Emmaus softball head coach John Eyer is about ready to head out to a softball field with a blow torch to melt the remaining snow away so his team can practice on an actual field. For the most part, they've been in the friendly confines of the high school gym, with the exception of a couple ventures onto the parking lot.

"It's hard, because there's cars all over... it hasn't been easy," said Eyer, who is heading into his 16th season as coach.

One thing that the team can do inside without much of an adjustment is get its pitchers ready for the season, which is a key, since Rachel Brown and Olivia Marcks, who were mainstays of the staff throughout their high school careers, are both gone. To fill the void, Eyer is looking to three girls to handle the job. Senior Laura Rau returns after missing last season with an injury and is joined by junior Sarah Mohr and freshman Ciara Wippel.

"Rau's working hard and our junior is throwing well and then with the freshman that we called up," he said "We've got three girls to go to. If I have to go to all three in a game, I'll use all three. Whatever we have to do to win games, we're going to do."

The team also is without shortstop Miryah Palko and thirdbaseman Claire Harris, who also graduated. Palko was the team MVP and hit .418 last season, helping to lead the Lady Hornets to the conference championship. This year's roster has four seniors, six juniors, two sophomores and two freshmen, so youth is going to play a big role for the team this season.

"It's a young team, but it's not like they've never played ball before," said Eyer. "They've played tournament ball, so they know the game and they know what to do. Right now, they're all working really hard and they look really good, they're all just eager to get outside and start doing something," said Eyer.

Eyer knows that his team is going to have to be prepared, because with the merger of the LVC and MVC, things have gotten much tougher for Emmaus.

The Hornets went 10-4 in the LVC last season and were in a division with three teams (Allen, Dieruff and Central Catholic) that went a combined 6-36 in the conference. This season, Emmaus' division rivals consist of both Parkland (14-0) and Northampton (10-4) in addition to Central Catholic, Nazareth and Whitehall, making for much more competition.

While Whitehall and Nazareth both had league records under the .500 mark last season, they did both qualify for districts. In fact, it was the Zephyrs who knocked Emmaus out of the District 11 playoffs with a come from behind win. Whitehall had also beaten Emmaus during the regular season, as did the Blue Eagles, so this year's division battle will be a tough one.

"It makes our division so much stronger and it's going to be competitive, so for us, it's going to be interesting," said Eyer. "I think the whole makeup of the league is going to be interesting and it should be kind of fun."

Emmaus played in the LVC Championship in each of the last two seasons, but lost both games, falling to Bethlehem Catholic in 2013 and Parkland last season. For all the success that Eyer has had with the team, its last conference championship came in 2001 in the original East Penn Conference. Eyer did lead the team to a district championship in 2007 and was a district runner-up in 2012.

Emmaus is set to open the regular season schedule Friday at Central Bucks South and play its first home game at Patriots Park Monday against Allen.