of the season, so they've developed a one-game-at-a-time approach for this season.

"One of the things that I've been encouraging all of our girls is to play not with the expectation of failure, but the expectation to succeed, to excel with courage on every possession and not be thinking about what's coming up, but live in this moment," said Dunn. "The Latin term is carpe diem: seize the day. If you do well today, the pieces will fall into place."

This year's team has four seniors - Ivy Forstater, Maraya Palko, Drea Watkins and Beth Wiseley - which gives it a strong group of returning players and thanks to a developing youth program, there are new faces coming in that will be able to provide some immediate help. Freshman Kiyae White and sophomores Destanee Watkins and Vanessa Huber bring some new faces to the team, with White even cracking the starting lineup.

"She comes from a line of great athletes and her parents have been great," said Dunn, who enters his third season with the Lady Hornets. "She's a special player. Right now, she's in our starting five and she really changes the dynamic of our team just with her athleticism and she works hard. Whether she got it from her brothers or her parents, she comes in and just works."

Destanee Watkins is the younger sister of Drea, who is looking forward to having her little sister on the team this season.

"It's great. Hopefully, I won't get too mad at her if she screws up," joked the senior Watkins.

Watkins and Wiseley also spoke glowingly of White and the young crop of players joining the team.

"She's a good player and has a good attitude," said Wiseley of White.

After last season and their play in summer leagues, Dunn identified four areas - ball handling, closing out, finishing and foul shooting - that the team needed to improve on to be successful. He also wanted to improve his team's athleticism and conditioning to help bring about an improved transition play.

"Finishing our layups and getting in shape" are two things that Watkins says the team worked on very hard during the off-season. "We ran a lot, but it's good for us because transition points are what we want this year. If we take it one game at a time, we can really be a threat; I really believe that and I really want to [be a threat] in our last year. We have some goals set that we want to accomplish both individually and as a team."

Wiseley, who Dunn has relied heavily upon since taking over the team, likes the new approach and wants to make herself into an even more dominant player than she's been.

"I definitely want to be a threat and rise above things," she said. "As a team, we definitely want to get into districts and if we do this right, we can get into the LVC playoffs, too."

"I've thought there is something very special about Beth and Drea, even two years ago, the way they handled themselves and the type of individuals that they are off the court only reflects on the court," said Dunn. "They're great character individuals and they are really a credit, because the two of them and our two other seniors have really been able to bring change to our program."

Dunn has gone as far as bringing in local community leaders who have overcome adversity to speak to the team about getting through tough times that ultimately arise during a basketball season.

"Each year has its great moments and its challenges and I want the girls to be prepared that we're going to go through some tough times," said Dunn. "We're talking about if your shot isn't going, what can you do to help us win? You can always play tough defense."

While he believes his team can reach success on the court, Dunn also thinks that they can have a lot of success off the court and stresses how important character and accountability are to his players.

"I feel really good about this group, but I feel great about them because of the people they are and I really believe that the type of individual that you are will translate onto the basketball court," said Dunn.