The Emmaus girls swimming team has quite a task ahead of it. There is always the battle to catch Parkland and this season, the Hornets have to do it with a young team consisting of just two senior swimmers.

Graduation took away many of the team's top swimmers, but that doesn't mean there's not enough talent remaining for the girls team to make a run at Parkland as well as conference and district titles.

The two seniors (Tori Bingham and Claire Frank) are both quality swimmers who can provide leadership for the younger swimmers coming up through the program.

"On the girls side," sad Emmaus head coach Tim O'Connor. "The swimmers didn't all have state-meet experience, but they were all swimmers who for four years swam our district meets and those are the end-of-season meets that you really focus on; to lose a lot of that is huge.

"Fortunately, we do have some good leadership on both sides and I'm very much looking forward to that. Claire Frank has really worked hard in the offseason and really tried to improve some areas that she wanted to do."

Frank has set high goals for herself coming into the season, but both are within reach for her.

"My personal goal is to make it to states in an individual event for the first time" said Frank. "I've only gone for relays in the past. I've really worked on my technique this year and I think that's really improving my strokes."

The two best shots for Frank are in the 200-yard individual medley and the 100-yard butterfly.

"I've never really gotten a chance to swim [the 200 IM], but last year I got a best time at one of our championship meets during club season and I thought to myself, 'if I can do that when I'm not tapered, I wonder what I can do when I'm tapered.' So that's one of the events that I'm focusing on. I'm also focusing on the 100 fly, to break a minute for the first time."

With Bingham and Frank at the top to provide leadership, O'Connor feels confident that underclassmen can step up and continue in their development and keep the team competitive.

"Maura Beuttel and Sam Mull are now juniors and I'm looking for them to do a really solid job," said O'Connor. "I know that Sam's been training her butt off for about a year solid and I know that hard work will pay off for her. Kaitlyn Hur is another girl who has really been developing well and I'm curious to see how she does."

The freshman class brings some interesting young talent into the program, including diver Jess Hurlburt.

Emmaus' diving program has been improving over the past couple of seasons, but it's been difficult to find a young diver that wasn't going to require a lot of time to develop. O'Connor believes Hurlburt could be an important addition.

"For Emmaus to say that we have a good diver, who comes in, is big," said O'Connor. "Normally, we've been very fortunate to develop divers like Anna Overholtz, who put four years of commitment in and she developed into a really solid diver for us. There aren't many times that we get to say 'hey, we've got a freshman diver here,' and this year we do."

The annual meet with Parkland has been moved back to an end-of-season meet after being moved up to around Christmas the past couple of seasons.

The meet generally determines which team will win the conference, which has recently been dominated by the Lady Trojans. Even though her team is very young, Frank believes it can close the gap with Parkland.

"It's been a goal for the Emmaus girls to beat Parkland and I think with all of the talented young swimmers and Jess Hurlburt, the young diver that we have this year, we'll be able to score major points in that meet," said Frank.

"Parkland is always a good meet for us because we always get really excited and we're all determined to do our best and it's going to be a fight, but it's going to be a good fight."